6 Game-Changing Online Selling Trends for 2019

One of the most exciting things about being part of the world of eCommerce is that things never stay the same for long. Technology, trends, and products are always evolving: and because it’s so easy to open an online store, the competition is always growing.

This is really just the tip of the iceberg for eCommerce, and savvy store owners understand that to succeed, you have to stay on top of the latest developments. As the percentage of consumers shopping online regularly inches higher and higher, here are 6 online selling trends to keep in mind for success in 2019.

The rise of the chatbot

Artificial Intelligence has been in development for some time, and it’s just starting to reach the point where it can be really useful to us: take Siri and Amazon Alexa, for example. AIl now has the potential to positively influence a customer’s online journey in a very real way, through the use of integrated chatbots that deal with questions and complaints.

Already, consumers are starting to feel more comfortable with interacting with machines – partly due to how much time we already spend using messaging apps. With a high (and growing) amount of engagement on apps like Facebook Messenger, conversational commerce looks like it could be here to stay.

Whether the customer is put through to a digital assistant or a human customer service manager, it’s not hard to see why live chat is becoming the preferred method of contact over phone and email. Questions can be answered then and there, while the customer is still in mind to buy.

What does interaction with a chatbot look like? In this example from Slackbot, a website visitor has a question about how to add a guest account.

Slackbot has been programmed to give a comprehensive reply, likely based on the keywords ‘guest account’. Now the visitor has the information she needs right away. It’s natural for there to be limitations at this stage, but the timesaving and conversion optimization possibilities that could be gained from these interactions is still very exciting for eCommerce enthusiasts.

Device distinction

The average household in modern society contains more than 7 connected devices, whether that’s laptops, desktops, smartphones, tablets, or even phablets. It’s a lot, but it’s not all that surprising. We’re all borderline addicted to the internet – but research tells us that we prefer different devices for different activities.

Where this relates most strongly to eCommerce is the distinction between shopping on desktop/laptop and on mobile. While mobiles comprise just over 50 percent of web traffic, studies show that customers don’t feel entirely comfortable about making purchases on a mobile, even though they use them to browse online stores.

It seems to be the case that users will happily use their mobiles to research what they want to buy, before switching to a laptop or desktop to make the purchase. So what does this mean for your store?

It’s the word of the moment: omnichannel. To offer the best experience for your customers, your eCommerce store needs to be well optimized for whatever device it’s being viewed on, whether mobile, tablet or computer screen. With a good responsive theme from a mobile commerce platform, store owners can ensure that visitors are getting a seamless experience across devices.

Understanding customer lifetime value

Just as you would recognize and reward your regular customers if you run a brick and mortar business (or so I would hope), the same principle very much applies to online selling. Today’s consumers have so much choice when it comes to online outlets, so if you’ve managed to get yourself a repeat customer, congratulations – you’ve struck gold! Loyal customers must be nurtured, as over time they will spend 30x more with your company than the average customer.

Customer Lifetime Value or CLTV is a metric used to calculate the value of an average customer at your store. And here’s the tip: you want to increase it.

As discussed in a recent blog post on why CLTV is so important to ecommerce businesses, there are a number of ways to improve customer loyalty. These include offering a true omnichannel experience, creating personalized customer emails, utilizing paid search and making use of targeting and recommendation tools to keep your products fresh in the customer’s mind.

Product recommendations, in particular, are a famous tactic to increase CLTV. Magemail points out some interesting data on how recommendations help increase sales revenue, conversions and some other important micro and macro metrics. Check out their list on 12 product recommendations that can help you convert better and quicker.

To get a better grip on the changing needs of your customers and how to optimize your campaigns, try Wigzo’s machine learning technology.

Data will predict the future

Predictive analytics technology is becoming all the rage with online merchants, due to its ability to gather and analyze huge amounts of data from customer profiles and interactions. Based on this analysis, store owners can gain a deeper understanding of their customers and their shopping preferences, and make lucrative adjustments accordingly.

Through profiling, predictive analysis can group together customers with similar traits and use their habits to predict what a similar customer might buy, which allows for more relevant and successful targeting. Available on various different eCommerce platforms, this promises to be a crucial trend for improving eCommerce conversion rates – particularly in the B2B sector, where customers place much larger orders.

Getting personal

As we are able to capture customers’ data and analyze it accordingly to influence marketing decisions, now is the time to put this information into effect and create campaigns that are hyper-personalized. Smart online store owners know that customization is key: everything from emails down to social advertising, product recommendation and customer discounts can be infused with a personal approach that will make each individual more likely to become a loyal shopper (remember we talked about this?).

