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E-commerce as a way of doing business has been on the rise in recent years. The advancement in technology and shipping has made e-commerce attractive for customers and business owners. E-commerce has allowed businesses to be on a global and worldwide platform. Consumers get the freedom to access rare items from different niches. The closer connection between businesses and their markets have given rise to the opportunity to make creative concepts and spur ideas that are unique to this generation and will shape future products and services. E-commerce is predicted to become even bigger and e-commerce business statistics show that e-commerce sales are expected to account for 13.7 percent of retail sales worldwide. Owners of e-commerce sites know that the success of their platform can be owed to the loyalty of their customer base who make repeat purchases and wait for each new product outing. It helps to drive sales for your e-commerce website. Maintaining loyalty is an important aspect of a business because, for one, it is cheaper to retain existing customers. It also helps to re-engage customers and bring them back to your site. The following are just some of the ways e-commerce owners can establish loyalty programs in rewarding customers who have been loyal and stuck it out with them. Loyalty programs also help in optimizing conversion for your website.

Table Of Contents

1. Point Program
2. The Paid Program
3. The Charity Program
4. The Tier Program
5. The Partner Program

Point Program

The Points Program has been utilized by brick and mortar shops and can be adapted in e-commerce as well. This program has a simple principle which is the more you spend the more points you get.

Every time your customer makes a purchase on your website or physical shop, if you have one, they get a certain amount of points depending on how much they have spent. The more they spend the more points they will earn.

You can put a creative spin on this loyalty program and give it a name. The important thing is to explain explicitly the mechanics of the program to your customers so they will be motivated to get the points and rewards.

Points give customers the opportunity to earn rewards and you not only increase your customer’s average order value you are also encouraging them to invest in your brand. This move minimizes the likelihood that they will switch to a competitor.

You have to keep your points system simple, however, so it is easy for customers to keep track of their points.

The Paid Program

Paid programs require members to pay a monthly or annual fee to join your VIP member’s club. You need to have a considerable following and a loyal customer base for this loyalty program to be effective. Loyal customers and frequent buyers are your targets for the paid program since new consumers are not likely to get into a VIP program.

Make your VIP program valuable enough and exclusive only to members otherwise, it will lose its value.

Barnes and Noble have run an effective VIP member’s club which costs $25 a year, and it offers members discounts, free shipping, and other benefits.

However, in order for people to pay $25 dollars you have to show them the value of the program upfront as Barnes and Noble did. For example, they have added in the reward of getting $60 worth of coupons once customers got the VIP membership. Once you show that the value of your loyalty program outweighs the cost people will join in.

Finally, you can convince people to join by showing customer testimonials of the paid VIP membership as social proof.

The Charity Program

The marketplace nowadays is more receptive to businesses with a social conscience. You can have a loyalty program that doesn’t have to include discounts, instead, to build a stronger relationship with your customers you can incorporate your business values into your program. If you happen to create a loyalty program established around mutual values with your customer you are likelier to inspire brand loyalty. This fact is exemplified by The Body Shop which has put animal welfare as part of their program.

As part of The Body Shop’s VIP program, they give customers the option of donating their reward points to charities centered around animal welfare.

The Body Shop’s customers share their values and it makes the donation option even more meaningful. Mutual values give you the opportunity to connect with your customers on a deeper level strengthening your relationship with them.

The Tier Program

This program is based on levels of loyalty. This program requires that the more your customers buy your products and services the more rewards they get. Offering a tiered loyalty program means your brand will always be in your customer’s mind. Furthermore, tiered programs are exciting and are similar to gamification where members reach higher levels the more, they “participate”.

Construct your tier program in such a way that the more points a member has the more exclusive rewards they can get. Make the rewards at the highest level ultra-exclusive therefore more attractive. If you want to motivate members to reach higher levels, include percentages for each tier. Show how many members have reached each level so your customers will be motivated to reach a higher level to gain social status among members.

The Partner Program

Customers know the benefits of loyalty programs and are looking for greater flexibility in rewards. You have the option of partnering up with other businesses to strengthen and be more creative with your loyalty programs. This move helps you with more opportunities in growing your customer base but also facilitating the building of new business relationships. One study discovered that 68% of millennials do factor in rewards in staying loyal to a brand.

The more rewards a brand offers the more they stay. Partnering with other businesses can boost the loyalty of your own customers. As an example, Nike’s loyalty program has exclusive membership benefits that include partnerships with Apple, Classpass, and Headspace.

