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Ecommerce

28 Jun 2019
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The difficulties of delivering a great omnichannel experience

By 28/06/2019

When it comes to operating in a competitive environment, savvy businesses are utilising omnichannel commerce as a way to engage with the customer at all touchpoints. A great system will learn from the customer’s behaviour and deliver a consistent and tailored experience everywhere they shop.

If you can manage it, omnichannel commerce just makes sense. According to the Harvard Business Review, omnichannel customers “… spent an average of 4% more on every shopping occasion in the store and 10% more online than single-channel customers.” What’s more, the study also found that with every additional channel used, shoppers spent more in-store, with customers who used over four channels spending 9% more.

Unfortunately, the key phrase here is “if you can manage it”. Although omnichannel commerce is an asset to any business, it’s not always easy to execute. Here are some of the difficulties you might encounter when deciding to embark on omnichannel marketing.

It’s non-linear 

The omnichannel journey is complex and non-linear. With today’s technology, customers have a proliferation of touchpoints available to them. 

For example, they could follow your brand on social media but not buy anything; or they could walk in-store, check out your products and buy them online later; or perhaps they decide to buy your products online, collect their order in-store, and add more products to their cart as they check out. 

As you can see, there’s no straight line to the customer experience. Instead of a straight line, we need to re-imagine the customer experience as a spider’s web. And, no matter where your customer is in that web, you’ll need to be able to meet them in any given channel at any given time. Furthermore, because customers expect a personalised shopping experience, you will need to install systems that “remember” your customers no matter where they are. 

However, this brings up another challenge…

Your systems don’t talk to each other

Personalisation is key to the customer experience, but capturing and analysing all of this behavioural data is where things get complicated. Most omnichannel commerce involves the use of multiple standalone platforms, none of which talk to each other.

This means that a customer might have bought something online, but the in-store retail reps have no idea what’s going on. Customer behaviours might suddenly shift but the email marketing team won’t realise. Prices and stock levels online could vary wildly with what’s actually available in-store.

As you can see, the potential for chaos is high. To make it work, you’ll need a “Golden Record” – a single view of your customer that captures all information – whether that’s online, offline, through email, telephone, live chat, or social media. It lets you aggregate all this data into one place, which all teams can access, allowing everyone to get on the same page.

The only problem is creating a Golden Record is…

You don’t have the workforce or technology to support it

As we mentioned, managing multiple customers relationships at all touchpoints can be complex, especially when everyone is using different systems. For your omnichannel endeavour to succeed, you’re going to need employees who have channel-specific skills and experience, and the technology to execute this.

That’s why any great omnichannel experience usually starts with an ambitious dram and then a systems integration project. It’s an overhaul of every possible system you work with, (from product information and delivery to personalised email marketing and loyalty incentives) consolidating them all into a single integrated system.

All of these difficulties can be avoided when you choose Magento. Find out how to build a connected and customer-centric platform for your omnichannel experience in this PDF. 

18 Jun 2019
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When an eCommerce site is not just an eCommerce site

By 18/06/2019

According to the business coaching gurus, sales are easy!  All you do is just capture a lead, nurture that lead, make the sale and then get a testimonial. Job done!  

But what does it actually mean? Why does one brand have a cult-like following and another brand struggle even to make traction or sales?

How do you capture those leads in the first place to nurture them? And what is nurturing?  Do I invite them around to my house for a meal and a cuddle? I’m just trying to sell (insert product here ie newborn photography, plus size clothing, bridal dresses, pens etc)!!

The truth is, in today’s society, if you build it, they won’t come.  You need to start by building a community because more and more, people want their purchases to have meaning and they want to be part of something.

Aspirational brands help customers to belong

Look at Toms for example, they built their whole brand out of giving back.  So for every pair of shoes you bought someone disadvantaged would get a pair of shoes.  You purchase some shoes AND it made you feel so good about yourself, nice!

But more than that, they detail the stories behind your impact of buying shoes which shows you how you are making a difference and helps you feel like you belong to a community of people who want to create change.

TOMS has expanded into other causes

Harley Davidson have a Harley Owners Group section complete with member benefits and events.  Because people who love to ride are the ultimate in community.

