Keeping up with the current trends helps to learn about the demographic audiences. It reveals customers’ interaction patterns before purchasing a product or service.
Studying these patterns can help you to locate the touch points, implement new strategies for your shop and forecast the future repercussions of those ideas.
Trends also shape the markets and bring innovations that sometimes change the face of an entire industry.
For example, Amazon ambitious efforts in the different sectors of e-commerce industry have helped the industrial technology in reaching new heights. From automated warehouse management and drone deliveries to ambitious patented Blimp mobile warehousing and delivery system, it feels like nothing is impossible in the future.
This has also caused dramatic changes to the customer experience matrix and means to evaluate it. Delivery times have shrunk from weeks to same days and some companies even tried to delivery within a few hours.
Suddenly, instant gratification of the customer has become the new parameter of imparting superior experience.
“There’s a race to be ahead of the curve. Either you match up to its speed or risk falling out of pace.”
Despite futuristic advances, long-term success starts with knowing the fundamental market opportunities and potential points of friction.
In this guide, we’ll explore some of these e-commerce trends and point out essential steps for how can you implement them in Odoo in 2019.
Let’s get right to it!
E-commerce Localization, personalization and customer Experience Counts
“ Localization is based on personalization of the content of your website according to the target market to render superior customer experience.”
At a very basic level, localizing your e-commerce store would mean:
- Personalizing the user interface so it suits the location in focus.
- Display the content of your website in the local language.
- Providing trusted local payment options.
The criteria can geographical or ethnic or both while customizing the website to suit different people.
Odoo GeoIP Redirect Module automatically detects the customer’s location to display your e-commerce website in their local language and currency to provide a truly localized shopping experience.
But then, what Is Personalization for an e-commerce website?
Personalization is providing the content according to the tastes and preferences of the customers.
A simple ‘You May Also Like’ section that shows the additional purchase options according to the previous purchases or the product you are currently looking at is a good example of personalization.
Personalizing picks up on the customers’ interactions and shopping behavior to display content according to their preferences.
These can include:
- Previous purchases.
- Recent search queries entered.
- Items currently in the cart.
- Location of the customers.
- Popular products in the customer’s region.
These two are the hottest topics in the block right now as the technology is paving new ways to reach out to wider audiences.
The one-size-fits-all mentality is out of the window and everybody wants to associate themselves with a brand at a personal level.
The flexibility of Odoo ERP system allows you to configure plugins that can deliver a truly personalized experience to your customers.
Here the list of some of the best Odoo modules that can open up your Odoo website to new e-commerce trends of 2019. To know more click on the module:
- Odoo Smartsearch using Elasticsearch
- Shipping Per Product
- Odoo Rental Sale
- Odoo Queue Management
- Website Helpdesk & Support System
- Odoo Booking & Reservation Management
Building Community, Engaging Customers & CRM for E-commerce Store
Once you have solved the riddle of finding the optimum personalization options for your website, you need to convert the visitors to your website into customers.
You would also need to find ways for retaining those customers because ‘The cost of acquiring a new customer is 5 times higher than retaining an old one’.
There is no other way of saying it- Earn loyal customers for your Store by building a community around your online store.
Today, more than 70% of the consumers make the decision on purchase depending on the reviews and suggestions from friends, family, and other shoppers.
One of the reasons for this behavior is because online customers cannot touch the product before buying.
Building a community around your e-commerce store isn’t just about creating a web page on Facebook or Instagram and asking people to join it. It’s about getting them to know about your brand and build interactions.
This leads to the next important thing which is Customer Engagement?
Customer engagement is interacting with the customers and prospects. Your products cannot sell themselves. You need a definitive customer base that is happy with your e-commerce store, products, and services.
‘Interactions Build Brands’.
You need to convince the customers to come to you. There are a lot of ways to do that;
Coupons and discounts: The most common and ongoing e-commerce trend to continue in 2019 is a discount via coupons and vouchers.
