We recently worked with a partner client who is located in India.

Now if you are familiar with Indian culture, you’d know that they have a lot of holidays. Like, all the time.

Between Muslim and Hindu holidays, there is always some sort of holiday marketing that needs to take place.

Luckily, much of the world takes breathers between major holidays. In the US, October to December are hot months for many retailers.

Once the retailer has done their due diligence of getting enough eyeballs to their website (which generally increases for most of our clients organically during these “hot” months), how then do you convince the visitor that this is the product that they need to buy?

And is this the right time to be testing?

There’s no doubt that visitors to your site on the holidays are pretty motivated, which means they’ll many times overlook some elements that trigger FUDs (Fears, Uncertainties, and Doubts).

We call this holiday motivation.

However, all retailers are pretty aware of this fact, so customers who are holiday shoppers are constantly and excessively bombarded with all kinds of incentives. How do you cut through all the noise and not oversell a pretty “oversold to” visitor?

ALSO READ: Staying on brand with promotions and discounts

Over the years we’ve come up with a few tactics that can help you provide your site visitor with everything they need to persuade them to make a purchase without overselling.

Elements of successful holiday marketing campaigns

Planning a holiday marketing campaign is something that you should not do weeks before the holiday shopping season. Successful retailers begin to plan their marketing campaigns months before the upcoming holiday season.

The reason?

It takes time to put together all the key elements of a successful holiday marketing campaign – this is something that we have noticed over the years of working with big and small online stores.

With that said, now let’s take at the three elements that make a successful holiday campaign:

1. Define your target audience

Your target audience refers to a specific group of people who are more likely to purchase your product, therefore, the group of potential consumers you should optimize your website for.

Many factors such as gender, age, location, income, interests can dictate your target audience.

Defining your target audience also includes articulating who your target audience isn’t. Many at time people tend to confuse their target audience with their target market. The former refers to a set of consumers that you plan to sell to or reach via your marketing efforts.

So how do you go about defining your target audience for the upcoming holidays?

Looking at who already buys from you is one of the best ways that can help you identify your target audience. Where do they live, how old are they, what are their interests, how do they look for your product, how long does it take them to make a purchase decision? The best way to learn about all this is by conducting JTBD customer interviews or launching surveys.

You can also learn a lot by analyzing your competitors. Who are they selling to, and which channels do they use to advertise their product?

Another thing that you can do is to take a deep dive into your Google Analytics data. You can actually learn about who is visiting your online store by looking at GA data. GA can also show you where your visitors are coming from, what type of content they are engaging with the most.

2. Review the previous holiday marketing campaigns

Sometimes you have to look back in order to know how to move forward.

Without taking an in-depth look at the performance of your previous holiday marketing campaigns, it’s difficult to see what’s working and what’s not.

The digital world is not stagnant, it’s always changing – something that might have worked in the previous campaign might not work this time around.

Reviewing your previous holiday marketing strategy is not difficult, you can access all the data you need from platforms like Google Analytics, FigPii, and many more.

3. Define your goals

Once you understand how you performed in the previous holiday campaigns and who your target audience is, then it’s time to set goals for the holiday season.

As much as you may want to have more holiday sales, it’s important to make sure that the goals you set are realistic. The goals you set will help track your progress.

Every goal should be aligned with your business goals. This gives you a certain degree of direction in your whole marketing plan.

Remember, for every goal you set, don’t forget to set KPIs that you will use to measure your progress. You can also create custom goals in GA to fit your company’s unique needs.

Tracking how holiday marketing plans contributed to your main goals or objectives empowers you with the right data that you can use to improve your marketing strategy going forward.

11 Holiday marketing strategies and campaigns that work

Below are 11-holiday marketing strategies and tactics you can use to convince potential customers to buy from you and also become loyal customers:

1. Don’t underestimate the power of data

Look, the reality is the qualitative data that you can extract from analytics on holiday shopper activity is tremendous. Nothing can help you determine areas of focus for optimization on your website like real-time data.

So start tracking customer activity and purchases like a pro.

Segment the life out of the data to gain as many insights as possible. This will help you hone in on how different traffic sources differ in their purchase activity, returning vs. new visitors, high AOV vs. low AOV customers, etc.

We generally set up anywhere between 15 to 20 different funnels for any of our customers, and what better time to see how customers are flowing on your website at a micro-level than during the holidays?

Well, it’s argued that because these customers are so highly motivated, the data may not be as reliable.

However, we find holiday data helpful in a few areas:

• You can compare to off-season data and find similarities and trends
• You can compare to off-season data and notice what visitors overlook on the holidays compared to the offseason
• You can create a better-structured plan for future holiday seasons using the insights you collect

Some of the funnels include, but aren’t limited to pre-product page abandonment rates, product page effectiveness rates, bounce around effect, etc.

Heat maps are also great to get a sense of how your visitors are viewing your website, where they’re clicking, and are they seeing what you want them to see? Again, comparing that data to off-season data as well as grabbing insights from heatmaps will prepare you for future in-season events.

