Industry Chat: Ways you can boost engagement and acquisition with UpSellit
Do you want to boost engagement and acquisition of your online shop? We interviewed Richard Greenwell of UpSellit to inform you about the actionable ways to achieve this goal successfully.
Our expert on engagement and acquisition: UpSellit
UpSellit, an AI-powered conversion rate optimisation (CRO) platform, has performed tens of thousands of tests with some of the largest brands in eCommerce. Their work across nearly every industry and demographic has resulted in mountains of gathered data and volumes of best practices.
Armed with this invaluable information, UpSellit is uniquely qualified to address common eCommerce pain points with the most efficient solutions. They have synthesized this information with two main goals in mind:
1. To give you data-backed insights that will help you better understand the different types of abandonment
2. To provide you with actionable ways to optimise your funnel for optimal profitability
How do you define the different stages of site abandonment?
Although most conversations about abandonment tend to focus on abandoned baskets, expanding your CRO strategy to target the reasons for each stage of abandonment can easily produce double-digit increases in your conversion rate. At UpSellit, we define the stage of abandonment as the deepest part of the funnel the shopper has reached before exiting the site.
By combining the stage of abandonment, the actual page abandoned, and key visitor and session details, you can start to create hyper personalised conversion optimisation strategies that will enhance the shopping experience and significantly increase the value of every visitor.
If a shopper is going to abandon, why does it matter which stage and page they are abandoning from?
If you’re treating every stage and page of abandonment the same way, you’re not only frustrating your shoppers, but you’re also leaving a great deal of money on the table.
For instance, if a shopper advances all of the way to checkout but navigates to a product page and then closes the tab, we would still call that “checkout abandonment”. We do this to label levels of intent. Calling this “product abandonment” would be undervaluing the shopper’s interest. After all, earlier in the session they were moments away from entering their credit card number.
How can basket abandonment be reduced?
Basket abandonment is one of the most commonly discussed metrics in the whole conversion funnel. This segment gained its popularity because these are your shoppers who have expressed high purchase intent and have the greatest potential for a larger order value.
We’ve found that gamification is a great way to boost AOV and new customer acquisition. One popular use of gamification is to combine a gamified experience with incentivised strategies. Since shoppers tend to ascribe more value to incentives they’ve had to earn, this strategy makes the shopping experience more engaging.
Dynamic elements like UpSellit’s Progress Bars and Boost Bars entice users with an incentive while gamifying the additional spending required to redeem it. Allowing shoppers to pick a mystery prize, play a mini-game, or complete a small puzzle are all great ways to get customers involved.
How can product page abandonment be reduced?
Shoppers who abandon after viewing your products are often looking to compare prices. For these comparison shoppers, the opportunity to receive price drop alerts can be an enticing offer.
UpSellit’s Price Drop Alerts leverage natural price fluctuations and real-time interest, all while mitigating price sensitivity and expanding your list. To set one up, ask the user if they’d like to be notified if or when the item goes on sale. If the item does drop in price as part of a sale, you can let them know with a personalised remarketing email. This strategy helps prevent users from shopping for an item elsewhere and increases conversions, all without requiring a unique incentive.
What about shoppers with active baskets — is there anything that can be done to effectively to give them a push towards checkout?
If your shopper is scrolling through your website with popular products sitting idle in their basket, you have the perfect opportunity to push them to checkout. UpSellit can monitor product availability and popularity to incorporate subtle urgency messages into the active basket shopping experience that will make your customers run to the register.
How can order value be boosted at the basket stage?
The basket stage is the perfect time to employ the cross-sell technique. Streamline the decision process by recommending products that pair well with items shoppers are planning to purchase, such as a matching pair of pants for the top they added or a case for their new phone purchase. These items round out shoppers’ orders, enhancing their experience and overall satisfaction with your brand while boosting AOV.
What is the best way to build trust with shoppers at the checkout stage?
At the checkout stage, you’re asking your shoppers for their most sensitive information. Therefore, you need to tread very lightly. Information overload can scare off even the most experienced ecommerce veterans.
Adding a security seal like McAfee, Verisign, Norton, etc. can provide the peace of mind your shoppers need to open up their pocket books. Just remember, less is more. Plastering your checkout page with every possible trust seal can quickly have an adverse effect.
How can the product recommendations be truly personalised?
Fusing AI and product recommendations enables retailers to drive sales without additional incentives. For instance, UpSellit’s Product Recommendation Engine utilises browsing patterns, behavioural triggers, and hundreds of other indicators to suggest products that excite shoppers and increase order value.
Artificial intelligence has made it possible to learn more from users than ever before. The science behind AI makes personalisation more accurate and effective, making it a key tool for businesses seeking to enhance the shopping experience while boosting overall performance.
For example, when your shoppers abandon the category page and they haven’t clicked through to a section yet, you can use certain mouse movements to make predictions about their interests. UpSellit’s Behavioural Parsing Engine can determine links that were almost clicked in order to deliver effective product recommendations to shoppers who abandon a category page.
What role can social proof play in reducing abandonment?
By highlighting different types of proof at each stage of the funnel, you can offer a gentle, guiding hand towards checkout.
For your top entrance pages, you can boost brand trust with an industry certification, or call out where your products have been featured.
Social proof is also a valuable addition to category and product pages, which can often be an overwhelming experience for shoppers. Try highlighting sold-out items. This may seem counterintuitive, but these popular items are as good as a line outside a nightclub. They create urgency by proving your business is booming and your customers love you.
In a variety of stages, product reviews are one of the simplest and most powerful applications of social proof. They inspire confidence in both your products and your site as a whole. If you’re still working on generating product reviews, a post-purchase email remarketing campaign can help build your base of reviews and get the ball rolling. With UpSellit’s Email Remarketing platform, we’ve found success in offering customers a small incentive on a repeat purchase in exchange for a review of their previously purchased product.
How can a specific audience’s preferences be discovered?
A/B testing is an invaluable tool to learn about what resonates with a particular audience. Let’s say you’re running a messaging campaign on abandonment, but would like to know if adding an incentive would improve your results. With a control group, you can gather an accurate comparison of how strategies are affecting conversion rates, average order values, and customer lifetime value.
By implementing A/B testing over the course of 30 days, you can get an accurate picture of which strategy generates more revenue and most importantly, profit. While it may seem unlikely, non-incentive campaigns can outperform incentivised campaigns, such as when the incentive being offered is too small. The only way to find out for sure is to test both strategies. By applying this method to more of your strategies, you can fully optimise your campaigns and maximise ROI.
Here you will find more ways to boost your engagement and acquisition >>
Start to boost your engagement and acquisition!
Understanding the customer journey and how shoppers interact with your site is imperative to fighting abandonment. By meeting your customers at each stage with solutions relevant to their journey, you can more appropriately address their needs and encourage not just an initial conversion, but future purchases as well.
Each new customer you acquire with these intelligent tactics will have endless long-tail revenue potential, ensuring your business will continue seeing profitability even beyond a single purchase.
Do you want to boost your engagement and acquisition with UpSellit? Then start your affiliate program with the technologies from UpSellit now! Get in touch with our experts now >>
