Star

Category Archives: Marketing

Use Black Friday email campaigns to boost sales in your e-commerce store

Black Friday email campaigns that boost sales

November 4, 2015

Another Black Friday is just around the corner and—likely—another record-breaking holiday sales season will come with it. Email campaigns are a proven way to effectively announce sales and boost profits. But what should you send? Take a look below for some ideas to use for the holiday season.

Our latest Spree-as-a-service offer frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

The Sale Announcement Email

We’ll start with the simple one first: Make sure your customers know you’re having a sale, and what it is, because you can bet your competitors will. Keep it simple. Everyone loves sales, so you’re subject header can just be “50% off Everything!” It will almost guarantee you that shoppers will at least open the email to find out more.

The Free Gift Email

Everyone loves free right? Including a free gift if customers hit a certain dollar amount is a great way to boost the average sale amount. If a customer has spent $90 and is $10 away from earning a free gift, they’ll likely spend that extra ten dollars to hit the target.

 

Again, the subject can be simple. “Free” will almost always get someone interested. You can also spin this so it doesn’t seem so salesy, and being that Black Friday is around Thanksgiving, in the body of the email you can include something along the lines of “Our way of saying thanks,” or “Our way of giving back during the holiday season.”

The Extended Sale Email

Black Friday sales don’t have to end on Fridays. If you’re in e-commerce—and you’re reading this blog so I’m assuming you are—the sale can last all the way to Cyber Monday. Last year, retailers brought in over $2 billion on the Monday after Black Friday.

Not everyone gets around to shopping on Black Friday. They may have missed the boat and will jump out of their seats when they see your “Extended 40% Sale off EVERYTHING” email.

The Black Friday Giveaway

This is similar to philosophy to the “Free Gift” email—people love free stuff and rewards. Giveaways and contests are a great way to inject more life into your sales than those of your competitors.

The terms of the giveaway or sale will be up to you. One common strategy is to offer your customers a chance to win a gift to your site for every purchase they make. Or, you can guarantee a small prize—say a $5 gift card— for any purchase, with a chance to win the Grand Prize, such as a $1K gift card.

The Humor Email

Do you know what people like almost as much as free stuff? Funny jokes. Announcing your sale in a way that J.Crew did last year is a great way to get a leg up on competitors and their potentially similar sales.

You can also include jokes specific to your business or industry. For example, if you’re in the clothing business, a post-Thanksgiving email featuring your stretchy pants might not be a bad idea.

Rember that your email marketing campaign should be a part of the entire Q4 sales and marketing strategy. Read more on how to prepare for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Holiday season here.

Spree as a Service comes with the same functionality as the open-source plus all the SaaS advantages, such as free integrations and features, no upgrades or maintenance, and effortless scalability. Try our free trial or request a demo.

email marketing tips for ecommerce

How to make email marketing work for you

October 28, 2015

Marketing emails can be a great tool to boost sales. But to do so, you have to do it right. What do I say to my customers? And just as importantly, when do I say it, and how often? These tips will make sure you’re emailing the right way and will help you take your business to the next level.

Our latest Spree-as-a-service offer frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

Content and Relevance:

This isn’t Lord of the Rings and one email does not rule them all. In other words, what’s relevant to some customers won’t connect with others. For example, if you sell clothing, sending your male customers a coupon for a sale on ladies’ underwear is not going to get you very far. Worse yet, it might make the impression that your store specializes in women’s apparel and have your male customers looking elsewhere.

Tracking your customer information, such as gender and age, will help you send targeted emails, which will, in turn, increase your open rate. Tracking sales information will help you target as well. The above example was pretty simple, but what about a business that doesn’t make it as easy as splitting up your customers into a 50/50 (emails for males, emails for females) group?

If you sell a wide variety of items, such as pet supplies, it would make sense to track customers’ sales. If Susan has spent a year buying nothing but cat toys, would it make sense to send her information on a sale for all goldfish products? Probably not.