A partner client once had a massive holiday banner in the middle of the page, and visitors consistently missed it and would not click on it. How would we have discovered that without the right tracking information and data? Once you arm yourself with this data, next holiday season you will be very prepared for what will be coming and can plan your #holidaymarketing plan accordingly.

2. Engage and collect visitor emails.

Your visitors are coming to your site by the droves. On average, online retailers see a 30 – 40% spike in their online traffic around the holidays. But unfortunately, much of that “new” traffic is there for the sole reason of getting a holiday gift for someone, and likely won’t be by returning. What’s key for the new traffic is to capture their email so you can begin a drip campaign to incentivize and engage them to come back. Email remains to be one of the most effective tools for re-engagement. Now capturing emails can happen in different ways, and we suggest testing what is most effective.

Capture visitor emails through pop-ups.

Now, these aren’t appreciated by visitors, but their effectiveness can’t be denied. Use sparingly, and make sure you offer visitors who do sign-up a pretty decent incentive. Before deploying a pop-up, however, we HIGHLY suggest that you make sure your email campaigns are converting and engaging customers.

Capture emails in the checkout forms.

You can have the opt-in checkbox automatically checked, however, you do run the risk of a visitor not appreciating the emails from you and vowing never to buy from you again as result. You can also incentivize the opt-in on the form but asking for them to check the box to ensure they know what they are doing.

Capture emails from your webpages

You can also just make the email capture field on your website more prominent. In the below example, they actually extended the area of the email capture in order to enhance its prominence.

The example below shows a great incentive, however, the prominence is just not there. Amongst everything else on the page, the font, etc.; it can totally be missed.

Capture your visitors’ friends’ emails!

Double, triple, or quadruple your email lists by asking your customers to tell a friend, and if that friend purchases they receive a hefty discount.

This, not only engages your own customer, transforming them to brand ambassadors but also helps you gain more customers and broaden your reach.

3. Email is your friend during the holidays

Email is always wonderful and is one of our favorite marketing tools. However, utilizing email as a market tool and knowing HOW to use email as effective marketing are two entirely things. And capitalizing on your email marketing campaign’s effectiveness during the holiday can mean some major ROI.

Here are 7 email marketing tips to keep in mind:

1. Send back-in-stock messages when something popular is available in stock.

It’s always a bummer for users when an item they have been tracking is not available.

Many retailers have the product page active and ask the visitor to click to get an email if the item is back in stock.

2. Use geo-location to segment for in-store advertising.

Send special email discounts to customers that are in close proximity to your physical stores. Holidays lend themselves to wanting to personalize gifts and the experience. Offering them a reason to go to your store can help you increase conversions offline.

3. Subject lines shouldn’t sell, just tell enough to reel them enough.

This is a more generic, but equally important, email marketing tip. Subject lines should be very enticing, but without giving all the details. Give them enough to make their mouths water and open an email, in order to maximize the response. The open rate, of course, is directly related to the click rate because almost 99% of the time, a higher open rate = greater click rate. So your subject lines need to be strong and smart.

4. Send quick image emails; which are easily viewable on phones.

It’s the age of the tablet and smartphone. If you haven’t come up with a responsive site design and razor-sharp mobile-friendly emails yet, you are missing out on a lot of business. Luckily, most email service providers optimize for mobile. However, you still are in control of what is being displayed. Send emails that consist of just an image (a picture is worth a thousand words and lots of more conversions) and CTA for the mobile and tablet users (you can segment).

5. Avoid clutter!

Don’t confuse the reader with too much messaging and crazy colors and designs. Emails are much like websites that have a primary goal, don’t clutter, and keep it simple.

6. Email without tracking the data is useless.

Don’t ignore open rates, click rates, and segmentation. It can help you optimize your email marketing campaigns for better results. Again compare off-season to in-season email data so you can learn and grow from it.

7. Test it darn it.

From subject lines to content, to layout, to design, just test it! Many email providers have a testing option, so why not. Testing without theory and well-thought-out hypotheses is useless because you aren’t building on the tests and tracking specific variables. Make sure it’s scientific in order to see the results you need. Things like subject line, layout, time sent, segmentation testing, number of calls to action, design of calls to action, etc. are all different areas you can test.

toprankblog.com

4. List the information they need to see

It’s a no-brainer, visitors that are coming to your website to find something to buy for the holidays will be wondering when will the package arrive? Will it arrive in time for the holidays? So don’t let them wander thus causing more friction! List the shipping and delivery information in an obvious location (and repeat listing wherever it’s needed).

Address your customer concerns head one by using cognitive progression: anticipating concerns based on the seasonality of your product/service.

5. Support your physical store

If you have a physical store, it wouldn’t hurt to highlight this on your site and send targeted email campaigns for the relevant customers (display using geolocation) to get more foot traffic and more offline sales. Getting people to your offsite location, promotion in hand can help you increase offline sales.

