Tim Peter Thinks

4+ Outstanding E-commerce Insights to Kick Off Your Week

We’re in the thick of the holiday shopping season, so it’s unlikely you’re making many changes to your site. But the data you’re gathering now about customer behavior on your sites and in your stores will provide you excellent insights into how to improve those experiences once your development freeze ends. And continuing to improve your customers’ experience remains important.

Next year will undoubtedly be a huge year for e-commerce and mobile commerce as customers increasingly expect to accomplish their goals on any device, in any location, at any time. To help set you up for success in this rapidly changing space, I’ve rounded up the following 4+ outstanding e-commerce insights. Check ’em out and see how you can apply the lessons in your business.

1. First off, there’s a really good post from our old friend Linda Bustos at GetElastic that lists 8 tactics of high converting e-commerce sites. The folks at GetElastic also break down the implications of omnichannel vs multichannel for the store of the future. What’s important to note — and something I’ll talk about further in just a minute — is how the introduction of mobile into e-commerce has created a hybrid shopping experience for your customers. You can’t just focus on improving their experience in any one channel to optimize conversions; you must also ensure that their experience works across channels as well. Happily, if you pay attention to where your customers actually need assistance, the specific optimizations aren’t as difficult as they may seem at first glance.
2. Backing up that thought, Marketing Charts highlights marketers’ most valuable — and difficult — conversion rate optimization methods. Marketing Charts also discovers the types of data marketers are using for personalization along with its impact on ROI and says that 1 in 3 marketers report “major uplift” in SEM conversion rates from personalization. Which, if you think about it, makes a lot of sense. It makes it a lot easier to improve conversion when you know who you’re talking to.
3. To help you personalize your customers’ experience, consider incorporating social data into the mix. Business Insider recaps data that shows social commerce drives conversions. Which really shouldn’t surprise long-time readers here since we’ve mentioned a few times that, at its core, all marketing is social.
4. Finally, make sure you don’t ignore mobile. Mobile’s increasing share of e-commerce traffic and revenues (something we looked at in this past week’s e-commerce link digest), underscores why it’s probably not too soon to say that it’s all m-commerce. Want more signs that’s becoming true? eMarketer says that Amazon’s visual search app ‘turns the world into a hyperlink.’ Remember, it doesn’t matter whether Amazon wins or not. The trend remains clear: the growth of mobiles, wearables, usables, and invisibles will significantly shape e-commerce in the coming years. Google knows it and, rightfully, fears it. They’re making a number of changes to improve monetization of traffic — changes that may drive up your costs. And, bringing us full circle, those changes underscore why it’s so important for you to continue working to improve your conversion rate.

Want to learn more? Then check out these 9 Outstanding Marketing Posts to Warm Up Your Weekend: E-commerce Link Digest from our regular E-commerce Link Digest series, and these 10 Exceptional Marketing and E-commerce Essays: The Top Posts from November, too.

You might also want to check out some of our past coverage of the e-commerce, mobile commerce, and digital marketing overall, including:

• 10 Key Posts about Millennials and Mobile: E-commerce Link Digest
• The Secrets Behind “It’s All E-commerce” for 2014
• The Zen of Digital Marketing Strategy
• 7 Steps to E-Commerce Heaven
• Today and Tomorrow: Mobile and The Changing Customer Journey
• Mobile Makes E-commerce Even More “Frictionless”
• Your 2014 Internet Marketing New Year’s Resolutions – Thinks Out Loud Episode 56

Plus, don’t miss these slides and video from my recent webinar, “Digital Marketing Directions: Three Key Trends Driving Your Marketing Next Year”:

Finally, if you want to learn even more about how customers changing behavior shapes e-commerce and marketing, be sure an register to receive a special report I’ve produced in conjunction with hotel marketing firm Vizergy, “Digital Hotel Marketing in a Multiscreen World.” While it’s targeted specifically at hotel and resort marketers, the lessons apply to just about any business. You can get your free copy of the report here.