If you want to stand out from the swathe of other eCommerce stores on the internet, you need to reach out on a personal level and use your customer’s’ location, demographic and previous shopping habits to persuade and convert. The best CRM systems do this automatically, using the collective data at their disposal. From using the customer’s name in an email to displaying an ad for a product they recently viewed or favorited, personalization will be the key to winning hearts (and sales) in 2019.

Interactive Product Visualization

Should that ‘Buy’ button be clicked right away? But one begins wondering–haven’t really understood the quality of this product, is it exactly what I need to buy? Such questions tend to linger on most customers’ minds before they proceed to the next step to make the final payment. Therefore, it arises the need for customers to be able to interact with the product as much as they want to before they commit to purchasing an item. Online reviews and influencers sometimes aren’t enough. Customers want to see the product, feel it and eliminate all that doubt before making the purchase. So, the audience was once satisfied with high-quality product images but today they want more.

Today’s technology lets you use virtual reality, 3D imaging, augmented reality and the likes to be able to interact with products from the comfort of your device screen—laptop o smartphone. E-tailers are increasingly indulging the audience with product videos, evolved to be more engaging and are providing a 360-degree online shopping experience. What this interactive product visualization technology does is that it brings the tangible in-store experience to the online platform and helps eliminate that hesitation before the purchase.

With such low barriers to entry, eCommerce store owners must learn to respond quickly to new trends.

14 Credible Ways To Use Wigzo Web Push Notifications (and what not to do!)

We can’t help but emphasize the importance of using web push notifications to improve customer engagement and retention rate of your business. In the last 6 years, there’s been a spike in the interest to apply the push strategy from firms of different sizes and from different industries.

While push messaging was originally associated with the mobile medium, the strategy gradually trickled down to the browser. Today, push notifications deliver 50% higher open rates than emails. And that’s pretty cool because businesses shouldn’t have to wait for the prospective buyers to open and read their emails.

The businesses should be able to engage with the target market even if the latter is not present on the website. That’s the beauty of push notifications!

Wigzo’s “push” helps clientele achieve higher engagement rate

While emails and social media are still important tactics to stay in the purview of the customers, they are no longer the most effective ones. Even though the push technology seems a bit distracting, it has been able to catch the attention of consumers and convert them into loyal buyers.

1) Inc42 makes use of web push notifications to be able to interact with their website visitors regularly. Wigzo was able to give a boost to Inc42’s average daily visitors and achieve an average CTR of 18%!

2) With the help of Wigzo’s smart segmentation technology, eCommerce store Mr. Button is able to track user interaction and tailor the push messaging accordingly.

If you are still unsure about how Wigzo can help your business amp up its customer engagement level, learn of these new ways in which you can:

1. Recover abandoned shopping carts

If you are an eCommerce firm, then this is perhaps the biggest issue you will ever face! It is really hurtful when the almost-customer suddenly decides to leave a loaded cart behind and move on. With a push message, you can create a sense of urgency to bring him or her back on the website and to complete the purchase process.

2. Send time-sensitive price alerts

Not all of us shop on a whim. We wait for the right deal or a flash sale to shop like a boss! So if the price of a product – that a consumer previously showed interest in – dropped, make sure (s)he hears it from you first through push. After all, who wants to miss out on a deal? This is all but a tactic to nudge them to make interaction on the website.

3. Notify subscribers about an ongoing sale

You may run different discounts for different products. Whether it an end of season sale or a limited period discount – make sure you catch the attention of your consumers before their focus shifts on some other online store. A real-time notification and they will get instantly hooked!

4. Offer location-based tips and discounts

This is a form of hyper-personalization, and will surely bag you a quick conversion. If your website also has a physical store and the prospective buyer happens to be in the vicinity, shoot a quick message to nudge an action from him or her.

5. Re-engage inactive customers

The market is literally spoilt for choice. And consumers today like to hop from one online store to another. So it isn’t surprising to search for a hack that can help you re-engage with such dormant buyers. Pique their interest by sending a notification around a referral program you have started or any other offer that may add value to them.

6. Validate your customers

Just because the consumers have created an account or shared contact details on your website doesn’t mean you take them for granted. Validate their actions by sending a small “thank you” push notification or best – offer them sort of a discount. They would dig that!