Apart form membership, it provides Harley owners with local events where they can be part of the Harley community and many other tools and tidbits such as mileage recognition. All of this adds to the prestige of owning and riding their Harley amongst those who ‘get it’.

Harley understands its customers need to belong and their love of riding.

Sephora have one of the best communities of an omni-channel brand.  Sephora redefined how women shop for beauty products and created the Beauty Insider Community.  This ensures that their raving fans can join groups to connect with each other and follow topics of interest, they can ask questions of experts, browse the galleries and get inspiration, and score access to exclusive events.  Not to mention all their how-to videos and quizzes.

Sephora keeps its community engaged

So, whether you support a bigger cause like third world poverty or the growing concern of self-body image issues or have just created a brand synonymous with luxury or performance, when your customer feels part of a community there is power and loyalty in that.  So capturing and nurturing leads is about helping people to belong.

And loyalty goes well beyond a loyalty program when you have raving (mad) fans.  These are people who will line up for hours just to be first in line to get your new product and will keep you afloat in the tough times.

Your community and your website

Whether your business is based on helping others or is it about having others aspire to be like your brand, you need to create this reflection on your website where people can get involved.

Before you build your website, think about how you will represent this community experience and get your best customers involved on your website. And your eCommerce platform choice will be important here too because it will need to be flexible to allow you to represent your items for sale as well as your community and informational aspect.

It’s in this way that an eCommerce website is not just an eCommerce website anymore, and the more you can get your customers involved and part of your brand, the more you will have a customer for life.

If you want help discussing how you will reflect your community aspect on your website and help your customers to get involved and feel like they belong – just contact us on hello@theplayhousegroup.com

05 Apr 2019
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What goes into a successful checkout experience?

By 05/04/2019

I was shopping for my favourite green powder drink the other day (yes I’m a health nut) with an online store that I was unfamiliar with. And when I didn’t get my confirmation email within a nano-second of hitting Place Order, I completely freaked out. You see, I didn’t know whether or not I could trust them yet and I’d taken a risk!

Online shopping is not new, and yet as we all know, not all online shopping experiences are created equal. And with cart abandonment rates which can run as high as 80%, how do you get someone to trust you and complete the checkout when they have never shopped with you before?

Well firstly, you have to remember that the checkout experience happens way before they actually reach the checkout. Just as you wouldn’t walk up to a stranger and ask them to marry you, you need to impress your customer through the entire experience, and then ask for the sale with an easy and fuss free checkout experience.

Let’s break it down.

Things you need to consider before the checkout page

  • Mobile first design – the highest abandonment rates of checkout occur on mobile phones, if they even get that far in to purchasing.  If your website and your checkout page are well designed and easy to navigate then you are further down the road than most.
  • Include a Shipping calculator – so customers don’t get an unexpected surprise in checkout. There’s nothing more frustrating than browsing through a store, choosing what you want, then heading to checkout and finding that shipping costs just as much as the products you want to order. Make it easy for customers to check shipping costs no matter where they are on the site, as well as offering multiple shipping options.  Unexpected costs in checkout is one of the biggest reasons for cart abandonment.
  • Similarly to shipping, make sure any extra fees and taxes are revealed early and before checkout. Your customers need to be able to calculate the total price before they get to the checkout pages. If your customer is shopping around for the best deal and suddenly discovers your price is just as much as everyone elses but you were being tricky about it – then you will lose trust, credibility AND the sale.
  • Clear refund and exchange policies. Let your customers know that if something DOES go wrong – they have options. This also protects your business by ensuring there are strict guidelines for what can be refunded or exchanged, and under what circumstances.
  • Reviews – if you have lots of great reviews from previous customers on your product pages or on your website, it shows a level of trust from others that helps ease the customers mind. It shows that you will do what you say you will do. This will translate to the checkout.
  • Provide quick, easy customer service options for when your customers are having difficulties checking out or need advice on an item.  These can be things like Live Chat or an easy to locate customer service number.

Where to next?

A successful checkout experience is as friction-free for your customer as possible.  Like we just talked about, if you have a well designed website with enough of the right content then your customer already knows exactly what they are buying, that they have the right size, has the social proof that you are reliable, knows how much it is going to cost including taxes and shipping and is confident of their purchase. So what else could halt their progress and cause them to abandon the purchase?

