If you’re an eCommerce marketer or a merchant, you know the importance of your Shopify store data, and how it can help you.
For example, if you pay attention to your online shopper characteristics, you can know what visitors are browsing, how much time they’re spending on a page, what they’re adding to their carts, when they’re shopping, etc.
Data can help you analyze shopping trends, behavior patterns, plan promotions, strategize pricing, predict demand, forecast sales, etc.
But in spite of knowing all this, 80% of marketers find it really hard to use data to drive sales.
Why?
They might be missing out on assessing online shopper motivation.
So, in this blog, we dissect various visitor actions and tell you how to turn those actions into sales.
But before that, let’s quickly look at the benefits of understanding shopper behavior patterns.
Why is it important to understand online shopper characteristics?
Observing and understanding various visitors’ actions on your Shopify store can provide insightful data. Now, you will have a range of different types of visitors to your site.
For example, they may be casual browsers, impulse shoppers, bargain hunters, occasional shoppers, regular and loyal customers, among others. And so, you’ll have data on many different types of visitors. And that data can help you in many ways, such as the following:.
- Makes conversions faster
- Reduces customer acquisition costs
- Helps find numbers and information that you’re looking for
- Helps with customer segmentation
- Helps you plan promotions
- Targeted marketing to improve sales
- Predict product demand
- Manage inventory better
- Make informed and calculated business decisions
- Helps with pricing strategy
10 customer actions on your Shopify store and how to turn them into conversions
In this section, we’ll discuss some of the most common online shopper characteristics and the reasons why customers may visit your Shopify store.
For example, here’s a customer account page that shows the various tabs for customer actions—change password, return products, order tracking, etc.
Further, we’ll delve into what customer actions mean and what you can do to lead their actions to conversions or sales.
1. To learn about your products/services
One of the most basic online shopper motivations is to browse products / services and everything else your Shopify store offers. In other words, to learn more about your products. In addition, they may also want to browse newsletters, guides, e-books, blogs, etc. to gain more information about your products.
Once you know which products or elements customers are interested in, you could try to drive them towards taking desirable actions. Let’s understand this with some examples.
- Example 1: When a customer browses product pages, you could recommend similar products so they discover more, offer discounts to entice them to buy products, show videos or how-to guides to improve their product knowledge and how the products could add value to their lives.
- Example 2: When customers browse your product guides, videos, newsletters, or blog, you could encourage them to share their contact details and in return offer store credits or reward points. This way, you also have their contact details for future marketing campaigns.
2. To sign-up on the customer account
Another common online shopper characteristic is to visit your site to sign up for the customer account. They may want to register on your Shopify site for various reasons:
- To get first-purchase discount
- To get sign-up store credits
- To purchase at a later date
- To access different elements on your site
So, when you realize visitors want to sign up on your customer account page, what should you do?
- You can offer store credits or reward points in return of them signing up to entice them to make purchases
- Encourage them to sign up using their social media credentials by pushing the social login feature. This will help you retarget them on social media channels to boost sales
- When visitors sign up, push them to share more details, follow you on social media, sign up for newsletters, etc. so you can engage them further
Here’s an example:
3. To check store credits/ reward points
Another online shopping attribute of customers is related to reward points or store credits. 75% of consumers prefer brands that offer points or store credits. That’s because store credits or reward points give a sense that customers are receiving something extra and for free.
Here’s how you can convert customers’ actions around store credits into conversions:
Example 1: When customers login to your Shopify customer account page to check their store credits, give them ideas on how to utilize those store credits. For example, you could show them a pop up message or send them a message on other channels.
Example 2: Run real-time promotions to motivate customers to earn more store credits by making more purchases. For example, ‘Spend $100 in the next one hour and double your store credits.’
Also read: How to use Shopify store credit to improve customer retention
4. To add products to shopping carts
Studies show that shoppers visit eCommerce websites at least 9 times before they finally make a purchase. This means, customers browsing products or adding them to carts may not have high-purchase intent. And you’ll have to work towards turning them into buyers.
Here’s what you can do:
- When customers add products to their shopping carts, entice them to make impulse purchases by sharing FOMO and urgency offers
- Create promotional campaigns such as discounts, free shipping, same-day dispatch, etc. to drive customers to proceed to checkout
- Promote the reorder feature for products that customers purchase repeatedly, to make the process faster and easier
5. To add products to wishlists
Many of your customers might be interested in your products but may not be ready to buy them instantly. This is yet another common online shopping attribute. For example, they may want to take some time to decide, compare your products with others before purchasing, or wait for prices to fall during sales.