E-commerce businesses thrive because of the loyalty and trust a new generation of consumers have given it. In order for your e-commerce to grow and gain further traction, you should put in place loyalty programs that will make the choice of purchasing in your e-commerce store more attractive and more valuable. It also helps in re-engaging inactive users. There are plenty of creative ways to reward your customers and putting in place existing loyalty programs for an e-commerce business or thinking of your own can make the process of shopping all the more exciting and fun for your target market.

Have you ever wondered how impactful product reviews really are in eCommerce?

In a survey of 1,000 U.S. customers who shopped online at least once during the year, it was found that better reviews are the #1 factor that drives people to choose a higher-priced option.

Today we’ll take an in-depth look at eCommerce product reviews and everything you need to know to get them to work in your favor.

1. Why You Need Product Reviews
2. How To Deal With Negative Reviews
3. How To Use Feedback To Improve Your Product
4. How To Offer Incentives For Honest Reviews
5. 3 Ways To Get Reviews For Your Products
6. 3 Ways To Showcase Reviews For Your Products

WHY YOU NEED PRODUCT REVIEWS

So the first question you might ask is: why product reviews?

What makes them so vital in eCommerce?

To get straight to the point, it’s not enough these days to offer a product with the promise of satisfaction, backed by your word alone.

Customers crave knowing what others think about the product they’re about to purchase. User-generated content (UGC) provides reassurance to customers on the fence about a product. For example, if you saw the same product with 443 reviews versus 3 reviews, which would you buy?

Many people spend a chunk of time sifting through reviews before pressing the “Add to cart” button. It’s because of those reviews that many have decided to commit to their purchase after getting a feel for the product based on what others think.

There's a difference between selling your product yourself, and selling your product through product reviews. One form of review is customers taking pictures of your product. These pictures give prospective customers a visual representation of what they’ll be getting — giving the customer a view of the product before a professional editor using Photoshop made changes for advertising purposes.

Take a look at the above image. There’s a clear difference between the first “Before” picture when a customer took a photograph of the object, and the “After” image that’s been edited to make it look more presentable.

“Raw” images (images that haven’t been edited) give potential customers a look at what the product looks like outside of the marketing magic of photo editing software. This level of honesty lets potential customers know exactly what they’ll be purchasing.

User-submitted images provide authenticity. Even if the camera they’re using is old, or the lighting isn’t the most appealing, it lets others know that someone has already taken the time to purchase the product, open it up, test it out, and share results.

Some people even post their reviews and images on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram — helping to grow your social media presence without you having to lift a finger.

Let’s take a look at how Apollo Box used product reviews on social media to bring in both “Likes” and new sales with the use of user-generated images:

Pictured above is one of Apollo Box’s most popular products that they post about on Instagram. As you can see, it has 3,031 likes. The way it’s been photographed has been edited for marketing purposes, showcasing every accent and small detail to highlight its best features. On their website, Apollo Box also feature images that their customers have taken of the same product:

This allows others to see what the actual product looks like through the eyes of people that have purchased it. It gives a sense of credibility and shows social proof this item is worth purchasing.

HOW TO DEAL WITH NEGATIVE REVIEWS

No one would ever dream of wanting a negative review for a product they’re trying to market. However, there’s a particular strategy to reduce the number of negative reviews you get.

It’s called “damaging admission.”

So what exactly is damaging admission? It's the simple idea that you, as a business, acknowledge any shortcomings of your product(s). For instance, who it’s marketed for, any quality control issues, etc. But who in their right mind would sell themselves short like that? Customers typically expect a well-rounded, finished product that they will be satisfied with, right?

Things happen, be it due to human error or production mishaps. Not every product is perfect and sometimes goes through several stages of revisions. As a business, this is where you highlight what you might believe to be a drawback to your product. If you don’t do it, someone else might in the form of a negative review. Don’t fret however, this may work in your favor.

A negative review or two won’t hurt your business if you’re proactive addressing every single one. In fact, replying to every review will show people who haven’t bought from you yet that you care about your customers. There are two types of negative reviews that can help your business:

• Credible and unbiased negative reviews.
• Negative reviews that have some purpose and are useful.

There will be reviews that fail to meet these two requirements, but for the ones that do, those will be the reviews that help you improve your product.

HOW TO USE FEEDBACK TO IMPROVE YOUR PRODUCT

Be it a positive or negative review, you can always use others’ feedback to help improve your product.