During the holiday selecting a gift for someone is, more than often, quite personal, so hand-picking the item is what many people like to do. You can display using the customer’s location by tracking the IP address they are coming from. Based on their IP address, you can display store-specific information.

6. Banners

It’s amazing how some banners can be hidden, and not quite achieve the objective you had in mind. Actually, I’m often struck by sites that have such obscurely located banners – why have them at all? Below is an example of a “hidden banner”.

Banners are relaying a message, relieving a fear or doubt, offering an incentive, and addressing different personas.

When you create them with that in mind, not only will the location be more clear and apparent, but you will also cater the messaging to address elements of the conversion framework, thus making them even more effective.

Below is an interesting way of displaying a pop-up banner. As you enter the site you are greeted with the pop-up banner. However, I would say it is a bit too wordy, although props for the idea.

Macy’s does a good job of showing the banner even as you click on the cart, again reminding the visitor about the incentive at hand.

7. Urgency

You have an advantage here since the holidays already lend themselves to urgency. It’s a limited time frame to get the necessary items. However, it is possible for you to amplify urgency, especially during the holidays.

Flash Sales

You can conduct 24-hour flash sales to commit visitors to purchase at that given time, rather than continue to comparison shop. Again, you’ve increased the urgency, thus pushing your visitor to move forward.

Holiday Countdown Counter

When a visitor knows that there are 10 days left for the holiday, but only 3 days left to get the item on time, this is going to create great urgency. Now although we’d consider this tactic a FUD, it is a well-known marketing strategy to often increase anxieties to encourage the visitors to stop delaying the purchase. The holiday countdown counter should be clear, visible, and include language that makes them well aware of what they are missing out on if they don’t proceed now.

8. Scarcity

When customers know that some items are in limited quantity, they will tend to want to secure the item before it runs out. Especially during the holidays. Including wording like “While Supplies Last” indicates that an item can, at some point in time, become unavailable due to scarcity. Placing a number of course of how many are left (especially if it is a low number) is an even bigger incentive for the visitor to not delay in making that purchase.

9. Account for an increase in mobile traffic too

You’re going to get a spike in traffic on your website, and naturally on your mobile site as well. The use of smartphones and tablets is rising, which means that’ll increase will be reflected in the traffic especially during the holidays. Make it easy to navigate your mobile site so that visitors can easily find what they’re looking for. Most companies have updated their sites so that they are responsive, but that’s not enough. Similarly to optimizing your website, your mobile site needs a complete conversion strategy.

10. Testing and Holidays

Most companies have a complete code freeze during the holidays in order to avoid any unexpected problems on the website. And with hundreds of thousands of dollars a day at stake during the holiday season, it’s no surprise that companies are cautious. However, if there is an iron-clad testing process in place, it is becoming a more common practice for companies to run mini-tests in order to capitalize on the increased traffic. These tests run for only a few days and test simple elements on the page as to not disrupt visitor flow throughout the site.

11. Retargeting ads

What better way to ensure that your visitor doesn’t forget about you than by showing them the dress they saw on your website on subsequent sites they visit? If you’re able to also make sure the language points to the scarcity and urgency of going back to the site to make the purchase, you have a winning strategy to get visitors back to your site for a closed sale and conversion.

The holiday season is great for business, but with these golden rules, you can maximize the impact that the holiday season will have on your revenue for a greater ROI.

The post Holiday Marketing Strategies: 11 Tactics Every Small Business Should Leverage appeared first on Invesp.

It doesn’t matter now. Whether or not you’re ready for Black Friday and the holiday sales season, it’s upon us.

If you’ve been working all year to get ready for this year’s blitz, the overall retail sales predictions are mostly favorable. And even the negative stuff isn’t too bad.

• Inc.com quoted a Deloitte-authored sales forecast that calls for total retail sales of $965 billion this year, up about 4% from 2014. But the more pessimistic analysts will take that as somewhat negative news because it falls short of last year’ 5.2% increase in sales.
• Taking data from forecasts done exclusively for them, Reuters offers one of the gloomier predictions, saying that sales growth will be the slowest since 2009. But there will still be growth: 2.8% to 3.4% according to their predictions
• The National Retail Federation, the eternally optimistic standard bearer for the retail sector calls for “healthy sales gains” of 3.7% this season.

Fortunately, even if if you’ve done absolutely nothing to prepare for holiday sales, all’s not lost. Ecommerce and online shopping continues to grow at a healthier pace than overall retail sales and it gives all retailers the opportunity to capitalize on “last minute” promotional opportunities.

While Black Friday and Super Saturday have been traditional big sales days for bricks and mortar retailers, ecommerce seems to spawn more landmark sales days every year.