Whatever may be the reason, when customers add products to wishlists, here’s are some examples of how you can do to encourage them to buy them:
- Example 1: When customers add items to wishlists, segment those customers, create a promotional campaign, offer incentives and motivate them to buy those items. For example, ‘Items in your wishlist are available on discount right now. Grab them now!’
- Example 2: Send reminders of products in the wishlist. For example, ‘Items in your wishlist are selling out fast. Buy them before they’re gone.’
- Example 3: Combine wishlists with other marketing strategies. For example, on customers’ birthday, allow them to share wishlists with friends so they can receive their favorite gifts
Here’s an example:
6. To save their details in the customer account
At times, customers may login to your Shopify site just to update their details such as contact, address, payment methods, etc. This is a common online shopper characteristic. It’s a good practice and benefits Shopify merchants. Hence, you must make it easy for customers to update their personal details.
However, this is also an opportunity for you to entice them to make purchases. Here’s what you can do:
- Show them product recommendations, bundles, etc. Do this strategically by including products from their wishlists and recently viewed products section
- Remind them about their accumulated store credits and how they can use them to make purchases. To do this, show pop ups or highlight the store credits section in their Shopify customer account page
- If they update details such as add birthdays or anniversary date, offer them free store credits or discounts or gifts on their special days
7. To initiate returns and exchanges
Another common reason for customers to visit your Shopify site is to initiate returns and exchanges of products they bought from you. Although it’s a straightforward online shopper characteristic, the reasons for this action could be many. But you could turn a return or exchange into a sale for your store.
Here’s how:
- Example 1: When customers initiate a return, encourage them to make it an exchange instead. For example, offer them a different size, a different color variant, etc., of the same product.
- Example 2: Give customers the option of store credits instead of returning cash. You could even make store credit the only option. That way you do not lose out on the revenue or sale you already made.
8. To make purchase decisions
Customers may repeatedly visit your Shopify store when they are inching closer to finally making a purchase. However, they are not there yet. And you have to drive them towards taking that action.
Here’s what you can do:
- When you see customers revisiting your store, offer them incentives such as discounts, gifts, etc.
- You could bring in FOMO and urgency to persuade them to make the purchase soon
- In addition, you could also reach out to them on chat and offer them assistance or help to drive their purchase decision
- Automate messages and discounts strategy so you can communicate with them at the right time with the right offer
9. Visits at the time of annual sales
Traffic to your Shopify website could double or triple during peak shopping seasons, such as your annual sales, BFCM, holiday season, etc. It’s a typical online shopper characteristic in the eCommerce world. But did you know, only 10 to 12% of these visits convert to sales?
However, with the right strategy, you could turn more visitors to buyers. Let’s look at some hacks to do so:
- Use incentives such as discount, entice them to buy wishlist items or products they recently viewed on your site
- Encourage visitors to use store credits during the sale time. Also offer more store credits towards purchases made from the sale
10. Visit your website to access other channels
Customers know that they will find information about all your different channels, such as social media pages, shopping apps, etc., on your website. Typically, all these details are available on the contact page in the navigation bar, or home page.
For example, say you have a favorite brand and you realize you aren’t following them on social media. What do you do? You quickly go to their eCommerce store, click on the social media icons so you can follow the authentic page.
Here’s how you can convert these visitors into buyers:
- Offer rewards and store credits to customers for social media follows
- Promote social login feature
- Create social media exclusive campaigns
- Offer incentives for sharing your posts, comments, etc.
- Request for user generated content and give them incentives to shop
Ready to turn your customer actions into sales?
Your Shopify store may have all these different types of visitors and customers. And of course you would want to drive them towards sales. And for that, you now have the many actionable points we’ve shared earlier.
However, to meet your customers at every step of their journey, you will need an intuitive Shopify app that helps you capture these online shopping attributes, as well as take automated actions on your behalf.
That’s where Flits Customer Account Page app comes in. The app designed for Shopify stores not only helps you set up and manage customer account pages, it also helps with add-on features such as wishlists, store credits, recently viewed products, etc.
If you want to get started with the strategies we have shared above, explore Flits Customer Account Page App for your Shopify store today!