Positive reviews (like the example above) highlight product success. If you receive praise from your customers, often times it creates a sense of euphoria that leads to even better ideas.

Is your product doing well? Are there any ways to make it even better as a way of providing great customer service to your customers, and as a way of saying thanks?

Of course there are! Build upon the positive product reviews you receive and learn to incorporate the feedback that others have contributed.

We’ve already discussed how negative reviews can work for us, but it doesn’t stop there. Thank people for taking the time to point something out to you, or even thank them for purchasing the product in the first place, even if they were unhappy with it.

Use the feedback to offer an even better product. Just be sure to acknowledge any shortcomings not only for your own benefit, but for those that have taken the time to point it out to you in the first place.

HOW TO OFFER INCENTIVES FOR HONEST REVIEWS

So you’ve received a couple of product reviews now, both positive and negative. You’ve drafted several ideas on how to improve your product to ensure better results in the future. What’s next?

Go the extra mile by responding to reviews or purchases with an incentive that encourages customers to make future purchases with your company.

Try things like:

• Discounts on future purchases for honest reviews.

• Free promotional items for future product reviews or customer retention and satisfaction.

• Items that you or other customers feel will compliment a customer’s purchase at a discounted or “promotional combination price.”

3 WAYS TO GET REVIEWS FOR YOUR PRODUCTS

By now you should have a firm understanding of the importance of product reviews, how to deal with negative reviews, how to use feedback to improve your product, and how to offer incentives for honest reviews.

Now it’s time to find out how to get these product reviews, and the best ways to set them up on your page to maximize conversion rates.

• Email Your Customers: After they purchase your product, trigger an automated email to leave a review. Here’s the email BOOM sends after someone buys one of their products:

This email gets a 30% open rate, 2% click rate, and has generated BOOM! $1,770 in sales, even though it’s not sending people to the store to buy.

• Ask Influencers: There are people out there that review very specific things. If your product happens to be in their field, contact them and ask them to review your product for. Here’s an example of where Scentbird reached out to an influencer by searching for “perfume reviews” on YouTube, created a list of targets, then sent this email:

Some influencers will love your product and promote it for free. Others will ask for compensation anywhere from $50+. If you have the budget, consider paying an influencer for a day.

• Offer A Rewards Program: Some businesses offer rewards points for taking specific actions after purchasing a product. Here’s an example of how Adagio uses a rewards program to give customers 5 points for every product they review. Every 100 points earns the customer $10 to spend in store.

3 WAYS TO SHOWCASE REVIEWS FOR YOUR PRODUCTS

After you start receiving reviews, it’s time to make them count. Here are four ways to use your product reviews to generate more sales:

1. Use reviews on your product pages for people to see (try using video reviews for extra social proof). Here’s how BOOM! by Cindy Joseph uses video reviews on their Boomstick Color product page:
   
   
2. Use star ratings for people to see your review score. Check out how Apollo Box showcases product reviews using a star-rating system:
   
   
3. Use screenshots of reviews that haven’t been touched up via software. Here’s another example by Apollo Box of how they showcase images on their homepage that customers have uploaded:

6 KEY TAKEAWAYS TO INCREASE YOUR PRODUCT REVIEWS

• User-generated content works! It promotes authenticity and a second opinion, plus it builds trust with your customers.

• Don’t be afraid of negative reviews. Often unbiased negative reviews will help you shape the kind of product you want to put out.

• Build on what you have. Use your product reviews to improve your product for future releases.

• Consider incentives as a means of thanking customers for giving you an honest review. They might come back for more.

• Reach out to your customers via email for reviews. Or alternatively, provide customers with something shareable to share on social media, ask influencers to review your product, or offer a rewards program.

• Strategically place your product reviews on your front page and product pages.

There’s an honest difference between a positive 5-star and a negative 1-star review, but even the smartest of eCommerce businesses will incorporate product reviews into their marketing strategy, without panicking over the 1-star review.

Gift cards possess huge potential for merchants who want to increase revenue, acquire new customers and get their brand noticed.

It’s generally believed that a gift card program is a marketing tool perfect only for the biggest holiday season or that it can be applied merely by big brands. However, gift cards can be a great tool to drive customers and increase sales, regardless of the season or the brand size.

According to the National Retail Federation 2014 survey, 60% (or 6 in 10) of shoppers say they would rather receive a gift card than anything else.

That’s why I wrote this post. I’ll cover the most interesting gifting facts and stats and will lay the foundation of an effective gift card program: your golden ticket to selling more.