Keep in mind, there are times when it makes sense for you to send customers information about the stuff they don’t typically buy. Keep this in mind for the holidays, when customers aren’t necessarily shopping for themselves. Speaking of appropriate times…

Timeliness:

When to send an email is just as important as what to send. The sooner you send an order confirmation, the better. The longer the customer goes without receiving that confirmation, the more apprehensive he or she will be that something went wrong with the process.

Likewise, a shipment confirmation will also placate any fears that the order is NOT on the way. With the confirmation, include a realistic time that the customer can expect to receive the package, such as 3-5 business days.

Lastly, an email asking the customer how he/she likes the product is a nice way to wrap up the sale. It shows that you care that your customers receive their products as they wanted when they wanted. Schedule this for a couple of days after the long end of your confirmation (using the above example, send the email on day six or seven). If you send this email too soon, it will have customers thinking they should have received it by now and something went wrong when in reality the item is still on its way.

As far as emails that are intended to have customers buy again, research shows there are certain times that will lead to higher purchase rates. Monday through Wednesday, as well as Sunday, have proven to be the best days to send your sales emails.

On top of that, there are certain times of day that correlate with higher purchases as well. During the workdays, as well as during commutes home, have proven to be the best times to reach out to customers.

Frequency:

This last point is key, and can also be tricky to manage correctly. Email too often and you risk annoying the customer, who will in turn likely tag your emails as spam. Not good. Go too long without contacting your customers and you risk them forgetting about your company and going with a competitor. Also not good.

There’s no all-encompassing guide to point to that will provide best practices for all businesses, but as a general rule, you don’t want to email your customers more than once a week (with the exception of the aforementioned post-transaction confirmation emails), and you also don’t want to go more than a month without sending out your email campaign.

Hitting that sweet spot of perfect frequency will often depend on your business. For example, if you work in a subscription business, you’ll want to time replenishment emails with the frequency of the customers’ needs. If he/she buys dog food once a month, a reminder to place the order every three weeks would be appropriate, to give the customer some leeway and provide time for shipping. This way, the food will be there by the end of the month and Fido won’t go hungry.

Tools that Can Help

When you’re starting out, you can probably manage many of these tasks on your own. But what about when you’re handling 100, 500, or 1000 orders per month? Using an email service like MailChimp or Klaviyo will help. Coupling one of those services with a tool that can automate the process will allow you to easily and efficiently communicate with your customers.

Spree as a Service comes with the same functionality as the open-source plus all the SaaS advantages, such as free integrations and features, no upgrades or maintenance, and effortless scalability. Try our free trial or request a demo.

ecommerce brand's SEO

How to increase your brand’s SEO

October 14, 2015

SEO has been something of a buzzword lately. But what is it? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and is described by Wikipedia as “the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s unpaid results—often referred to as “natural,” “organic,” or “earned” results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users.”

Our latest Spree-as-a-service offer frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

What that means for a business owner is, whatever search terms resonate in your industry, you want to be at or near the top of the listings that appear whenever people put that term or phrase into Google. The more people that see your site, the more people will shop on it, and the more shoppers you have, the more sales you’ll get.

Follow these tips to maximize your SEO to see your webstore’s traffic spike, and the sales roll in.

Identify Keywords and Phrases

You need to figure out what key terms and phrases you want to trigger your appearance in a search. For example, if you’re a high-end shoe retailer, then you’d probably want to have an appearance when customers search for “High-end shoes.”

Maybe you’re not ready to take on Nordstrom’s or Barney’s (the first and second results to appear on Google when you enter that phrase) and you still do a high volume of sales inside your physical store. In that case, your location can help you drive customers to online and offline sales, such as “High-end shoes in Pennsylvania” or more specifically, “High-end Shoes in Philadelphia, PA.”

Content-Driven Traffic

Whatever you determine to be key terms and phrases, maximize their use through fresh and engaging information on your web store. Running a blog is a great way to keep new content on your site. One thing you don’t want to do is force these keywords into the content. It has to seem natural, as it will turn off readers/shoppers, and will be recognized as a forced attempt at maximizing SEO by the search engines.

The more fresh content you have, the more traffic will come to your site. And, again, the more traffic you have is the more opportunities you have for sales.

