The coronavirus pandemic has made consumers change the way they live and ultimately, the way they shop. Due to this, it’s important for merchants to adjust their tactics and cater to changing consumer trends.
In this blog, we will look into 11 strategies that will help you prepare your Shopify store during these times, especially diving into ways you can adjust your store to fit your consumer’s needs.
Store Optimization
1. Create a hygiene page
Customers are prioritizing hygiene these days and online stores need to deliver to the standards that customers expect. If customers don’t trust whether your manufacturing and packaging is hygienic enough, they will choose not to shop from you.
Set up a hygiene page that informs shoppers about the safety and sanitary standards you follow in your manufacturing unit, how the workers have a cleaning process, and how items are packed and delivered safely. Knowing about these procedures will make the shopper feel safer and they will opt for your services over your customers.
2. Set up a custom customer account page
Consumers want a personalized touch to their online shopping experience. In fact, 44% of consumers say that they will likely become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience with a particular company. This personalization is especially important as consumers have lost the ability to walk into a physical store, use their rewards cards, and receive a social experience while shopping
Provide a personalized experience for your shoppers with a customized customer account page. With a customer account page, your shoppers can view their saved products, wishlists, search history, their orders, etc, all in one place. This simplifies the way shoppers interact with your Shopify store.
Such an experience will make shoppers want to come back to your store.
3. Provide virtual experiences like virtual try-ons
Consumers want a better idea of how they can use your products. Many shoppers who usually only shop in-stores are turning to online shopping. It’s important that you provide these shoppers with a more realistic experience of the product.
Virtual try-ons allows you to ‘try out’ a virtual product on an online store. For instance, shoppers on a fashion store can upload their image and see how a T-shirt or a pair of jeans will fit them. Such a virtual experience can be set up for fashion, shoes, glassware, accessories, and other wearable products.
If you can’t provide virtual try-ons, you can make your product pages more interactive with 3D modeled images. These images can be moved around and looked at from different angles. Your shoppers can get a better understanding of how the product looks. Read about 3D product imagery for Shopify.
Another element that makes product pages more engaging is product videos. Apps like Typito allow you to create product videos that show the product in context. You can add text within the video to highlight specific product features.
4. Understand the current needs and optimize your inventory
Use your store data to understand how shoppers are interacting with your store and shopping from you. Your analytics can give you a lot of information about which products are selling well and which ones need to be rehauled. Set up RevTap to get a holistic view of your store’s analytics.
RevTap identifies product segments to help you learn about the bestselling products, most abandoned products, products bought at a discount, etc. Use this information to optimize your inventory, price your products better, and introduce other variants of products that are selling well.
5. Set up a static banner to share shipping and delivery details
During this time, your delivery and shipping are sure to face delays and roadblocks. Ensure your shoppers are aware of this by setting up a static banner at the top of your storefront. This banner can be updated about any delays for shipping products, whether there are stockouts often, how long delivery will take, which locations will be serviced quickly, etc.
Having this information as soon as they land on your storefront will help your shoppers plan their purchases better.
6. Provide live chat
Your shoppers want instant help. This was a need even before the pandemic. However, now, since they’ve moved all their shopping needs online, getting quick assistance is a larger priority. What’s more, if a customer is unhappy with your store, or the lack of help provided, they are sure to take their business elsewhere. In this time, you can’t afford this.
If you haven’t already, set up live chat on your Shopify store with apps like Tidio to allow shoppers to reach out to you for assistance. By setting up live chat functionality on your store, you’re sure to see a positive impact. Live chat has the highest consumer satisfaction rate at 92%. Shoppers who message a live chat on a store get instant help with whatever questions they have about the product, making them feel more assured about their purchase decision.
Ensure that you have a customer support executive manning the virtual lines and responding to your shoppers instantly. If you are a global store, you also need customer support that works within shifts so that customers across the globe can avail of your team’s help.