The checkout pages

Now, there will be people who are always looking for a discount and a coupon (and you may not be a discounting business), or just doing preliminary browsing research to buy it at some later stage.  But how do we keep the others and get them to feel confident enough to complete their purchase?

Now that we are at the checkout page, here are some things you need to consider:

  • Capture their email address as early as possible.  You may be losing up to 80% at the checkout page, but you can get around 15% back by capturing their email address and engaging an abandoned cart campaign. For those people who were just doing research to purchase it later, these reminders will be invaluable.
  • Take away the header and footer and remove any other distractions that will stop someone from completing the checkout.  Once someone has decided to make their purchase, your job is to make it as easy as possible. If they are distracted by unnecessary information then you are complicating the process.
The Checkout Page for OPSM
  • Make sure you have security and encryption in place so a customer feels comfortable sharing their personal and credit card details. You know that little lock symbol in the URL bar? That’s a clear sign to customers that any information they send across is protected by SSL certificates. And, in this day and age when everyone is so concerned about data reaches, this is definitely a must.
  • Trust badges are also an excellent way to convey trust.  A trust badge or trust seal is a symbol placed on your website that ensures your visitors know that you are legitimate and that all their data is collected securely. A trust badge can significantly increase conversions.

  • Partner with trusted affiliates. I always feel better when I see that a company offers payment through PayPal because I know that I am now also protected by PayPal’s rigorous returns policy if anything goes wrong. Partnering with known and verified companies helps bolster the authority of your own business – so bask in that reflected glow!
  • Offer a choice of payment methods. Even how we pay needs to have a variety of options these days because everyone has the method that they like to pay by. These can be things like credit card, Paypal, or Afterpay.
  • Consider where you place, and what you call your coupon code box.  If someone has a coupon code you want then to be able to find it. Also, there are some people who will abandon ship to find a coupon code just because they see a coupon code box and, if they can’t find one, end of sale.  This bargain hunter just may not be your ideal customer anyway (or a loyal one) but it is still worth considering where you put the coupon code box and maybe think of other names for it like “gift code”, so it implies that not everyone gets one.
  • Offer a range of delivery options. Offering same-day or next-day delivery in Metro areas is fast becoming the norm for those companies that truly want to compete.  Offering Express options for a premium and other options at a reduced price or even free can really seal the deal with many customers.
  • Consider offering Click-and-Collect services. Sometimes you just want to secure your items and then pick them up when you are ready. Offering click-and-collect services through stores or Parcelpoint is again becoming the new normal. Remember though, that your customers are expecting immediacy.  If it takes three days for their order to be ready it would have been easier for them to come in and shop for it themselves and takes the convenience and cost saving out of click-and-collect. So make sure before you offer it, you are set up to deliver it.
  • Don’t make your customer create an account. Look, if I don’t know you, and if I haven’t shopped with you before I don’t want to suddenly be your best friend.  The truth is, I may never buy from you again. Having to create an account at checkout is also one of the biggest reasons people abandon their carts. Let people warm up to you, and then give them a reason to create an account like a loyalty program. Once they love and trust you, then creating an account with you makes sense.
  • Keep it simple stu…ahem. If you have a long and complicated checkout process you will lose people. Make the experience as uncomplicated as possible. Ask yourself, for every field you have, if you 100% need to collect that information. That way you can be absolutely sure the information is serving a real purpose and will keep the form as short as possible.  The less fields you have the easier it is to get to the end of the checkout.

Unsure whether or not your checkout is converting well?  Maybe try some A/B testing or contact us at The Playhouse Group, so we can check out your checkout!  See what I did there?

12 Mar 2019
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HOW MOBILES ARE REVOLUTIONISING THE BRICKS AND MORTAR EXPERIENCE

By 12/03/2019

We’ve all heard it and we’ve all done it.  Uttered those words “I just don’t have TIME”.  

“What are we going to buy Jeff for his birthday, I don’t have TIME to go to the shops.”  “Let’s do an online grocery shop darling, I just don’t have TIME to get to the supermarket”.