Share on Social Media

Whatever new content you have, be sure to share it on any and all social accounts that you have associated with your store. These are just more channels for you to attract traffic. Sharing on Google plus, specifically, will directly help your ranking on Google’s search listings.

Blogs, news about your company, and new/featured products are the kinds of things that you want to share with your community. Social media is having more and more of an impact on e-commerce, so start sharing now.

Spree as a Service comes with the same functionality as the open-source plus all the SaaS advantages, such as free integrations and features, no upgrades or maintenance, and effortless scalability. Try our free trial or request a demo.

ecommerce product description guidelines

Ecommerce product description best practices

October 7, 2015

You can have the best products in the world, but if you can’t communicate that quality effectively, how are customers going to know? And, more importantly, how will they feel comfortable clicking that “buy” button? Here are some tips and advice that will help you seal the deal.

Vendo marketplace platform frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

Show Don’t (Only) Tell

We’re not here to tell you NOT to tell the story behind the product (in fact, look at the next point) but don’t ONLY tell. Include multiple high-quality images of your product. Show different angles, viewpoints, and elements of your goods.

Remember, you’re selling online. Your customers don’t have the option to hold and feel and get comfortable with the item they’re about to buy. So do your best to recreate that in-store feeling by providing big, beautiful images of your goods. Provide 360 degrees worth of angles or, even better, make it a gif.

Tell The Story Behind the Product

Your business has a story, and so does your product. Tell it. For inspiration, check out Huckberry’s blog, the Journal. There is a reason why the men’s outdoor goods retailer Huckberry,  is described as “equal parts store, magazine, and inspiration”,

You don’t necessarily need to include such in-depth descriptions on every product, (you don’t want to get too wordy) but new and/or featured products deserve extra attention and are worthy of a story behind their production.

Emphasize Uniqueness

Your competitors are going to have similar products, but there’s something about your inventory that makes you different. Whatever it is—the design, the manufacturing process, the price—make sure you emphasize this in your descriptions. If your customers don’t know why your products are better/different, what’s to stop them from going to the competitor next time?

Include an Obvious Call to Action

You’ve got the customer interested. They’ve looked at the product images, read the story behind the product, and really like what they’ve seen thus far. Now it’s just a matter of sealing the deal. You can push the customers over the edge by simply providing a “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” button within the page that features your product description. If they’ve made it this far, they’re already interested. Turn the opportunity into a sale with a strong call to action.

Allow Customers to Easily Share their Experience

If your customers have a positive experience shopping with you, they’ll be willing to share your product with their friends and family. Now they won’t write a blog about it, but if you provide simple buttons to like, tweet, pin, and/or share, it will open their friends’ and followers’ eyes to your brand.

Word of mouth has always been a great sales/marketing tactic. Social media has given the opportunity to spread the message faster and to a wider audience than ever before. Take advantage of it!

The Bottom Line

You’re going to have competitors; it’s unavoidable no matter the industry. But you can set yourself apart with unique and effective product descriptions. Making that sale is the first step to turning a customer into a “brand ambassador.” Once they see why you’re the best option for them, they’ll keep coming back—and sharing with their friends.

Vendo marketplace platform frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

Best practices for Ecommerce design

Best practices for Ecommerce design

September 30, 2015

You’ve got the best products, and pride yourself on completing your deliveries on time, every time. That’s a great start, but if you don’t attractively display your items on your website, how are your customers supposed to buy them? These best practices will ensure that the quality of your products is accurately displayed on your website, every time.

Vendo marketplace platform frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

Show Don’t Tell

“This is the best shirt/coffee/makeup in the world.” Who wouldn’t say that about their own products? Displaying images of satisfied, real-life customers is a much better way to display the quality of your goods. If you have an active social media profile you can kill two birds with one stone here by displaying your Twitter or Instagram feeds in a section of your site.

Another strategy you can implement is to dedicate a portion of your site to a community and/or press section. The community section can feature the images of satisfied customers sent in through your social profiles, as a variation of—or enhancement to—the above recommendation. Any positive press or reviews from accredited reviewers should be displayed in a press section.