MarketingLand.com lists five important online shopping days that digital marketers should pay attention to, beyond Black Friday and Cyber Monday:

1. Cyber Sunday, November 29th – Sales are increasing on the day before Cyber Monday as more retailers give shoppers an online preview of Cyber Monday deals.
2. Green Monday, December 7th – Second only to Cyber Monday for single-day holiday sales totals, Green Monday is your chance to ensure that gifts will arrive before Christmas.
3. Small Business Saturday, November 28th – While intended to boost sales at small, local bricks and mortar retailers, digital marketing tools like geo-targeting helps to boost sales online and offline.
4. Free-Shipping Deadline Day – Whether it’s Green Monday or you want to take advantage of shorter shipping times, one promotion every online retailer can run is a countdown to the last day on which shoppers can have purchases delivered for free before Christmas.
5. Last-Minute Shoppers – There’s always someone on your list that you miss until the very last minute. Digital gift cards are a great solution and retailers can promote them right up to … the very last minute.

“Black Friday isn’t Dead” – What Ecommerce Retailers Can Do This Season to Help Next Year’s Sales

When the NRF writes that “We know that Black Friday isn’t dead”, regardless of the context, it should make any retailer, ecommerce or bricks and mortar, stop and ponder.

What do they mean Black Friday isn’t dead? Who said anything about Black Friday’s demise? Black Friday is now an international retail sales sensation, with Canada, Brazil and UK retailers, among many others, promoting it heavily, even though it’s just a name in those markets, without a basis in the calendar.

But the truth is, after peaking at $59.1 billion in 2012, Black Friday sales have decreased steadily ever since. And they’re expected to sink below $50 billion this year – an over 20% total drop in just three years. All while overall retail sales and ecommerce sales have steadily increased in the same time period.

So, while claims that it’s dead are coming mainly from “click-bait” headlines, Black Friday is definitely changing.

And that change is largely due to online shopping and ecommerce trends.

This Holiday Season Look for Emerging Ecommerce Trends

If you do nothing else this holiday sales season, it is important to watch for emerging online shopping trends. Retail and shopping habits are evolving rapidly and staying ahead of the wave means keeping abreast with changes. And the waning of Black Friday as a monolithic high-retail-sales day is just one.

1. Why Black Friday Sales are Slipping – Digital marketing is the reason Black Friday has become a big sales day in markets where the day doesn’t actually exist. The splash of U.S. Black Friday promotions spilled over on the web and shoppers in other markets began demanding similar deals.

But if digital gave Black Friday an international appeal, digital is also reducing its prominence as an exceptional sales day. Online retailers don’t have to wait for any particular day to offer a deal. In the hyper competition for sales that began in 2008, ecommerce sites looked for any and every way to capture shoppers’ imaginations and sales.

This year, Best Buy, itself suffering some sales issues, began promoting holiday sales online on October 6th.

2. Smartphone Users Shopping in Micro-Moments – Google has identified an online holiday shopping trend trend that shows shoppers are forgoing Black Friday lineups and day-long mall marathons in favor shopping in micro-moments on their smartphones.

Google’s numbers show that 54% of all online holiday shoppers (browsers and buyers) say they plan to shop on their smartphones during spare moments throughout the day, like when they are in a lineup, or on the bus. And Google predicts this trend to be spread throughout the holiday season, not on any one day.

Google points to a 7% drop in the time spent in mobile sessions, coupled with a 64% increase in smartphone’s share of ecommerce purchases in the past year, as evidence of the trend.

3. Mobile’s Pull Will Affect Other Landmark Shopping Days – Black Friday won’t be the only victim of the “every day is a sales day” potential of mobile commerce. in 2014, Google noted a shift of prominent search spikes for “gifts and presents” from Black Friday and Cyber Monday to a more steady interest throughout the season.

What Do These Trends Mean for Your Ecommerce Sales: If you do not already have a mobile-optimized site, get one. If you are already mobile, optimize your site for loading speed and conversions. Start thinking about your digital marketing tactics, like email and paid advertising, in terms that might better suit smartphone shopping in micro-moments.

Theses are just the trends predicted for this year. Who knows what trends will emerge. But the more you pay attention to them, the more you’ll be able to optimize for them and take advantage in the new year.

The post Online Holiday Retail Sales – 6 Effective Ways to Boost Your E-commerce Sales This Holiday Season appeared first on Invesp.

If you’re looking for a better approach to conversion optimization on your product pages, stop thinking of it as “conversion optimization”.

Instead think of it as: “persuading a human being that the combination of your brand and product offers her the best value”.

Regardless of how you think of it, the point is to always keep your eye on the target, your customer, who is human – not a conversion rate percentage point on your analytics report.

If you want to maximize conversions, or persuade your web visitors to buy, your product pages should appeal to humans on at least three levels:

Sensory

When your product pages appeal to a customer’s senses, you don’t just tell them about your product, you make them feel it, or what it’s like to own it.

Here’s a quick example: the first product page below is from a local bike shop. It quite capably displays the bike models in stock.

The second product page is from a bicycle manufacturer. It too displays bike models, but almost half the page is devoted to an image of the product in use. The photo helps capture the viewer’s imagination. Combined with the “…Ready For Adventure” copy, the top half of the page is “sensual”; appealing to the human senses of adventure, the excitement of escaping the daily grind and the feeling of wind in your hair.

