How to Boost Customer Engagement for Your E-commerce Site

As deeply emotional creatures, our decision-making process is anything but rational-only. We decide based on hunches, gut feelings, instinct, and we make impulse buying decisions all the time. However, relating to a brand and purchasing from one are two entirely different events. For the former, it takes emotion and loyalty, for the latter, you go through the steps and never bother to learn about the actual name behind the product. Every single business wants to be in the first group of lucky brands that inspire loyalty and engagement from day one.

Alas, that is no easy feat, even for the brightest stars in the business world, as competition is fierce, and more businesses are sprouting everywhere trying to appeal to your audience in the exact same manner. When you’re strictly in the e-commerce world, the struggle only gets more complex, since the challenges of eliciting an emotional reaction and long-lasting engagement are much more difficult than in a brick-and-mortar store where human interaction thrives. Still, with the right strategies, your e-commerce business does stand a chance to get more customers to engage and ultimately purchase.

Inspire and share customer reviews

Reviews give an entirely new dimension to your business. They breathe new life to your existence, and they put it in perspective for potential customers who need a little extra persuasion to actually give your brand a try. For the modern consumer in search of a product or service you’re providing, this oversight may cost you not just a single purchase but their general thrust.

When you showcase the quotes of your customers directly on your website, you put your brand’s reputation into their own hands, and you let them give it a new voice, one that potential customers can relate to better. The entire process of publishing reviews, including those on social networks and on platforms such as Glassdoor, and soliciting reviews increases engagement levels significantly. You show your customers that you value their opinions and that you’re proud to be their seller of choice – and that fact alone will get them to come back to your shop for more.

Ensure spotless customer support

Although every negative comment and review represents an opportunity for you to engage with your customers and to improve your image, it’s always best to focus on prevention. Customer support remains an essential part of your overall engagement efforts, simply because it’s one of those rare opportunities your customers get to interact with another human during their e-commerce journey. That’s why you need to make that single point of contact count.

For starters, you need to use a secure and trustworthy provider such as Orange to make sure that your customer support agents have a strong Internet connection to do their jobs with ease. Furthermore, you need to provide proper training and education to ensure brand voice consistency and to help them deal with unhappy customers and diffuse negative situations. Finally, give them the right equipment such as noise-canceling headphones and quality computers, and they shouldn’t have any issues when performing their duties.

Make the most of your social presence

Too many brands use their social profiles without actually putting in any imagination or effort into maintaining their social image. As one of the most important steps in the customer journey, every single social platform can be just a stepping stone to take them to your website.

Engagement on social media can be a catalyst for greater website engagement when you play your cards right and you implement a strategy that helps you create quality posts, respond to queries on time, and reply to comments regularly. Add website links and call-to-actions to each post meant to boost engagement, andyour social networks should serve as yet another funnel to drive traffic to your site.

Content remains king

Finally, engagement greatly depends on your long-term strategy for your e-commerce site. If you treat it like a conveyor belt that only serves to sell, you’re missing out on numerous perks that content offers. Continuous content creation for your e-commerce site can mean the difference between a site that has little to no engagement and a site that inspires comments, shares, questions, and debates.

Use your store to educate and inform, to provide invaluable advice through content in various formats. Focus on diversification, so as to impress all kinds of customers: those that like video tutorials, those who love reading long-form content, and those who like playful how-to blogs with a touch of wit. With the right content strategy paired with your social efforts and customer support, you can rest assure your engagement rates will skyrocket.

Customers don’t engage with prices or flashy ads. They do, however, engage with ideas and values. Use your e-commerce site to build a memorable presence and provide stellar customer service, and you’ll inspire more people to engage with your brand via your site