Basically, a good rule of thumb is anything positive said about your service or products from someone outside your company should be displayed on your website, or at the very least shared on your various social profiles.

Focus on What Makes you Unique

What is it about your products that make them unique? Shoppers will have an almost infinite amount of places to buy a shirt, but why should they buy your shirt? Is it the materials? Manufacturing? The price? Any and all of these reasons should be featured.

This content can accompany the featured products that are displayed in a prominent section of your website. You should also include this in all of your product descriptions. You don’t need to tell the whole story of the first stitch of thread to production, but a brief “This hand-crafted gingham-style shirt was designed with the professional in a business casual office setting in mind.”

Tell Your Story

Product descriptions are one way to feature what makes you different than your competitors. Another way is to briefly tell your story. This should be in a different area than where your products are displayed, such as an “About Us” section.

Why did you get into retail/e-commerce? What is it about your products that shoppers won’t be able to find anywhere else? If you have a personal connection to the goods you sell (“After a Minor League Baseball career, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the game, so I opened John’s Sporting Goods”) these are the stories you want to share with your customers.

Make Shipping Options Clear

Different customers are going to have different shipping needs. Some may be casually browsing and don’t mind if their products don’t get to their house in a week. Others might be procrastination shopping (think: Holidays) and are willing to pay extra to get the item the next day.

Make sure any and all shipping options are made available to your customers as they’re checking out. The last thing you want is to lose a sale because the customer thinks they won’t get the product in time or—conversely—because they only see expensive shipping options.

Draw Attention to Sales

This is a tenet that goes across all mediums of retail. If you’re running a sale—show it. Shoppers have been haggling for the best possible deals for hundreds of years. This hasn’t changed just because you’re selling online now.

The Bottom Line

What’s the common thread here? Originality. Your website is more than just a place for customers to buy things. It’s a piece of your business, and your business is the only one like it out there. Stress what makes you different from your competitors, and this uniqueness will be recognized by your customers, who will become loyal to your brand and never think of shopping elsewhere.

Vendo marketplace platform frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

create a blog for ecommerce business to boost traffic and sales

How to make blogs work for Ecommerce

September 22, 2015

The most important aspects of running a successful e-commerce business are quality products and dependable service. It doesn’t matter what else you do if you can’t deliver a good item within a decent amount of time. Outside of those essentials, however, are a number of different things you can do to increase awareness of your brand and, most importantly, increase your sales. One of them is maintaining an interesting and relevant blog.

Our latest Spree-as-a-service offer frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

A blog, you say? How is a brief article going to increase my sales? Well, consider it the law of averages. The more people that come to your website, the more that are going to shop for your products, and the more that shop are more that are likely to click “Buy.” But where does the blog come in? Creating a well-written blog is a great way to keep readers coming back, and turn them into buyers.

Take Into the Gloss and Glossier for example. ITG started as a popular blog that provides fashion tips, advice, and articles featuring interviews with models and fashion professionals. It became so popular that the founders decided to venture into e-commerce with Glossier. Glossier has been a retail success and Into the Gloss continues, pointing readers to Glossier.

Of course, building a business off of a blog first isn’t the traditional route to e-commerce success. Huckberry, the popular men’s outdoor clothing retailer, also maintains an active blog presence. Huckberry’s blog (called the Journal) is more image-heavy, telling the story behind its products and featuring the brand’s adventurous ambassadors.

What’s the connection? Both brands have gone beyond the norm of retailers, creating a sort of newsroom circulating content pertaining to their respective industries. This will help create an army of “brand ambassadors” who will go to your site for more than just a sale and will, in turn, recommend your site and products to their friends and family.

Maintaining a blog and combining it with a social media presence will create a culture of brand loyalists that wouldn’t dream of going to your competitors, even if they have a similar product. If you’re selling sporting goods, blog about the importance of using the right equipment on the field. And if you’re products are being used in a high-profile way like, if we’re using the sporting goods example, by a Major League player or in the Little League World Series, you’re darn right you better write about and publicize that!