With the advances in eCommerce, our portable buying machines (your mobile phone), and with time becoming even more of a precious commodity, a dark cloud has loomed over bricks-and-mortar retail stores for a while that has meant those still standing have needed to reinvent themselves and do things smarter.

With the advent of marketplaces like Amazon, fitting in ‘shopping’ with our modern overrun lives just makes the convenience of buying things online so appealing.

But now it seems, that the smartest of retailers are turning the mobile phone into their bricks-and-mortar friend and embracing the benefits it has to offer using in-store apps.

While some are still struggling to embrace the omni-channel approach, those who have done it wisely are really reaping the benefits.

So why do in-store apps work so well?

The simple reason is, in-store apps create a more personalised experience for your customer and the more you know about them the more you can personalise that experience.

Starbucks for example, understood the time poor worker and made an app so you can order and pay online and beat all the queues – then all that is left to do is pop in and pick it up from the counter.

Beacons and geo-tagging are a great way to know when your customer is near or in-store and can be used to provide tantalising discounts or reasons to enter the store.

So perhaps you can imagine your customer walking towards their favourite product in-store and just as they are about to reach it, they get pinged with a special for 10% off!  YES PLEASE!

Customers most commonly use in-store apps to find coupons, redeem digital coupons in-store or even to locate sale items or in-store discounts. They also compare prices and view product ratings and reviews.

Store layouts are also a great opportunity to include on an app.

Similarly, using beacon locaters to know when someone is in store for a click n collect or a return is totally invaluable.  You could be getting things ready before they even reach the counter.

Making your loyalty program a part of the app is a no brainer.  Not only are they pinged sales items that you know interest them, they can then see if they qualify for further discounts or free items based on their loyalty points!

However, all this is just the tip of ice-berg for the opportunity for in-store apps and it is really limited to our imaginations.

Why not have a chat-bot built right into your app so that someone can scan the item they are trying on in a change-room and request a new size be brought to them instead of having to try and call for and track down a sales assistant?  Just one idea.

The thing is an in-store mobile app can create a really personal experience for your customer which in turn promotes loyalty.  So working out how to create a true ‘experience’ for your client is totally worth putting your thinking cap on for and one that your customers will actually venture OUT for.

Apps have the opportunity to totally disrupt the way business is done right now and continue to evolve our shopping experience.

If you want to continue to innovate your business, talk to us at The Playhouse Group.

Bonus material

Here are two fun ways that apps have been used to create a real ‘experience’ for shoppers.

Hointer

Hointer totally reinvented the shopping experience.  They have one item of each product on display effectively reducing the need for floor shop space and creating mini-warehouses out the back. You shop by scanning the barcode of the item you want to try via an app on your mobile or tablet.

Your items are then picked from the warehouse and delivered (via robot) to your dressing room within 30 seconds. With this kind of experience, people generally try on more items and buy more clothes. Plus it is a very easy experience. No trying to flag down an assistant whilst half-naked because you got the wrong size!  

Whatever you don’t want goes down the shoot and the rest stays in your shopping cart which you pay for with a swipe of your credit card.

Migros

The Swiss supermarket, Migros, used a Discover feature on their mobile app. Users can scan any of the 5,000+ products in the store to access product information, real-time ratings and reviews, recipes, and nutritional values.

This creates a range of cross-promotional opportunities that mean consumers leave with more items than they originally intended.

15 Feb 2019
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HOW TO LAUNCH A LOYALTY PROGRAM

By 15/02/2019

Your business is booming and you’re seeing loads of sales from new customers. You’re doing well, but could you be doing better? My honest answer is… yes. Now that your business is established, your goal is to turn those new customers into repeat customers. The fact is that most businesses get 80% of their revenue from 20% of their returning customers. Before we continue, let me hit you with some quick stats:

  • Loyal customers buy more often
    The likelihood of purchase increases each visit from 27% to 45% to 54%.
  • Loyalty customers spend more
    A repeat customer will typically spend 3-5 times more than a new customer.
  • Loyal customers refer more business
    A customer who has purchased from you 10 times refers 3 times more people who then convert 7 times higher than traditional paid campaigns.

