This is an era where there are hundreds of websites and dozens of places to buy nearly anything in nearly any category. Apart from the big retailers, there are hundreds of small ecommerce sites just like yours. The good news is that not all of them are working hard to make sure they satisfy their customers, and you can stand out from the crowd.
The other thing to remember is that the world is your market. Want to tower over the competition and truly set yourself apart? Follow these growth hacking guidelines to destroy your competitors and become a true influencer in your field.
Know Your Customers
Who are your customers and where do they come from? What devices do they use, and do they log on to your website from home or on the move? Where do they live, and what do they do for fun? What social media network will you most often find them on? The answer to all of these questions helps you to know your customers and how to reach them.
Know Their Journey
Not only do different customers react differently, but different customers take different online journeys through the sales funnel. Some start at the top, while others come to your website ready to buy. What does your average customer’s journey look like, and how can you make that as fast and easy as possible?
Knowing the customer journey and how to cater to it will make your website truly stand out.
Personalize All Day
Every user takes a different journey and they all want to feel like you are talking right to them. With modern technology including cookies, predictive personalization, and more you can make each user’s journey their own, showing them products they are interested in and things unique to their taste.
This onsite personalization is usually only done well by a few sites in any given niche, and if yours is one of them, you will win the day.
Prevent Cart Abandonment
The worst feeling is when you get the customer all the way through the sales funnel, and then they leave their cart and abandon it, never returning to complete their purchase. This can be for a number of reasons, whether your site does not feel secure enough to the fact that your checkout process is too long and complicated or has too many fields for them to fill in.
There are plug-ins and tactics that will help you prevent this abandonment and set your website apart. Research and use them to crush your competition.
Use Exit Intent
As a user on your site moves their cursor in a way that shows they intend to leave your site, have an exit intent pop-up that invites them to stay and even gives them an incentive to do so like a coupon or a discount.
Getting the user’s attention is one thing, holding it and keeping them on your site is another. Exit intent helps you do this and makes your site unique. Be creative, and your customers will love you.
Incentivize Social Shares
Social Shares are the new word of mouth, and if a customer has several hundred friends or followers, this can be much more significant than in personal recommendations. How do you get more social shares from your customers? Well, give them an incentive. Make it worth their while to share your post, your products, or a review of your company by offering coupons, discounts, and even referral bonuses.
For even more bang for your buck, offer affiliate links for bloggers and others so they can make money from sharing your site and product ads on their website. You may be surprised by the business you earn and how much this sets you apart from your competition as well.
Run a Contest
Want even more attention? Run a contest of some sort. This can be a giveaway, steep discounts, or just a way to win one of your products or some of your services. This is a great way to earn more word of mouth, get your customers talking about you and your brand, and setting yourself apart from other companies.
What should you do in your contest? That depends, and this is where knowing your customers comes in. The better you know them, the more likely you are to get entries into your contest and more shares. Do a good job with this, and your competition will be eating your dust, so to speak.
Give it Away
There is one way to truly be above the rest, and that is to create something of value and give it away. Cookbooks, eBooks, reports, tools, case studies, all of these things can be valuable and you should give them to your customers. Why not sell them? Simple! Once you give something away, you activate the law of reciprocity.
What does that mean? When you give someone something of value, they are more likely to spend money with you and your company because they feel like they owe you something. This is not the reason for doing things, but it certainly does help your bottom line. However, be sure what you are giving away reveals that you really do care about your customer and have an interest in their success even if they never buy from you.
Want to crush your competition and really set yourself apart from the rest? Then follow these steps to make your site unique and put smiles on your customer’s faces they can’t help but share. You’ll destroy your competition and reach new sales heights and numbers.