Look, we know that writing isn’t everyone’s specialty. If you don’t have the budget to hire a content marketing specialist, you can always find a freelancer for a reasonable price. If you do write it on your own, make sure you read over your copy several times or have a friend do it. Having typos or simple grammatical mistakes is a great way to look unprofessional.

If properly executed, your blog will keep customers coming back to your store again and again. Just keep the content fresh and at a high quality and watch the traffic—and sales—roll in!

5 emails to customers that will increase your sales

5 emails to customers that will boost sales

September 8, 2015

Communicating with your customers is the key to e-commerce success. But what should you send? Push too hard for sales and you risk getting marked as spam. Don’t reach out enough, and you risk losing sales that a simple email would have sealed for you. Here are five emails that you should employ in your outreach plan today.

Vendo marketplace platform frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

1) Thank you for your Order

There’s no tidier way to wrap up customers’ transactions than thanking them for ordering. It shows that you care that they got the order on time and as expected. Fail to do this and you fail to establish a bond with the customer. There’s no reason for them not to shop with a competitor in the future.

Also, It will also open up a dialogue in case they DON’T receive the item on time, or as expected. There’s no better way to lose customers than by disappointing them. By opening up the communications, you can fix the problem and they will buy from you again.

2) Order Status Updates

Keeping in line with some of the key points above, if you keep the communication open, it will alleviate fears from the customer. Telling patrons, “Order Confirmed” and “Your item has been shipped,” will put to rest any doubts that a problem happened in between the time they paid and the time the item they receive the product.

3) Product Review

Providing a quick and easy way for customers to review your products is another great method to enhance customer loyalty. If it’s not exactly as they wanted it, customers should be able to say so. Remember, you’re selling things based on a picture, so things might not be perfect every time. And if you notice a significant amount of customers complaining about an item, you can use the constructive criticism to either change how you present the product or remove it from your inventory altogether.

4) Product Reorder Reminder

If you’re in the subscription business, this is key to gaining customer retention. You want to hit the sweet spot of sending the email late enough that it’s time to restock, but in enough time that the customer will receive the subscribed item(s) before the last order’s supply runs out.

For example, if you sell coffee, and customers orders a one-month supply, you’ll want to reach out to them about three weeks after they received their last shipment. That way, you’re close enough to the point that it’s time to restock, but have enough time to get the coffee to their doorstep before Day 30. Because if your customers are anything like me, you don’t want to mess with them without their coffee.

5) Personalized Recommendations

It never hurts to suggest an item or items that you think your customer might enjoy. Staying with the above example, if your customer orders dark coffee, and you just got in a new Brazilian Super Dark Roast, it couldn’t hurt to let your customer know you just got this product in.

During holiday sales, it couldn’t hurt to suggest some products that are out of your customers’ typical buying habits. At these times, patrons are looking to buy gifts, instead of typical orders, so you can cash in on the shopping rush with your existing customers. Just be careful doing this during normal times of the year, as it’s a good way to get your emails marked as spam.

Additional Tips and Tools

Sending these emails yourself will be fine when you’re first starting out. However, down the line, you may want to look at a service like MailChimp or Klaviyo that will help you send those emails. You can even automate these third-party services so emails go out at the moment of a desired action. For more best practices, including when and how frequently to send emails, visit our article, “How to Make Marketing Emails Work for You.”

Vendo marketplace platform frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

turn your customers into a community

Turn your Customers into a Community

August 25, 2015

Customer retention is one of the keys to e-commerce success. In fact, one report states that increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits anywhere from 25% to 95%. But how do you keep your current customers buying again and again? Nothing’s fail safe, but one proven strategy is to use your social media profiles to create a rich and vibrant community.

Creating an active and engaging social presence will turn your customers into true fans, brand ambassadors that are eager to see your new product/company news and share it with their friends and family. Competitors can offer similar products, but creating a community gives you an advantage over the other retailers. Some of the fastest-growing names in e-commerce have put this theory to the test and have reaped the rewards.

While getting customers excited to buy your hot new item sounds simple enough, best practices include more than just posting about new products. Take surf and beach retailer Surfdome, for example. Surfdome, recently sold to Surfstitch for $16M, has nearly 50K Twitter followers.