Do your customers have a reason to be loyal to your business? While you think about it, let me tell you that after years of working in the industry, I know that an exciting and robust loyalty program is the best way to gain and retain customers.

The next question is, what kind of program is best for your business? Look at what you are trying to achieve with the program and set up key benchmarks that align with your goals.

For example, you could measure:

  • Sales revenue
  • Average order value
  • Customer lifetime value
  • Purchase frequency
  • Cart abandon rates
  • Customer retention rates

Once you’re clear on your KPIs, you can look at the type of program that will best achieve your needs.

Types of Loyalty Programs

1. Points Loyalty System

This program suits businesses encouraging frequent short-term purchases like cafes, pharmacies, or massage parlours. It’s great because it encourages repeat spending by working towards a goal. However, be careful of discouraging customers if the number of visits/purchases needed is too high.

2. Loyalty Card Program

If you want to inspire frequent, high-value purchases, then this is the program for you. This type of program is common with larger chains like Coles, Woolworths, and Myer. Members feel special when they get access to exclusive discounts, coupons and points – just make sure they remember to bring their card with them!

3. Cash-Back Loyalty Program

For businesses that want to encourage frequent, high-commitment shoppers, then rebate/cash-back programs are the way to go. A well-known rebate program that you probably know about is FlyBuys. If you use it, you’ll understand that these sorts of programs are easy to understand but expiry dates on points and lack of instant gratification can be off-putting to many.

4. Mobile Loyalty Program

A mobile loyalty program is where all businesses should be heading, in my opinion. A lot of innovative businesses (Sephora Insider, Starbucks and AMEX Plenti Rewards) are adopting this tech – and it’s no surprise when you consider the amount of data and insight it gives you.

It’s time to go mobile

It’s 2019 and although many businesses still use physical loyalty cards (or even those punchcards they used to have at Starbucks), the days of these wallet-stuffers are numbered. At The Playhouse Group, we’re seeing an increasing shift in the market, with companies migrating from printed cards to cloud-hosted system and eWallets.

The cloud-based loyalty space is crowded and is growing rapidly. That’s why it’s crucial that you step up your game with a solution that covers your customers both online AND offline.

We’ve recently run RFI’s for clients like ILR and Camerahouse to help future clients (like yourself) make an informed purchasing decision. So, what are you waiting for? Get in touch today.

05 Oct 2018
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SALESFORCE, SIRI, AND VOICE SEARCH

By 05/10/2018

At the recent Dreamforce event in San Francisco, Marc Benioff (Salesforce CEO) announced that Apple’s Siri would now be available in Salesforce, exposing the backend to power apps and utilise their Einstein functionality.

Seeing two tech giants unite is exciting and with the increased use of “voice search” means this new feature couldn’t have come at a better time.

Below are some stats highlighting the rise in “voice search” –

  • 30% of searches will be done without a screen by 2020 (Source: Gartner, 2016)
  • There were one billion voice searches made in January 2018 (Source: Alpine.AI, 2018)
  • 72% of voice-activated speaker owners say their devices are often used as part of their daily routine (Source: Google, 2018)
  • By 2019, 39% of millennials will use voice-enabled digital assistants (Source: eMarketer, 2017)

What is Einstein?
You can read more about Einstein here but in short, Salesforce’s Einstein is a layer of artificial intelligence that delivers predictions and recommendations based on your unique business processes and customer data. You can then use those insights to automate responses and actions, which will help improve your staff’s productivity and enhance the customer experience.

How will this benefit retailers?
There are a number of ways Australian retailers will benefit from this link up –

  • Smart apps will be able to make recommendations based on the customers previous habits and at the same time, provide “shoppers like you” functions
  • Customers are increasingly using voice search for day to day things (weather/events) but to quick search for specific products at stores further improves the shopping experience
  • From a customer service perspective, staff are now able to record feedback that will be passed back into Salesforce as notes helping to grow your understanding of the customer
  • As per the Apple website – “Native Salesforce iOS apps for business: Salesforce, working with Apple, will redesign the Salesforce Mobile App to give customers rich experiences exclusively on iOS, with unique Apple capabilities such as Siri Shortcuts, Face ID, Business Chat and more.”