7. Leverage social proof

Consumers can be a little hesitant to take the plunge and buy something online. But you can resolve that with the push technology. Show them how many other consumers have bought the same product or how happy they are with your services. A little social proofing goes a long way!

8. Cross-sell and upsell

If your consumers have already chosen a product, don’t let that stop you from increasing the average order value. Give recommendations. Entice with them an add-on (cross-sell) or show them an upgraded version of the product chosen (upsell).

9. Keep the customers informed of their purchases

Once they have ordered a product, make sure you keep them informed about its shipping details through real-time push notifications. That would take some burden off their shoulders!

10. Retarget product or service drop-offs

This kind of messaging is apt for those consumers who put the products in the cart but leave the checkout process mid-way. As they still haven’t left the website, it gives you an excellent opportunity to send a reminder about the cart.

11. Send “back-in-stock alerts”

Your consumer excitedly came to your website to buy a specific product but found it to be out of stock. Don’t let that be the end of it. Once the product is restocked, send a push message updating him or her about the same.

12. Recommend products

So you noticed a consumer checking out a range of sci-fi novels on your eCommerce store. You can pop-up and recommend sci-fi non-fiction that would interest him. Consumers are lazy by nature. If you do a majority of the homework for them, they would love you!

13. Ask for customer feedback on product delivery

Getting feedback is an old-age marketing tactic but it works well because it makes the customers feel important. So once the order has been delivered, send a push message asking for a “token of affection”.

14. Inform about reward loyalty programs

This is a slightly targeted tactic. Make a list of long-standing customers and send them a notification – thanking them for being loyal and offering a credit of $10 or so to show your gratitude! They would hop to your website in a flash!

The Don’ts consider using Web Push Notifications

An effective Web Push Notification campaign can easily outperform Email Marketing and other sorts of campaigns, that is if executed well. After having done some discussion on the ‘Do’s’, here are some ‘Don’ts’ that you must keep in mind when dealing with Web Push Notifications:

There isn’t a good idea to get too greedy. If you are too frequent with sending notifications to your customers, close to a 10% users decide to opt-out solely for that reason. Instead, it is more relevant for you to send more contextual notifications based on their behavior and interests and your engagement rate is bound to go higher.
Relying on native opt-in prompts? Well, you shouldn’t. Although you might witness a higher opt-in rate initially this will only result in a high amount of churn.
If you are keen on using the native prompt, the better and more effective idea would be to build a custom prompt that pops-up right before the native prompt. This will result in better communication of your brand. Even if a user decides to deny it, a custom prompt will enable you to ask again later.
It is important to remember the purpose of push notifications. Basically, push notifications are meant to drive users to click and engage with your business. Therefore, the platform isn’t really ideal to explain your customer about detailed and finer points that you have to offer. Instead, link a landing page where your offers are more explained. Remember, the best performing notifications are usually the ones that have catchy titles, precise descriptions, and vivid images.

Over to you

Frederic Voyer, CEO, Swaaap.com aptly puts it right: “Push notifications have been a main factor to ensure that the users in our community are engaged and actively interacting with each other to meet each other’s business needs.”

So what are you waiting for? Get up and get going!

7 Statistics That Prove The Power Of Push Notifications And What Your Users Really Want

Push notifications are a common way for businesses to get their customer’s attention back to their app. It is like a reminder to the user that they have something to look forward to in the app. The tactic has proven itself to be effective in re-engaging inactive users and boosting in-app conversions.

7 statistics that prove the effectiveness of push notifications

1. Push notifications boost the app engagement by 88%

Most mobile apps get downloaded when their acquisition campaigns are ongoing. But with competing apps entering the market every day, it is becoming harder to keep the engagement levels of users, high. Push notifications are proven to boost the app sessions and engagement by serving as a subtle reminder to the user.

2. Push notification boost app retention rates 2X

The higher the engagement rates, the higher are the retention rates as well. In simpler words, as long as a user remains engaged with your business, he is more likely to stay. Since push notifications nudge him to launch the app, they improve the user retention rates as well.

3. Personalized push notifications have a higher click-through rate

Push notifications were initially just used to update users of new features or call them back with generalised messages. Today in times of personalization, push notifications are proven to perform better when they take into account user data like his demographics and in-app behaviour.

4. Android users more receptive to push notifications

A new report suggests that push notifications are particularly a very powerful marketing and engagement tool – especially for Android users. Android smartphone users have a 100% opt-in compared to those on iOS.