How did they get there? Not by merely posting photos of new surfboards and wetsuits, but turning its Twitter account into a great follow for all fans of surfing. Scroll the feed, and you’ll see GoPro videos from surfers mid-action, photos of surfers making their way through ridiculously huge waves, and yes, the occasional link to a new product. They also make an effort to tie in a trending hashtag of the day with surfing/beach fun, like this one for #RelationshipGoalsin3Words.

What Surfdome has created is a “one-stop shop” for surf fans. They’ll get news, cool pictures and videos, and associate Surfdome as an awesome place to buy surfing and beach gear. Personally, I’m a little top heavy for surfing, but if it were my thing Surfdome would be a must follow for me, and I’d quickly become a fan of the brand, not thinking of going anywhere else for a new board or wetsuit.

Blue Bottle Coffee, a $700 million coffee subscription business, follows a similar path. While a GoPro video of someone sipping a Blue Bottle brew might not be quite as exciting as surfing a big wave, if you have a look at their hashtag #BlueBottleCoffee on Instagram, it is filled with fans tagging their favorite coffee brand.

While you can’t get much different than a coffee and surfing retailer, you’ll notice a similar strategy between Blue Bottle Coffee and Surfdome. They create the community first and plug the products second. One guaranteed way to lose a Twitter and/or Instagram follower is to shamelessly share your products again and again.

Instead, whatever industry you’re selling to, post and retweet fun and interesting news relevant to that industry. If you’re a sports retailer, get in on the Little League World Series action. If you’re in the beauty and makeup industry, post about fashion. Creating an active blog doesn’t hurt, either, as it will provide you with another outlet to funnel brand fans to your site.

However you do it, the key to gaining customer retention is staying industrially patient and not over-posting about your own products. To paraphrase “The Voice” from Field of Dreams, if you build the community, the sales will come.

Vendo marketplace builder frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

 

improving the User Experience of an online store

Improve your online store UX with these handy tips

July 15, 2015

When it comes to e-commerce, the aim of any site is to direct users into the right places that they need to go and to encourage them to buy a product. Good UX can achieve this in numerous ways. From the way that a signup form is crafted to the colors used in the design, UX can have the effect of boosting conversions.

Bad UX has the opposite effect in that it’s off-putting to the site visitor. Web users have become increasingly sophisticated as the net has matured and is no longer willing to deal with a site that provides a bad experience. In e-commerce sites, this means that they won’t part with their cash to pay for your products if your site UX isn’t up-to-scratch.

Our latest Spree-as-a-service offer frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

What exactly is UX? (and what it’s not)

In recent years, we’ve seen a renewed interest in UX (User Experience) take place, thanks largely to the need to design for smaller screens. UX is not always an easy thing to define, so let’s first look at what it is and what it’s not.

UX shouldn’t be confused with usability or UI (User Interface). While these disciplines are related to each other, UI is concerned with the actual interface with which the user interacts, while usability is all about how easy to use a site is.

UX is all about the feeling that a user has when using a site. For example, if a site is slow to load, then the user quickly becomes impatient and frustrated and will leave.

That’s bad UX.

Similarly, if a site doesn’t include white space or contrast, then it becomes more difficult for the user to interact with the site and that too is bad UX. It is quite a broad discipline, but if you get it right, it can have a significant impact on sales in your e-store.

UX design for e-commerce sites

There are a huge amount of considerations to undertake when designing an e-commerce site. Make sure you discuss all the necessary issues with your design and developers’ team when planning the site. Here are a few crucial factors to think about.

Colors

Again, use brand colors, and contrasting colors to ensure that the text is clear and easy-to-read. You should also bear in mind accessibility and consider that people with color blindness will see colors differently. For example, green and red may seem like contrasting colors, but as they appear opposite each other on the color wheel, they appear quite similar to people who suffer from colorblindness.