With live chat, your shoppers will feel more satisfied with your store and will choose you the next time they need products that you sell.
7. Set up product recommendations
During this time, shoppers have specific requirements from online stores. Using your store data, you can look at common search terms and bestselling products. Place these products on your storefront to make it easier for shoppers to find these products quickly.
Besides products that are selling well, you can curate collections that feature products that will prove to be useful for your customers during this time. You can even set up personalized product recommendations with apps like WISER. This way, your shoppers will be shown app dynamic recommendations based on the shopper’s recently viewed, wishlists, etc.
8. Add product labels to guide shoppers through your store
When browsing a store, a shopper is looking at the product image, searching for the product that they would want to buy. However, for most stores, product images don’t stand out and they all look similar to one another. So, how do you use your consumer’s habits to help them make better purchasing decisions?
Product labels are stickers that can be added to a product’s image to grab your shopper’s attention. Such attractive product labels make your store more eye-catching to shoppers, increasing sales by 13%. These labels can be tagged with copy based on your preference— ‘Bestselling’, ‘On Sale’, ‘Fast-Selling’, etc. With these labels, you can effectively influence the shopper and guide them to click on a specific product.
Engagement Tactics
9. Build loyalty with store credits
Consumers love a personalized experience when shopping from a store and we’ve seen just how effective it is to provide this. 71% of consumers who are members of loyalty programs say membership is a meaningful part of their relationships with brands.
You don’t need a physical store to provide this for your shoppers. Set up store credits with Flits to let shoppers collect credits through different store activities that they can later redeem when purchasing from you. Shoppers can earn credits when they shop, leave a review, etc, and this reward system makes them want to come back to interact with your store.
If you do have a retail store, your shoppers can also avail these credits in-store! Flits integrates with your Shopify POS system, allowing your shoppers to redeem their store credit when shopping in-store.
10. Create helpful content for shoppers
Shoppers are choosing to support brands that help them and provide value to their lives. Some of the most successful brands have used content to acquire audiences who are looking for their solutions and convert them into loyal customers.
81% of shoppers conduct research before purchasing a product. If your brand comes across with authority, your shoppers are highly likely to pick your store over your competitor. Read about how you can use content marketing for your Shopify store during this time.
The kind of content you can create is vast— how-to guides, carousels, tips, videos, etc. Try out different formats to see which one performs best among your shoppers.
One format, in particular, is a lookbook, where you can provide a visual guide of your products and show shoppers exactly how they can be paired together. You can set up such interactive visual content using apps like EVM Lookbook. This is especially helpful for fashion stores who just want to provide fun content to entertain shoppers.
11. Focus your efforts on social media platforms
Now more than ever, consumers want to build a relationship with a brand before they start shopping from them. They want to learn the brand’s values, what it stands for, and its personality before they decide to make a purchase.
Social media allows you to connect with shoppers on a more personal level, giving them a day-by-day look into how your brand operates. With more consumers on social media these days, you can tap into these platforms and engage with shoppers online. Use platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest to build an audience that you can later convert into shoppers.
Besides this, we also suggest tapping into newer platforms like TikTok and start creating content to reach a new audience. With newer platforms, there’s a lot of room for experimentation. Your competitors may not be on these platforms already, making it easier for you to acquire audiences without having to share the space with other similar stores.
Ready to optimize your Shopify store to adapt to changing consumer trends?
We hope these strategies help you adjust to the new normal and ensure your Shopify store caters to the changing consumers trends through this year.
While you’re optimizing your store, you need to always put your consumers first and ensure that you cater to their needs. A custom customer accounts page can help you personalize the experience for your shoppers.
At Flits, we’re making it easier for Shopify stores to set up a customer account page for consumers right now. In fact, we’re also offering you a 60-days free trial to see how it helps your customers during these tough times.
Want to provide a customized store experience for your shoppers?
Install Flits to set up your customer account page right away!