Coupons and discounts work simply because of monetary advantage you are providing to your customers as compared to other stores.
Signup discounts and referral discounts work both ways- spreading awareness about your brand and bringing in new customers.
Odoo Website Coupons & Vouchers Module lets you create coupons and vouchers in Odoo. The Odoo admin can generate and share a unique coupon code with the customers to be used for availing discount on the Ofoo website.
“Then, there are Rewards. Integrate a Loyalty Rewards Program in your e-commerce store.”
Loyalty Programmes are much more targeted strategy than simple discounts. They tend to entice the customers in returning back to your store. HOW?
The online customers make purchases to earn rewards which can be used on the subsequent purchase thus they would be coming back to avail the earned rewards.
It also helps to Identify your high-end customers, regulars, and newcomers to provide a truly personalized experience to each of them. (Again, you need to personalize their store experience).
Use Odoo Website Loyalty Management App on your Odoo e-commerce store to reward loyalty points to the website customers.
Promotional Contests is another strategy to go with for moving your customers towards your brand.
Promotional contests work like a charm in spreading awareness about upcoming products and events.
Ambassador Programs: Make them a part of your e-commerce store. Today, a lot of stores offer Ambassador programs to promote their product through various real-life people on social media sites like Instagram, Facebook etc.
Ambassador programs are effective because people can actually relate to the other ordinary people instead of a model or celebrity using and then promoting a product.
‘Every Customer is Unique’
Start Combining various discounts and schemes to find the right strategy to engage your different types of customers, to bring in new customers and retain the old ones.
Take a look at what Neil Patel has to say about customer engagement in his blog; 32 Ways Your E-commerce Company Can Boost Engagement and Sales
Customer engagement as the latest e-commerce trend is going to continue in 2019 and its worth is only going to increase as the competition surges.
There are a plethora of other Odoo modules to interest and engage your website customers in 2019 such as;
Now, what’s are customer interaction programs without A sound CRM at its base.
A Customer Relation Management system manages your interactions with the customers. It allows you to collect customer data, analyze it and use it in its most efficient way to grow your brand.
Odoo’s inbuilt CRM provides the essentials to build a CRM for your business.
SEO Optimized Content & Conversion Rate Optimization
Traffic generated by organic searches in e-commerce sites still outranks those by other promotional modes.
As the competition stiffens and the market grows, the importance of content will remain one of the major criteria to increase the conversion rate.
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for Search engine optimization. It is the technique that aims to rank higher on the search pages of search engines like Google, Bing, etc.
‘Almost, 3.5 billion search queries are processed by Google alone every day.’
SEO content is the latest e-commerce trend that can drive your website through the roof in 2019.
Stats/Facts to summarizes the importance of content and SEO for your e-commerce store;
- Almost 67,000 searches are performed on Google every second of the day.
- In addition, 39% of all global e-commerce traffic comes from searches.
- The statistics show that 46% of all Google searches are local which indicates great opportunities for local businesses.
With Google’s constant updations to its search engine matrix in order to provide the best experience to the customer, high-quality content is imperative towards ranking higher in consumers’ searches.
Odoo Google Tag Manager module allows you to set up google analytics for your Odoo website and gather website data and optimize the content for customers.
Odoo Google Rich Snippets App allows you to add structured data to your Odoo website pages so Google can show your website as a rich snippet on the results page. To know what RICH SNIPPET is, click here.
Odoo SEO URL Redirect/Rewrite Module helps you to automatically redirect visitors from one webpage to another. This is highly useful if a web page is under-maintenance or its content has been moved to another link.
But SEO is the just one step towards diverting traffic towards your website.
Next step is to identify the areas that need improvement to optimize conversion i.e Conversion Rate Optimization.
As MOZ states, CRO is a systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take the desired action — be that filling out a form, becoming customers, or otherwise.
Tracking various touch points which the customers used to reach your website and studying their behavior patterns on your website can provide you with the knowledge to identify areas of improvement.