Buttons and other clickable areas

These ought to be immediately apparent to the user what they’re for. Remember to keep enough surrounding padding to ensure that buttons or links don’t encroach on other clickable areas that might be next to them. Mobile users will be using touch, so buttons and links should be large enough for these users to click easily. One more important tip: take a close look at the typography. It should be in keeping with your brand’s personality and should be clear and legible.

Images

An image can tell a story all by itself, so make sure yours are high quality but also optimized so that large file sizes don’t slow down the shopping experience. Include pictures that are clear and representational of the product or service. Also, keep in mind to make your website responsive, so that all visual elements are displayed well to mobile and tablet users.

White/negative space

That’s an important factor many shop owners may consider difficult to digest, but white space is not a waste. It’s for the benefit of a visitor – you don’t want to get him/her tired of content overload while browsing your site. White space should be used where appropriate so that the site doesn’t appear cluttered and the central message gets lost. Take a look at this example of Blue Bottle Coffee’s website.

 

beautifuly designed website with excellent UX

It’s important to remember that conventions (such as navigation being at the top of the page, and logo placed in the left top hand corner) are very useful when designing an e-commerce site. Conventions are design techniques that we’ve become so accustomed to over time that we expect to see them in sites we visit. As such, we look for them when we arrive at a site and if they’re not present, it can throw us to the extent that we leave.

With this in mind, be very careful about breaking conventions as it can also effectively ‘break’ your conversion rate. Whilst it’s sometimes tempting to be highly original and create designs that are a little off the wall, it pays to think carefully about your design choices.

Do:

  • Use appropriate, contextual content to enhance checkout flow and products. Provide your customers with concise descriptions, representative pictures from different perspectives, or videos showing your product in action—depending on the item sold. Users should be left with no doubt as to what the product is and what they need to do to buy it.
  • Use different colors for buttons with different purposes. You should also use color psychology to inform your choices and carry out A/B testing.

Don’t:

  • Add so much content that the message is lost and the user is confused. Provide important product data first and use accordions or tabs that can be expanded on user action.
  • Use long URLs – they should appear in the following format: https://www.yourshop.com/category/product for example https://www.amazon.com/George-Martins-Thrones-5-Book-Boxed/
  • Place lots of text around buttons, ensure that there is just enough of negative space.

Forms and Registration

It’s important when designing forms for user registration that they require as little input as possible. Remember that you’re not just targeting desktop users and as such, some visitors will have to fill in forms on mobile. With this in mind, make sure:

  • As few fields as possible are created. Only ask for the user information that you need, there’s no reason that you have to know their date of birth, for example. You can ask for more details (address, phone number, etc.) when the customer proceeds to make an order.
  • Form fields are large enough for users to comfortably click into with a finger.
  • Form labels appear in the right place no matter what device it’s viewed on.

Reducing the number of form fields can increase conversions by as much as 160%, so keep it simple and brief.

Key Decisions in the Design Process

When designing UX for e-commerce, the user should be central to every decision that you make. However, it’s important to remember that you are not your user and so you should carry out as much real-world user testing as possible. Consider taking a mobile-first approach too, as it’s much more difficult to pare back a desktop site for mobile than it is to design with mobile in mind from the beginning.

Now you know what factors you should draw attention to when thinking about your e-store’s UX.

Spree as a Service comes with the same functionality as the open-source plus all the SaaS advantages, such as free integrations and features, no upgrades or maintenance, and effortless scalability. Try our free trial or request a demo.

replenishment emails in an inbox

Turn one-time buyers into recurring customers with replenishment emails

May 12, 2015

Email marketing can be an invaluable tool for the retention of customers. Are you getting the most out of it? How about with your automated emails? A quick little replenishment email fired off from your system at the right time to the right place can make a world of difference when it comes to converting one-time buyers into dedicated, recurring customers.

Spree as a Service comes with the same functionality as the open-source plus all the SaaS advantages, such as free integrations and features, no upgrades or maintenance, and effortless scalability. Try our free trial or request a demo.

What are Replenishment Emails?

In a nutshell, replenishment emails are simple, periodic emails that remind a client that now might be a good time to place another order.