5. 65% of users return when push is enabled

This one proves just how compelling push notifications are to your app stickiness cause As 65% of the users tend to return to an app when push is enabled while those who do not have push enabled only 19% return within the span of 30 days. Mobile retention is a major challenge for brands but push ensures the users are consistently exposed to your app.

6. Mobile users actually opt-in for push notifications, but the rate varies by industry

The first and foremost statistic is to clear the air about push notifications being too nosey. Smartphone users were actually opt-in for these notifications in most cases. The catch here being, when they know that the app will have something valuable to offer to them whenever it touches base. There are almost 50% of users who opt to push and find them useful.

7. Rich push notifications increase direct open rate up to 56%

Rich push notifications are the ones you use pictures, GIFs, videos and audios in to engage app users. These kinds of notifications significantly increase your direct open rates catching full attention of the user mesmerising them.

But these numbers may vary from business to business, depending on the strategies they are backed by. It is important for marketers to first understand their user’s typical behaviour and identify a notification frequency that he is more likely to convert on, instead of getting irritated.

Types of push notifications that users want

But before you get started with all the strategizing, let’s take a look at the 6 types of push notifications that your users actually want.

1. Highly functional to make life easy

There are innumerable calls that I’m required to take in a day. There are times when I remember some and totally forget about the others, and am taken aback when the client calls – totally unprepared! But if I had a push notification sent to me by my calendar 24 hours before, there would never be a chance of goof-ups. Like this one here:

Push notifications that are simply functional and serve as a life hack are something that everyone needs. Because let’s face it, we do want things to get simpler for us and not all of us have the privilege of a PA to remind us of every little thing.

For instance, this travel app’s push notification is pretty nifty for those who are like me – straying a little too far from the boarding gate to kill boredom!

2. Simply encouraging to keep going

An app user could discontinue a session or simply become inactive because he isn’t really moving forward in your app or hasn’t found anything new to keep him encouraged. This increases the chances of a churn.

Push notifications that simply encourage a user to come back to the app because there’s something valuable for him in the end, are great for engagement. For instance, I haven’t used the 7 minutes app for a while now but I love the quick message I get every other day to ‘achieve my goals’ – I do open the app, but am simply a little too lazy to get to the workout part!

3. Location personalized messages

Imagine yourself sitting on a lonely beach and getting notified of a sale running on your favourite eCommerce app. Now you know they aren’t going to deliver the products to you at the beach, you’re simply going to get irritated for not being able to avail all the wonderful discounts.

Now if the app personalized its push notifications based on your location, it would show you discounts that you can avail close by. In fact, according to Localytics, 34% of smartphone users prefer push notifications based on their location.

4. Stimulating excitement

Do you have a launch lined up or a sale coming up? It is a great idea to build up the excitement with push notifications. Let them know what’s headed their way but give out just as much information that will nudge them to use your app to know more.

Tapping into positive emotions like excitement and curiosity of users can help you engage them better and even get higher in-app conversions from your campaigns. Like I would be really excited if I knew products I put in my wishlist went up on sale!

You could also base these notifications around the last activity of your users, making the messaging all the more contextual. For example, 8 tracks use a quirky tone to reach out to users who had previously used the app to look for playlists.

5. Simple and important alerts

If you have a news app or one that updates industry trends regularly, your users are that segment of the audience that wants to stay abreast with it all. Having missed something important is probably going to affect them in one way or the other.

Simple push notifications that alert the user of important news and updates are the best! They serve the purpose of adding value to the user, not cluttering their notification centre and getting them back to the app.

For instance, Medium sends me a very simple push notification every time someone I follow, publishes a new post. Straightforward and does the trick!

And this one here that is mechanical – but the situation calls for it!

6. Encouraging to continue an activity

There are going to be times when an app user leaves without completing a certain action in your app. It could be a game level that he suddenly got distracted from or cart items that he did not complete the checkout on.

Push notifications that let the user pick up from where they left with a quick reminder of what they’ve left behind, are proven to get more click-throughs and app sessions. Because it was an activity that the user was interested in, so it becomes easier convincing him to come back.

All your app users are different and they will certainly interact with your app in different ways. It is important to track their in-app activity to be able to create campaigns that stimulate action. The more data you use to personalize your push notifications, the higher are the chances of the user coming back to your app.

We wrote an 8 step guide to create powerful push notifications for your app using Wigzo a while back to help marketers create an effective strategy. You can read it here: How to create an effective push notifications campaign.