And the bottom half of the page niftily offers the products that facilitates all those cool experiences.

Sensual content is tricky on the web because, as advanced it is, the internet still only lets you directly appeal to just two of our five basic senses: sight and sound.

But you can’t let that stop you from indirectly engaging the others. Think about the “ready for adventure” copy in the product page above, or the image. They both appeal to more than our sense of light and sound.

To take it up a notch, while staying on the subject of bikes, check out this video from Kona (full frame and with the volume at a decent level).

Did you feel anything other than what you saw and heard?

Of course, it’s somewhat easier to motivate your senses with video of bikes screaming down a mist covered hillside than … let’s say … a car tire sitting on its side. But Michelin’s famous ad campaign from back in the day shows sensual content can be created around the least exciting products.

And don’t worry if you can’t afford a Michelin-style ad campaign or the production values of Kona’s video. You don’t need to develop all your own content. Suppliers and manufacturers are usually open to let you at least link to their content.

Benefit

Regardless of how sensitive, sacrificing and charitable humans may be, they are also selfish. Especially on the web. We only hang around websites where we see a benefit to ourselves for doing so.

The very act of online shopping, which we rarely do for anyone else’s benefit, is a very selfish pursuit.

So should your product page copy talk about your product’s features and/or your business’ accomplishments? Definitely not as a main focus. Your selfish customers really don’t care about “your” anything. They want to know what’s in your offer for them. To optimize conversions your product pages should emphasize the benefit(s) to the customer of your product(s), at least as much as they emphasize anything else.

Check the section below from the Kindle product page. It harps on benefits more than features throughout, including:

> “Indulge your love of reading without interruption” instead of “no email alerts or touch notifications”

> “…read for weeks…” instead of “battery life = 40 hours”

> “lighter than a paperback” instead of “lightweight” or “weighs 10 oz.”

Even the image conveys the benefit of being able to read anywhere – rather than the feature of being portable.

Social Acceptance

Why do people line-up for hours on end (some of these people waited for over a week) to get every new Apple iGadget? It’s not because having it somewhat sooner – a matter of days or hours – will make any difference to their work or lives. It’s not because the new iProduct solves anything that other similar products don’t.

It’s because they know new Apple products are almost guaranteed to be popular and they will have the bragging rights of being among the first to possess something that has a very high level of social acceptance.

Social acceptance is a major indication of the suitability of your product for purchase. The more people that use or recommend your product, the more reasons there are to buy it.

Social acceptance, or social proof, which is shown on your product page through customer testimonials, reviews, social media shares, media coverage and influencer endorsements, among other devices, tells your web visitor that others, who have presumably been through the same buying cycle and faced the same decision points, chose your product as their best option. For the visitor, that means they don’t have to find their own answers about the suitability of your product. If so many people found it acceptable, it must be good.

For another indication of the power of social acceptance, think about how many people would line up for an iThingy if no one else cared for the product or ever bought it.

It’s important to remember that, while numbers of “likes” or tweets are an indicator of social acceptance, getting them shouldn’t be the point of your page.

“Social” means “human”, and, by appealing to the senses, stressing the benefits and showing social acceptance, your product page conversion optimization must focus on what’s at the top of your conversion funnel. A human being.

The post How to Improve Conversions Rates on Product Pages By Not Thinking About Conversion Optimization appeared first on Invesp.

Editor Note: If you are looking to increase your ecommerce store revenue, we highly recommend reading the article: 31 E-commerce Conversion Rate Optimization Ideas You Must Try. 

More than half (62%) of US consumers with Internet access now shop online at least once a month. More than 8 in 10 people (83%) are satisfied overall with their online shopping experiences. Check out our new infographic titled, “Online Consumer Shopping Habits and Behavior” to know more about buying habits of online consumers and latest online shopping trends.

Infographic by- Invesp conversion rate optimization

To Publish this Image on your Blog or Website . Copy this code

<a href=”https://www.invespcro.com/blog/images/blog-images/online-consumer-shopping-habbits.jpg”><img src=”https://www.invespcro.com/blog/images/blog-images/online-consumer-shopping-habbits.jpg” alt=”Online Consumer Shopping Habits and Behavior – Statistics and Trends” width=”580″></a></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p>Infographic by- <a href=”https://www.invespcro.com/”>Invesp</a>

Consumer Satisfaction Levels With Different Aspects Of Online Shopping

80% of surveyed consumers are more likely to purchase a product online when offered free shipping

64% of consumers are more likely to purchase when offered free returns and exchanges

How Consumers Use Their Shopping Carts

36% of online shoppers say they spend time to find out which site stocks their desired item at the lowest price.

50% of surveyed online shoppers use their smartphones and nearly 60% use their tablets to make purchases

33% used coupons provided by online merchants for their purchases

78% of online shoppers don’t look at a product in a store before buying it online

31% expect to spend more on online shopping than they did in the previous month

Time Spent On Retail Sites By Device

84% of online shoppers refer to at least one social media sitefor recommendations before shopping online

60% of online shoppers like to receive an incentive or promotion from a brand before shopping

Social Media Sites Studied Before Making A Purchase

The Most Purchased Products Online

The post Online Consumer Shopping Habits and Behavior appeared first on Invesp.

