Selling online seems easy at first: no overhead, a worldwide audience, fewer employees necessary. But the latter actually makes it harder to truly close sales in your online store.
No one has a physical store anymore, just a very cheap digital one so the barriers to entry are very low. You and everyone else have a worldwide audience.
You have maybe a handful of employees handling your marketing, sales, and customer service for a potentially exponential number of customers.
As easy and beneficially as online selling has become, it’s almost more challenging than ever. 94% of customers visiting your online store for the first time are not there to make a purchase. Instead they are exploring your options, pricing, and brand. Afterwards, 88% will continue to research other options before making a decision.
The first time customers come to your site, you have a big opportunity to sink or swim. As you’re likely putting money and time behind getting them to your site, it’s vital you find a way to bring them back or lose out on them forever. Push notifications are a great way to bring back interested customers and boost sales on your online store.
Here’s how to use push notifications to increase sales on your e-Commerce:
First, get potential customers to opt-in to push notifications.
There are generally two reasons anyone is going to want to give their information or permission to hear from you again: your brand is too cool and interesting to pass up or you’re going to offer them something of value. The first option is probably wishful thinking. You need to get them to opt-in within the first 15 seconds or they’re likely to bounce forever. To get potential customer to opt-in, try offering something in exchange for their “Yes, send me notifications!”. Let them know that as soon as they opt-in, they will be receiving offers and discounts directly to them no one else gets. No one likes to pass up “free money”. Once you have them opted in, deliver.
Use push notifications to announce limited time sales.
As you promised, send subscribers push notifications for sales and discounts. To inspire more immediate action, make them time sensitive. You can create “flash sales” that last a day and send your subscribers a code and a link directly back to your site so they can use it right away. Include a countdown in your push notification to add a sense of urgency. If you can, make them visual with a little graphic or photos of items as they are more likely to get higher engagement rates. Remind potential customers what’s waiting for them at your site and make sure your notifications are like “gifts” and not annoying updates with little value.
Announce new products with push notifications.
The likelihood that potential customer who were previously on your site will come back to see if you’ve put up any new items they will like are pretty low. Instead, use push notifications to bring back a good percentage of them each time you announce a new product. A great way to send push notification is Beamer. Beamer goes beyond just push notifications. Beamer is an interactive newsfeed that sits within your website where you can announce new products, discounts on items, sales, news, etc. You can create really visual updates with photos, videos, CTA buttons to take users to specific products, etc. Beamer has push notifications you can enable that potential customers can opt into when they come to your site. You can make sure to keep customers in the loop on all your new products and bring them back to your site with your announcements. Having a feed of new products and news makes your site look more dynamic and inspires action.
Use push notifications to send personalized discount codes.
We’re in an era where customers not only respond better to personalization, but actually expect it. 79% of consumers say that they are only likely to use a brand’s promotions if they are tailored to previous interactions. You can tailor your push notifications to make sure that you are sending relevant offers and content to users. Using Beamer, you can send push notifications for your updates that are targeted for users based on demographics, location, language, and past behavior on your site so they are reaching the right customer with the right content.
Bring users back to abandoned shopping carts with push notifications.
Shopping cart abandonment rates are up around 73-86%, costing e-Commerce marketers a ridiculous amount per year. Push notifications can help turn this around for you. If you have someone opted in for push notifications and they have anything in their shopping cart, you can bring them back to your page with their full cart by using saved user data and get them to resume the buyer process. Reignite interest by sending notifications of previous viewed products to remind them of what they left behind. Offer a discount to users who have been “almost shopping” on your site as incentive to come out and complete their transaction. You’re much more likely to get people back where they can click and go straight back like a push notification rather than email where the open rate could be less than 20%.
Marketing and building traffic is hard, don’t let it go to waste with high bounce rates and low conversions and sales. If you aren’t using them now, push notifications should be added to your marketing and sales tool belt to increase sales on your online store. Try Beamer for an easy way to both engage potential customers on and off your site to increase sales.