WHY GIFT CARDS SEE STRONG PERFORMANCE ALL YEAR ROUND

According to the Retail Gift Card Association 2015 research 70% of shoppers plan to buy gift cards during the spring-summer gift season. The most popular occasions at this time are birthdays, graduations, Father’s Day, and weddings.

• 81% of shoppers prefer to buy a gift card for a birthday, making it the number one gift-giving occasion.
• 38% of adults reported to give a gift card as a graduation.
• The most popular gift wish for the Father’s Day 2015 is a gift card (32,1%). In contrast, only 24,7% of moms wish to get a gift card for the Mother’s Day, putting above homemade stuff, greeting cards and dinner.
• 12% of shoppers will buy gift cards as a wedding present.

The practice of giving gift cards for various occasions is on the rise. By offering unique gift cards for specific purposes, you double your chances to drive more customers to your store and increase overall spending.

THE RISING POPULARITY OF E-GIFT CARDS

This year, digital gift cards have reached the peak of their popularity.

Compared to 2013, shoppers are increasingly choosing to go online to get gift cards. The purchase of e-gift cards increased substantially from 26% in 2013 to 34% in 2014. Purchases of gift cards using social channels such as Facebook increased from 8% in 2013 to 13% in 2014.

What’s more, consider the following…

• 80% of top retailers sell gift cards online
• Digital gift cards experience annual growth of 200%.
• Nearly 70% of shoppers agree that they’re more interested in purchasing e-gift cards now than they were 2 or 3 years ago.
• 20% of those who have purchased at least one gift card from an ecommerce store responded that they buy 5-7 digital cards annually.

To reach digital-savvy consumers, you need to diversify your gifting options and go beyond traditional forms.

A number of merchants noted that multiple card designs and features increased their gift card sales. Hence, when you put personalization in first place and offer variety, that’s when you amplify card sales and brand awareness.

THE BENEFITS OF A WELL-RUN GIFT CARD PROGRAM

E-gift cards themselves are benefits. With traditional plastic cards, merchants generally don’t know any information about the gift card holders. With digital cards, the retailer has shoppers e-mail address or a phone number, so she can remind a customer who hasn’t redeemed value of the card or make special offers for those who redeemed the cards.

Gift cards are an effective way to:

• Increase sales: When shoppers purchase gift cards, they don’t stop at one. 70% of customers spend more than the value of the card. The average gift card user spends an extra 20% beyond the value of the card.
• Attract new customers: Gift cards encourage people who might not otherwise visit your ecommerce store to take a look around and likely return to make additional purchases. In the U.S, 41% of customers tried a new store or place because they received a gift card for that business.
• Enhance brand awareness: Branded with your company name, logo or design, gift cards become a great source of advertising and recognition. As people often buy gift cards for their friends, your brand continues to be dispersed among new customers.
• Complement retention efforts: 72% of customers who tried a business for the first time because they received a gift card returned to that business.

HOW TO BUILD A KILLER GIFT CARD PROGRAM

Like any other product (or service) you sell, gift cards also require a thoughtful marketing effort. Here’re several tips you can use to build an effective gift card program:

• Consumers are drawn to appealing design, so align your card design with your brand and consider designs for special occasions (Birthdays, Christmas, Baby Shower, etc.)
• Cross-sell your products. When customers spend over a certain amount in your store, you can offer a gift card as a reward. You can also motivate customers to buy certain products — “Buy this item and receive a gift card for free”.
• Launch in-store promotions. Gift cards make useful prizes for store events and promotions.
• Take advantage of peak shopping dates.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Gift card programs bring a lot of benefits to ecommerce storeowners. They attract new customers, drive revenue and build brand awareness, so it’s not a surprise that more and more merchants try to implement well-thought gifting programs. In order to maximize the success of such programs, storeowners should continue evolving and innovating gifting efficacy to keep up with consumer trends and new technologies.

When you start an online business, your main aim is to sell the products, right? As a business owner, you want to showcase your store to more audience. So, you decide to go on social media, why? Because everyone is doing it, then why shouldn’t you? It is tempting as everyone is aware of the hype that it is the best way to market your brand.

Do you know having a blog for your online store can be very helpful? Many businesses do not understand the importance of having a blog because they don’t have time to post quality content.

Today, we will talk about how a blog can play an important role for the growth of your e-Commerce business. Later, we will also discuss some tips that will be helpful to you for writing business related blog posts.