How this differs from other email reminders is that a replenishment email is specifically targeted to customers who recently purchased a product that will eventually run out, expire and need a refill. For example, those of you that are dog/pet owners may recognize this scenario:

You have a dog. Your dog needs food. You buy dog food. Your dog eats the food. The food starts to run out.

It’s inevitable that the bag of food will run out. The problem is that sometimes we don’t realize this until it’s either a day away, or that morning we wake up, go for a scoop, and hear the empty scrape off the bottom of the bag.

Fortunately, replenishment emails step in before running out becomes a pain. Let’s pick up where we left off with the above scenario.

The dog food is about to run out. You don’t even notice. Then, an email arrives reminding you to buy dog food. You order more. Dog keeps eating. Dog is happy. Repeat process next month.

Replenishment emails help take some of the burdens of the responsibility off of the customer, acting as helpful reminders that a purchase is necessary.

Why should we use replenishment emails? Why not just wait for customers to come back on their own accord?

If you’re an online business that ships its products to the customer, even a day of delay and necessity could cause the customer to rush down to their local store to buy from your competitor.

Sure, you might be thinking, “it’s okay to lose a sale from a recurring customer since you just acquired 9 other new customers that same month.” However, those are ten one-time purchases, rather than 10 recurring purchases.

It’s easier to retain a customer than earn a new one. You don’t have to constantly convince your existing (and satisfied) customers that you are the right choice since you’ve already earned their trust.

They have a need that you know you can genuinely, specifically, and easily fulfill. Plus, the time it takes to sell to them is nothing compared to the time it takes to make new sales, so don’t let your existing customers slip away!

Okay, I’m sold. How do I start sending replenishment emails?

Well, you could start by keeping track of when each customer makes a purchase and then remember to send them an email sometime down the road. However, for most businesses, sending out hundreds to thousands of emails each month by hand isn’t all that viable. Instead, we strongly recommend you sign up with an email marketing solution.

MailChimp is one service that you can integrate with your storefront to help you send out replenishment emails automatically. All you have to do is type up your email beforehand and set the conditions for sending them out to your clients.

How should I phrase my replenishment emails?

Keep it simple, straightforward, and on topic.

You aren’t trying to sell your customers something they don’t already need and there’s no need to push other products since you can save those for your other promotion strategies.

Make it a friendly reminder, with a little discount or free shipping if they place their order, nothing more. The urgency and the need enough should make it a fairly reliable conversion.

When is a good time to send this email?

Timing is key to making more sales and keeping your customers happy.

For instance, you don’t want your car to only let you know you need gas after you run out. While it’s nice to know why the car stopped running, it would be even nicer to know a little earlier and not deal with the pain of walking to the gas station.

It’s all about finding that middle ground between “too late” (when people will be unhappy) and too early (when people would rather wait). Serve them when they are aware of a need, but not after they’ve found other solutions.

From our experience, we found that somewhere two-thirds to three-quarters of the way towards needing that refill would be a pretty prime time to send out a replenishment reminder.

Essentially, you want them to have enough time to take action to avoid any interruptions in the product and service they enjoy. Fido shouldn’t miss a meal, and a road trip’s no fun when you run out of gas.

For services that use a monthly subscription, or whose product will likely run out in a month, sending that email at the start of week three should be spot on.

As well, for those of you who have a two-week free trial for their service, you will want to send out an email just before the trial expires expire—so they don’t experience an interruption in the service—and then again when it does expire.

The Bottom Line:

Replenishment emails help you spend less effort chasing down leads and converting your customers into recurring buyers.

As you can tell by now, this sort of email marketing doesn’t exactly work for every type of product (furniture would be a good example of items that do not need to be replenished on a monthly basis… unless of course, you live some sort of wild rock-star life).

However, even if you aren’t in the dog show business, you might actually be running a business that offers a product or service that could follow the replenishment process.

Think about the products you sell. Do any of them have a finite quantity (such as cleaning products, food), require refills (coffee machines, water filters), or wear out (razor blades, scrub brushes, and even running shoes only go so far).

If there’s a chance one of your customers will need more, look into getting started with replenishment emails.

Continue reading