If in the past year there’s been an ecommerce topic hotter than the disruption caused by mcommerce, well, let us know in the comments below. Other issues may have enjoyed their 15 minutes, but mobile commerce has been somewhere on the podium for the past few years.

E-retail specialists, conversion rate optimizers and web site designers tout the advantages of mobile optimization because shoppers increasingly use their mobile devices to buy. Many (at least those sounding the death knell for desktops) go so far as to say you should optimize your site for mobile first, then convert your mobile site for desktop use.

Why all the attention and focus on mcommerce? Sales growth.

Here are some of the numbers: In 2013, the U.S. saw 4.2% growth in overall retail sales and 16.9% growth in ecommerce retail sales. Very healthy numbers, yet they look decidedly feeble compared to the 2013 U.S. sales growth numbers for mcommerce:

• 70% increase in retail mcommerce sales
• 45% increase in mcommerce’s share of all ecommerce sales
• 50% increase in mcommerce’s share of all retail sales

And the forecasts are for high growth, versus overall retail sales and ecommerce sales, into the foreseeable future.

Are you ready for your first shot of perspective? Despite the impressive growth numbers, at $42 billion, mcommerce accounted for 0.9% of all retail sales in 2013. (Total U.S. retail sales 2013 – $4.53 trillion)

Let’s make it a double-shot. ‘Mobile’ sales figures, including those quoted above, include sales from smartphones and tablets. While an impressive 25% of all online retail traffic on Black Friday 2013 came from smartphones and only 14.2% from tablets, tablets accounted for twice the dollar sales of smartphones.

Average order value on tablets, $132.75, also eclipsed the average smartphone order by 13%.

So what’s all ‘perspective’ about the smartphone vs tablet numbers for mobile website optimization?

Next time you’re on a tablet, check out some ecommerce sites. Visit the big ones: Amazon, or Zappos,. Look for the differences between the site you see on the tablet and the site you get on your desktop.

In the vast majority of cases, there isn’t any difference. The major ecommerce players serve their desktop sites to tablet browsers.

On their ‘Checklist for Mobile Website Optimization’ even Google tells you to “serve tablet users the desktop version”.

In the Neilsen Norman Group study cited by Google on the checklist, the conclusions include:

“This (the work and issues around tablet optimization), combined with the popularity and ease of using (desktop) websites on tablets, begs the question of why companies would have a tablet app in the first place. In fact, we advise most companies to stick to their website and invest the resources in improving web usability, which still suffers badly in most companies.”

If you’re keeping score, with advice against tablet-optimizing coming from on high, it means that, if you do optimize for mobile, you should optimize purely for smartphones. That means you are doing all your mobile optimization just to capture 0.4% of all retail sales.

Why You Still Must Optimize for ‘Smartphone’ Commerce

First, if yours is a purely ecommerce business, you better optimize for smartphones because they represent 7.2% of your sales and they are growing fast.

If you have ecommerce combined with bricks and mortar locations, you’ll have to determine what percentage of your sales come from smartphones and if it justifies mobile optimization or a mobile-first site.

But even if yours is mainly a bricks and mortar business, like Best Buy (whose online sales in Q1 2014 were 8.2% of total domestic revenue – forbes.com), you still must optimize for smartphones and here’s why:

According to research done by QuickSprout:

• 58% of consumers with smartphones use them for store-related shopping
• 88% of consumers agree that a mobile device makes them more spontaneous with online shopping
• 90% of people move between devices to accomplish a goal, including buying online

How should these numbers affect your perspective on mobile optimization? It’s folly to think of online shopping as device exclusive. An online shopper doesn’t say to herself “right, I think I’ll go shopping on my desktop today.”

Broadcast messages on television, radio and print combine with digital marketing messages, content and ecommerce sites on desktops, tablets and smartphones, to each play a role in the decision to purchase.

Think about it. How many times have you seen or heard an interesting advertising message and immediately grabbed an online device to check it out?

SP-Commerce

Mcommerce on smartphones, let’s call it sp-commerce, is not a monolithic sales medium, but part of this three- or four-screen sales process. Indeed, sp-commerce’s role in the multi-screen process may be more important than its share of your retail sales.

The QuickSprout numbers show that shoppers use their smartphones to research products in-store. While show-rooming is popular on smartphones, have you ever seen a shopper use a tablet in-store to research a purchase?

That fact, combined with the very high spontaneity factor highlighted by the QuickSprout numbers, give smartphones the unique potential of being your sales associate and impulse aisle.

One More Perspective on Mobile Optimization

If you accept that mobile optimization is really sp-commerce, and that sp-commerce’s benefits for many businesses go far beyond the actual sales it generates, then responsive design, by far the most popular way to optimize for mobile, falls short for and might cost you more in lost sales than the cost a creating a site specifically for smartphones.