As previously discussed on our website, the evolving relationship between eCommerce and Home Devices is growing stronger and this new partnership will further influence how you and your customers interact.

28 Sep 2018
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SHOP WINDOWS AND HOMEPAGES

By 28/09/2018

If you were to walk by a shop on your morning commute every day, and the display window looked exactly the same for a month, you’d start to form an opinion that there were no new products, no special offers, and no reason to head in outside of necessity.

Companies employ Visual Merchandisers for a reason, they help entice you into the shops with creative and elaborate displays that capture the attention of passers-by enticing them in. That approach has to be the same for your website!

Managing a homepage needs to be the perfect execution of strategy and technology. In this instance, one informs the other and will help determine how you can keep the homepage refreshed and interesting.

Out of the Box features
Depending on your current tech, there are a number of out of the box features that you can switch on, that will work to refresh your homepage –

  • Magento: Take advantage of customer segmentation that serves different products/carousels based on known customer behaviour
  • Drupal: Personalise the experience for returning customers
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud: Utilise Predictive Intelligence to help make product recommendations using AI

For each of the above examples, you can dedicate retail space on your homepage, allowing the platforms to adjust and recommend products on your behalf. Customer trends and behaviours change, so having recommendations based on the “wisdom of the crowd” is a great way to provide relevant content in a timely manner.

Plugins
Tools like Visual Website Optimiser, Optimizely and Hotjar provide you with the means to A/B test your website. You can interrogate customer behaviour and build up a picture of what expressions, content, and colours are increasing presonses to CTAs or increasing basket sizes.

Strategy
With strategy, you need to have a good understanding of your current limitations and look at ways to keep the homepage looking regularly updates. The use of a Content Calendar is an excellent way of managing key elements of the page ensuring that you are regularly reviewing what is live and what can be updated. Running regular campaigns that are communicated through carousels or other means, ensure that the homepage doesn’t remain “static” for too long.

We firmly believe that a homepage’s content should evolve and update on a regular basis. There is no point providing an excellent offline experience and then having a website that doesn’t mirror that commitment. If you need support with either Strategy or Technology, reach out on the form below.

21 Sep 2018
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GET THERE WITH MIDDLEWARE

By 21/09/2018

Marketing Managers and IT Managers will be aware of this all too well, but sometimes the systems you rely on to manage your eCommerce operations, just don’t connect.

As we’ve discussed previously, customisation can provide short term gains but add risk long term yet the importance of integrated systems is absolutely essential.

Finding the right middleware solution means your business can resolve complex integration issues without forcing development on either of your platforms, that could impact on their upgrade paths.

What is Middleware?
Middleware acts as a direct communication between applications and databases where there isn’t a standard connection between them. This means you are able to manage the flow of information in both directions to ensure a single voice of truth.

What are some examples?
A very simplistic middleware example is Zapier. This allows a User to take a basic function (email) and use information provided on a form, to be uploaded into a CRM. In instances where your CRM is standalone, this is a quick and efficient way to get the necessary information without manual intervention and copy/paste.

More complex applications of middleware can be taking information from standalone POS systems, and integrating them into your eCommerce platform. There are a variety of systems out there that can assist, with Mulesoft and Jitterbit being two examples.

Benefits
There are a variety of benefits to using middleware, see below for some examples –

  • No requirement for complex development between unconnected systems
  • Usually they are cloud based which means no further costs for self-hosting
  • They are incredibly flexible, so you can connect multiple systems together using process flows and normalisation of data
    • Linking Business Intelligence / POS / eCommerce for example

Considerations
When choosing the right platform, you need to have a clear understanding of the systems you have in place and where the pain points are. Middleware comes with a variety of pricing, end point users, licenses, and volume of integrations – all of these will determine which product is suitable for you and your business needs.

At the Playhouse Group, we love complex integration projects and finding practical solutions. If you are currently facing issues with connecting multiple platforms, we’d love to hear from you and so we can provide recommendations, support and implantation. Reach out on the form below for more information.

13 Sep 2018
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CONTENT IS KING

By 13/09/2018

Online Retailers are constantly under pressure to produce rich, effective, and engaging content for their websites. With the speed that trends change online, staying ahead of the curve is a challenge and one that can be made even harder if you aren’t using the correct CMS or the right resource internally.