Email Marketing, Advertisement Campaigns & Retargeting
Okay! You’ve done excellent with the content, your website renders highly localized and very user-friendly content which would certainly attract traffic.
Moreover, your Website SEO is good which would bring in more organic traffic.
“The next step is promoting your website and products. Utilizing other channels to bring in the customers.”
What do customer engagement programs and CRM provides you with? Emails!!
Building an extensive mail list is important for the long-term success of your brand.
But do not bombard your customer with lots of emails on daily basis or you may end up in the junk folder. Cuz no one opens those boring marketing emails anymore.
Successful email marketing campaigns have two things in common;
- They understand their customers’ needs and provides solutions in the emails.
- Timing- They know when to hit the send button.
Know your target audience and then relate how your products can solve their problems.
‘72% of people would rather receive promotional material via email than social media.
‘38% of people say receiving special offers is the top reason they subscribe to an email list.’
Time your emails so they reach out to them at the particular intended moment.
Email marketing is one of the best strategies to bring back the customer to your store. The ROI of mail marketing is 3800%.
Make sure your emails are relevant.
Seasonal mails include the festive offers and promotions running in the store on various occasions.
The customers want these to get discounts on their big Shopping lists.
Newsletters provide products descriptions to your customers and also make them aware of the upcoming products and events.
They are beneficial because they educate your customers about the merits and uses of the products.
Reminder or Churned emails are used to inform the customers about any events, sales or when certain products are back in the store.
Drip email marketing with Odoo Drip mass mailing module can help you to strategize the email marketing campaign for your Odoo website. Send emails to your customers and prospects for newsletters, promotions, offers, etc. at the precise predetermined time intervals.
Sometimes even when customers come to your website, they add products to the cart and leave without purchasing. Or they just browsed and decided to leave.
Now, it’s time to call them back and remind them of your brand And That is Retargeting!!!
Also known as remarketing, it aims at displaying your brand through various sources to the reneged customers when they surf the web.
As the MOZ’s blog points out retargeting campaign if executed properly can certainly bring back bounced traffic and increase Conversion ratio for your website.
Mobile Optimization & Mobile-First Websites
Mobile searches surpassed that on the desktop in 2014.
As the mobile and net penetration increasing in the world, the trend is shooting upwards.
Google also announced that it will eventually start considering mobile versions of the websites as the first version. The mobile-optimized websites would rank higher in its search engine.
With Bing also following suit to Google, mobile optimization for your e-commerce sites become highly important.
A more advanced approach is designing a website keeping mobile devices in mind instead of the desktop which is the general approach. Hence, the name mobile-First website. A mobile first website is mobile optimized bur a mobile-optimized website may not be mobile first.
The reasons behind supporting mobile-first websites:
- 58% of searches come from mobile.
- According to Statista.com, in 2018 about 52% of the worldwide website traffic was generated through mobile phones.
“Slow loading mobile web pages are swiftly killing your prospects and potential customers.”
Optimize your websites for mobile phones. Period.
A website optimized for mobile readjusts itself according to the mobile screen it is being viewed on.
Key features of a mobile optimized site would be:
- Reformatted size and text properties to fit the mobile screen.
- Bigger Navigation buttons.
- Thumb-friendly interaction tabs and buttons.
- Optimized graphics and images for faster loading.
Test if your website is mobile optimized with Google’s Mobile Friendly test.
Then, take a look at the Google Mobile SEO guide.
And start creating strategies to optimize your web pages for mobile users.
Conclusion
The year 2019, is just around the corner and the Release of Odoo 12 has opened whole new areas of possibility for how can you grow your business with Odoo.
The highly flexible yet solid structure of Odoo ERP system lets you to effectively customize and personalize the apps to suit your business needs.
Combining various elements and analyzing the output is the best way to grow your online e-commerce business.
Whether it’s minor customization or a major transition, the experts at Webkul can provide solutions to queries and issues.
Tell us how are you planning to implement top e-commerce trends for 2019 in Odoo.
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