One of the biggest problems with responsive design is that it does not compensate for many desktop site features that don’t work on smartphones, including text links, mouse-over effects like drop-down menus and graphic effects like zooms and sliders.

Check out how text links on the Zappos desktop/tablet site turn to buttons on their sp-commerce site.

The post Keep Your Mcommerce Website Optimization in Perspective appeared first on Invesp.

Editor note: All strategies outlined in this article should be deployed on your website using AB testing. By doing so, you will measure the effectiveness of these strategies and whether they work for your or not. We highly recommend using Invesp’s The Essentials of Multivariate & AB Testing guide.

While it’s always been a focus of ecommerce strategizing, the promise of a personalized online shopping experience remains largely unfulfilled. It’s a curious circumstance because the statistics show that there’s a big demand, and payoff, from customizing the offering each of your customers get when they visit your site.

• 59% of online shoppers believe that it is easier to find more interesting products on a personalized online retail store
• 56% are more likely to return to a site that recommends products
• 53% believe that retailers who personalize the shopping experience provide a valuable service
• 45% are more likely to shop on a site that offers personalized recommendations
  (Invesp Infographic: Online Shopping Personalization Statistics & Trends)

The Lack of Personalization is Not All Your Fault

Ecommerce sites can’t take all the blame for the shortfall in personalized shopping. Online shoppers are notoriously protective of the sort of personal information required to personalize their shopping. However, the numbers show that many of them are willing to open up about their preferences if they know that it will improve their shopping experience.

• 57% of online shoppers are OK with providing personal information as long as it is for their benefit
• 77% would trust businesses more if they explained how they use personal information
  (Invesp Infographic: Online Shopping Personalization Statistics & Trends)

With 59% of marketers experiencing good ROI after personalizing their online store, there are clear benefits for both the shopper and retailer. When done right, there’s no real reason for ecommerce sites to avoid personalization.

An Onsite Personalized Shopping Comparison – Amazon.com & Henrys.com

First, the following comparison is very unfair. Amazon is probably the most famous online retailer and a personalized shopping pioneer while Henry’s is a regional bricks and mortar camera retailer with an ecommerce site.

But the examples show the two ends of the personalized shopping spectrum. I visited both sites recently while online shopping for a digital camera. The screencaps below are the pages displayed when I returned to each site some days later.

Amazon.com

In an effort that might be the state-of-the-art of onsite personalization, almost every element on the Amazon page is personalized in some way, according to my account details, shopping history and my potential shopping needs, including the following particular points:

1. Amazon immediately lets me know this page is personalized to me with the ‘Stephen’s Amazon.com’ link. It even sounds nice – imagine my own Amazon!
2. A personal ‘Hello’ and link to My Account.
3. My ‘Wish List’.
4. Amazon knows my location and refers me to the local site.
5. Hovering over ‘Your Account’ produces 14 personalized options.
6. Appstore for Android. Having visited their mobile site, Amazon gives me a link to the Android Appstore (though I’m not sure why they think I’d be interested in ‘Garfield’s Escape’, whatever that might be). It’s refreshing for an Android user to arrive at a site that recognizes there are a few mobile devices and operating systems in the world not made by Apple.
7. While I have never bought shoes online, at least they know I would be more interested in men’s sandals than women’s sandals
8. A list of the cameras I checked out on my last visit. No need to click on anything, but everything right there, ready to go. If online shoppers are doing any serious comparisons, they are very likely to return to a site more than once throughout the process. How often have you been frustrated by having to search again for an item you just viewed a few minutes ago, before leaving the site and returning?

Henrys.com

While not the behemoth that is Amazon, Henry’s has the means to produce a shopping experience that’s more personal than this:

1. A link to ‘Your Account’.

That’s it. No first-name basis here. No personalized options. No hint of what I shopped for when I last visited. To be fair, when I click on ‘Your Account’ I land on a page where I can enter my account information, which then leads to a page that has a ‘Wish List’, ordering history and account management options. All the personalization outlined on the Amazon page came without any clicking or logins.

Off-Site Personalization

A personalized shopping experience is not limited to your ecommerce site. From email to social media, you can stay in touch with and create a unique relationship with each shopper.

According to Invesp’s research, email is by far the most important digital channel for online shopping personalization. It consistently outperforms all other advertising channels, online and off, and lets you completely personalize your customer interactions.

Yet it remains underutilized as an advertising medium and its potential for personalization is even more neglected.

According to the 2013 Experian Email Marketing Study, as reported by marketingland.com, the majority of companies in the study asked customers for personal data, but 70% did not personalize their email messages.

That’s even more surprising when the same study shows that personalized email produces some astonishing results compared to generic messages.

• 29% higher unique open rates
• 41% higher unique click rates
• 26% higher unique open rates just from a personalized subject line

A Quick Ecommerce Email Personalization Case study – EB Games Gets It

Take a look at the list of emails below. Do any of the subject lines stand out? Hint: it’s the only that’s personalized of the 11 emails listed.

