The business of online selling may appear easy with very few employees needed, an audience that can be found on the Internet, very few overhead expenses, and becoming one of the preferred ways of shopping for many. But, the hardest part of running an e-commerce? How hard it can be to close some sales. In the e-commerce world, marketing is becoming a necessity for sellers.
Although e-commerce may have a few better advantages to brick-and-mortar stores, e-commerces still cannot perform successfully without some useful marketing strategies. To drive sales, increasing traffic can attract leads and essentially, convert them into customers.
Using a web push notification service can be one of the most effective marketing strategies. Push notifications can grab a lead’s attention and excite these potential customers by engaging with them. Luckily, there are some push notification tools out there that offer a solution for these online stores to deliver push notifications to help increase e-commerce sales.
Push notifications can be tricky to use, however, and can drive customers away by unsubscribing, but if handled correctly, they can be long-term help for e-commerce. Finding the right ways to use push notifications can make a difference.
Here are a few best practices to interest your customers and boost those sales:
1. Consider the time.
Timing is key! No one would be interested in seeing notifications pop up when it’s time for bedtime. It’s best to measure your audience and consider when it may interest them, the day of the week, and when users are more likely to be active.
You can look into key data to see the activity of users and use that to determine when you should send out that notification. Some tools can detect customer behavior with click maps to help you study how your customers interact with the notifications.
2. Use push notifications for time-sensitive sales.
If your store is going to have a sale or discounts, sending out push notifications for this is very practical. Not only it will be a good reminder to let them know what is waiting for them, but this will help potential customers consider looking into your product or service.
Adding a countdown and a personalized discount code on the push notifications will send out a sense of urgency. Think about these as rare “gifts” to give out, and do not try to go overboard in them as these notifications should be served with lots of value. Some push notification tools can allow you to make a price drop alert.
3. Use push notifications to give announcements of new products or services.
A lot of customers can become returning customers when they were satisfied with your product or service before. But, if a potential customer has just previously checked out your store website before, there’s a slim chance that they will be returning. However, if you announce a new product or service using push notification, there’s the possibility of gaining the potential customer’s interest.
Any updates and breaking news can be very useful to use in a push notification, and it will keep customers in the loop about the company. It also shows your online store is able to provide new inspired action and that it is up-to-date.
4. Get users to resume back to shopping by sending out push notifications that remind them of their shopping cart.
When someone puts a couple of things in their shopping cart from your online store but did not check out and had abandoned it, this is a good time to remind them and regain their interest. Send push notifications to remind them of the items they could still buy since their “almost” shopping experience can propel them to a completed transaction.
5. Keep the push notifications short and simple.
Keeping your text short and simple and to the point is a golden rule known in marketing. Many web push notification services usually require a set limit of characters to use. Staying within that frame will allow a customer to pick up the whole message of your online store and the sales.
6-8 words are the most ideal to use. You don’t have to, of course, fill out all of the characters and you can keep it a lot shorter, as long as you make your simple message known or provide the call-to-action.
6. Always stick with relevant content to display on your push notifications.
If your online store only sells sports-related goods, but you switch off to talking about news and updates about celebrities, you will no longer attract your audience of avid athletes and sports fanatics. Create push notifications that will keep your audience on their toes about what your online store has to sell and relate to your inventory.
7. Make your push notifications fun with images and rich media.
A lot of people like seeing visual elements of a product or service being advertised as it makes potential customers understand what they’re looking at. A good way to make your push notifications stand out is by adding click-worthy images or an emoji. It’s an effective way to attract your potential customers and engage with the push notification. There are features on push notification tools that will allow you to craft visually using images of your products or emojis.
8. Personalize those notifications!
Personalization is now what many consumers prefer when it comes to interacting with brands. The more closely related that a consumer feels with products from a business, the more likely it will heighten their interest in providing you a sale. Using a push notification tool, you can personalize the message with details of one’s shopping cart, as mentioned before. You can adjust the browser language to fit the customer.
9. Schedule ahead of time.
Push notifications are run by campaigns. When you have a sale coming up, you can align your push notifications to go out at the same time that the sale is released. Using a notification program, you can schedule your notifications as you see fit for your business. This will help you plan out what you will communicate along with your sale. This also helps you to avoid sending them out in bad timing that will result in annoying and disinteresting your potential customers.
*Photo credit goes to Cristina Dina on Pexels.com