Outdated CMS
With a lot of Clients we meet, invariably we’ll work together on platform selection. Typically companies have retained old tech due to heavy customisation and integration with existing systems. Consequently, though the status quo is maintained, restrictions on what can be achieved start to mount up. Outdated platforms tend not to include –

  • Marketing Automation
  • Drag and Drop landing page creation
  • Flexible templates
  • Approval processes
  • Personalisation
  • Ability to roll out Mobile First Designs
  • Links to Social

Trying to stand out from a saturated market without being able to utilise even some of the above, can be an uphill struggle.

Speed to Market
A knock on effect of not being able to use the above features, can severely impact on your speed to market. An outdated CMS will typically use either HTML blocks or WYSIWYG blocks. From a resourcing perspective, you start having to find new staff who are competent marketeers who are competent in HTML to release campaigns. Modern platforms mean you can focus on bringing more marketing driven users who can quickly pick up simplistic “drag and drop” processes, instead having to spend money with 3rd parties to ensure deadlines are met.

Strategy
Not having a strategy in place when updating and managing content on your website can have a detrimental impact on repeat customers.

Ultimately, a website that is refreshing carousels, product images, category/subcategory (for example) on a regular basis are always going to look fresh and interesting to regular visitors. Thinking more broadly around different ways campaigns can be promoted throughout the website, is a great way to sure your message is getting across and building up interest in a new product. As mentioned above, inflexible templates lead to cookie-cutter promotions that typically use a header image, body copy, and terms and conditions. Utilising built in functions of modern platforms means you are able to break away from “landing page fatigue” and really start to give each new campaign an individual feel.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be running an event in Sydney talking about content success stories using Acquia/Drupal, if you are keen to know more and would like to attend, please reach out to us on the form below.

07 Sep 2018
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DO YOUR CUSTOMERS HAVE A REASON TO BE LOYAL?

By 07/09/2018

We’ve touched on loyalty a number of times this year and cannot stress the importance of making your customers feel valued. A loyal customer, or brand advocate, will come back time and time again if you continue to provide excellent customer service and offers to entice further transactions.

In our previous blog, we talked about “Golden Records” and how it can lead to golden opportunities. In this instance, great customer data can empower loyalty programs.

There are many ways you can approach loyalty via your website, and these will differ depending on whether you are a “pure play” or not. Both present different challenges, and typically companies who sell online/offline must find a way to unify a customer’s data regardless of how they purchase.

Typically loyalty schemes are points based using physical cards and a unique identifier, meaning customers can collect their points regardless of how they are shopping. The use of mobile apps to track your points is on the rise too with Coles and Virgin Australia providing excellent examples.

From a technical point of view, there are now a wide range of modules that you can use with your Magento or Drupal instances that can add value to your website and ensure that customers have a simple scheme they can use.

Simply put, today’s shoppers expect to be rewarded for their loyalty to your brand. As a result brands are investing into loyalty programs more and more but before simply jumping in, there are a number of key considerations.

The biggest challenges you’ll face are around strategy and data. If you fail to execute the loyalty program in a way that benefits the customer, they’ll start to look elsewhere. Requiring customers to manually input their receipts as an example, will reduce the likely uptake from regular consumers. Likewise, running a loyalty program based on bad data will cause operational headaches. Analysing customer data will be a challenge initially, but it’s vital that you have the resources in place to be able to do so.

Promoting a loyalty scheme and using target campaigns is great, but if you don’t understand your customer and are pushing products to them they’ve never shown interest in, or worse still, already own, is a negative experience.

For an effective roll out, consider –

  • Simplicity: over complicating sign up or ongoing use, will turn customers away
  • Educate: give customers a feature and a benefit for signing up, simply asking if they want to join isn’t enough
  • Fun: gamifying the approach or using a social element is great to encourage engagement
  • Reward: don’t run a loyalty program if there aren’t genuine benefits to the customer or to your business.

If you’re looking to roll out a loyalty program but aren’t sure on the best approach, reach out to us on the form below and we can help you with scoping through to implementation, and ongoing support and recommendations.