And EB Games carries the personalization through to the content of the email, including:

1. A link to coupons targeted to my shopping history
2. An invitation to visit my local bricks and mortar store
3. My EDGE Level (whatever that is)
4. My shopping reward points (which I didn’t know I had, but now I’m interested)

Where to Start Your Ecommerce Personalization

In addition to using your customers’ account information and email addresses (all with their permission, of course), and their shopping history, another way to personalize their experience is by simply asking them. Here’s how Selfridge’s does it in the U.K: (via econsultancy.com)

The post The Importance of Personalized Ecommerce & 4 Examples of How It’s Done appeared first on Invesp.

As always in an Invesp infographic, the recently posted Online Shopping Personalization & Trends presents a lot of interesting and useful information.

Now it’s up to you to take advantage it. And the infographic gives you all the reason you need to do so by pointing out that almost 60% of ecommerce marketers experience good ROI after personalizing their online stores.

Other data highlighted in the infographic includes:

• Over 55% of shoppers believe it’s easier to find more interesting products on personalized online retail stores and are more likely to return to sites that make product recommendations
• 57% of online shoppers are OK with giving you personal information if they believe it is to their benefit
• 77% of online shoppers would trust businesses more if they explained how personal information is used

You Can’t Personalize Anything Without Personal Data

Of course, you need prospects to convert into customers, to actually buy from you, before you can personalize their experience.

Prospective online customers are notoriously fickle about giving personal information. Back in March, 2000, Business Week highlighted consumers’ concerns about privacy on the net. Their survey found that the vast majority of respondents were either “somewhat” or “very” concerned about the privacy of their personal information online.

More recently, Invesp’s Analysis of Online Consumer Behavior found that about one third of internet users don’t buy online due to privacy concerns.

Getting shoppers to become customers is the first hurdle to personalizing their experience. Here’s how to improve your chances of getting over it:

1. Link to Your Privacy Policy

Numerous tests show the positive effects on conversion rates of a clearly visible privacy policy in close proximity to your CTA. Here’s one from ContentVerve that shows how just 10 words guaranteeing privacy of information increased conversions by almost 20%.

• Write your privacy policy in clear language
• Make sure it 100% guarantees the privacy of customers’ information
• Clearly outline how the information will be used, especially highlighting the personal shopping experience that it can provide
• Let them know they can opt-out at any time. Knowing that it is easy to stop receiving your messages increases the chance of opting in

2. Use Security Certification Logos

Customers aren’t just worried about what you do with their information, they also care about how well you protect it from hackers. Make sure credible security logos from organizations like Verisign/Norton and Trustwave are clearly visible

3. Give Them an Incentive

In a way, it’s not entirely right to say customers are concerned about giving you their personal information. It’s more accurate to say that they have learned that the information has value and they have concerns about giving it to you for free.

Let’s use a hypothetical situation to illustrate this: imagine how many customers you would sign-up and how much of their information they would give if you offered a new car for doing so.

Returning to reality, offering small discounts, free gifts with purchase or other value-added incentives not only encourages prospects to sign-up, but to actually start shopping.

And that’s when you can begin to really personalize their experience and take advantage of the benefits of doing so.

The post 3 Steps to Start Boosting Your Conversion Rates with Online Shopping Personalization appeared first on Invesp.

How can you benefit by personalizing your customer’s online shopping experience? Just put yourself in your customer’s shoes – when you walk into a brick and mortar store, what impresses you the most? For one thing, it’s the way the store engages your interest and prioritizes your needs. That’s exactly what your online customer wants, as well. How do you achieve it? Check out our infographic on “Online Shopping Personalization – Statistics and Trends” for the latest statistics on how online shopping personalization affects shoppers and how it can increase your ROI.

Infographic by- Invesp

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<a href=”https://www.invespcro.com/online-shopping-personalization.jpg”><img src=”https://www.invespcro.com/online-shopping-personalization.jpg” alt=”Online Shopping Personalization – Statistics and Trends” width=”580″></a></p><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p>Infographic by- <a href=”https://www.invespcro.com/”>Invesp</a>

59% of online shoppers believe that it is easier to find more interesting products on personalized online retail stores

56% of online shoppers are more likely to return to a site that recommends products

53% of online shoppers believe that retailers who personalize the shopping experience provide a valuable service

45% of online shoppers are more likely to shop on a site that offers personalized recommendations

57% of online shoppers are OK with providing personal information as long as it is for their benefit

77% of online shoppers would trust businesses more if they explained how they are using personal information

81% of online shoppers agreed that they receive more customized marketing messages than they used to 5 years ago

Personalized display Ads have a 10-times higher CTR when compared to traditional display Ads

What Marketers Think About Online Shopping Personalization

61% of online marketers understand the importance of personalizing online shopping, but about 51% of them are not sure how to implement it

59% of marketers are experiencing good ROI after personalizing their online stores

Importance Of Online Shopping Personalization By Channel

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