visual commerce Archives |

4 Ways To Increase eCommerce Sales Conversions Using Visuals

Today’s site visitor isn’t looking for the ordinary. In fact, there is a consistent demand for engaging and exciting content in order to keep them on site for longer. This is especially true given the presence of alternatives that can be found with the ease of another quick search.

As such, brands and eCommerce merchants need to consider the optimal ways to best reach out these potential consumers. One increasingly popular trend in the world of eCommerce in this regard is the utilization of strategically positioned on-site images throughout an online store. According to Kissmetrics on boosting conversions, “Using the right images can boost your site’s conversions and get you to connect better with your target audience.”

Essentially, images can better connect site visitors with your brand’s product offering. For instance, rather than a dry and solely written piece of content, certain images can actually both express and trigger certain customer emotions. Consumers tend to find visuals more reliable and trustworthy. By connecting the consumer to the brand, these emotions can ultimately drive conversions and increase levels of customer loyalty.

But how can eCommerce merchants best incorporate visuals as part of their marketing efforts? This post will showcase four ways to use visuals to maximize marketing campaigns and best boost conversion rates.

1. Use original, content-specific photos vs. boring stock photos

Consumers are hungry for original content, also when it comes to photos. The go-to move of grabbing generic stock photos won’t always work. As such, brands should considering investing in photos that best relate to the other forms of content presented, including images that are taken by someone from your own team.

Sujan Patel writing about visual storytelling, says visual is always better than text for a very simple reason.

“Humans respond better to visual aids than text. Give your customers an opportunity to literally see your brand messaging.”

Another creative idea is to include animation or an alternative type of graphic that is uniquely designed to fit with the content presented. For instance, using a brand-specific mascot such as Moz’s famed ‘Roger’ caricature across your online store can strengthen your brand’s reputation and may be helpful for site visitors identify your specific site.

2. Embed product reviews with images on your own site

According to an InternetRetailer article on product reviews, “…product page visitors who interact with customer reviews convert at a 58% higher rate compared to those who do not”, while “revenue per visit jumps 62% and average order value increases 3%”.

Yotpo, a user generated content marketing platform and leading player in the world of product reviews, embeds product reviews with images on your site. See below how this works.

While the figures mentioned above speak for themselves, the power of product reviews lies mainly in their ability to provide credible feedback regarding an experience with your product. For eCommerce merchants, this information can prove invaluable, as such efforts also drive SEO efforts and thus, get more people, i.e. other potential consumers, to your site.

3. Upload user-generated photos onto your eCommerce store or social media channel

Since site visitors are looking for a website experience, not just a meaningless browsing session, eCommerce merchants should look to best engage with them. One unique way to approach this lies in understanding that users have the potential to become your best product ambassadors.

For instance, by asking current customers to send their photos highlighting a positive experience with your product, you can then provide the optimal platform for showcasing this experience. With this public (and not branded) endorsement in the form of user-generated content, who wouldn’t want to have a similar experience?

To make sure these UGC ambassadors breed additional ambassadors, you need to make sure that no lead goes to waste. For example, you might want to try email marketing platform GetResponse’s new tool for eCommerce merchants. After all, it’s of great importance to build a profitable email marketing list.

4. Adopt in-image ad technology for your online store

If images have the power to drive consumer behavior, you may as well take advantage of this influence to generate additional sources of revenue. With this mind, brands should consider adopting in-image ad technology as part of revenue generation strategies. You can pick from a number of platforms, including GumGum or Xaxis.

Time to Sum Up

Today’s average consumer won’t be bought by plain, unoriginal content. Brands and especially eCommerce site owners will need to figure out ways to incorporate highly relevant and engaging images in order to best boost conversions and keep potential shoppers on-site. With vast competition from current and upcoming e-tailers, eCommerce store owners should look to upload content-specific photos, embed user-generated images and product reviews with images on their own sites, and consider using in-image ad technology in order to engage shoppers and most importantly, drive conversions.

About The Author

Rotem has a long track record in inbound marketing, strategy and online brand development. With a focus in building digital and social media engagement, Rotem helps brands to expand their online brand footprints. Rotem is the VP Sales of InboundJunction, a premium content marketing agency in Tel Aviv. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.

Visual Commerce And User Generated Content (UGC) for Business Growth

As the amount of content available online continues to grow exponentially, we seem to have less time to actually read, so visual information becomes more important. When this is coupled with the fact that billions of images are uploaded everyday, many of them user-generated, the implications are clear. Cross-device visual commerce is the shopping channel of the future. Most e-commerce sites recognize this, of course, so the demand for good imagery is as strong as ever. But more important are images generated by consumers themselves, both pre-purchase and post-purchase. We live in a referral economy, where the voice of consumer carries legitimacy and influence beyond the words we may craft for our own products. Thus, images shared by consumers, with a few of their own words about the product or purchase, are the keys to successful visual commerce.

Visual commerce can take the form of either a trending wall of popular products, or of a product wall typically generated by some sort of hashtag to identify the campaign.

A trending wall application creates a page or “wall” of the most shared or recently viewed products, and locates that page anywhere on your site. Most trending wall applications use real time social data across a variety of social channels and use these cues to create and prioritize products on the page. This page can be placed anywhere within a site, and these applications typically work in emails and on your Facebook channel.

The other type of visual commerce is user-generated content, uploaded to either your site directly, or to social channels, and curated by a hashtag identifier. This is one of the most powerful forms of content available, since it plays to both the generator of the content (who wants to show off their new purchase or identifies as a trend-setter) and to those who consume such content. Look at the how product reviews have become our standard for judging performance of a given item, or the retailer themselves. Now think of that content expressed in visual form, uploaded by the user themselves, and aggregated on your site. No wonder many e-commerce stores experience up to a 21% increase in user engagement and conversion rates!

The opportunity for effective visual commerce is made even greater by the fact that over half of all internet usage is now on a mobile device. So customers in your store or restaurant, or going out for the evening, or enjoying a vacation can all easily capture the moment and upload an image that you may be able to use. The challenge for the retailer is in the collection and curation of these images via the hashtag campaign. Typically, some form of gamification is used to entice this activity, such as a sweepstakes or competition. If the campaign is visible enough, and easily shared with friends and family, sometimes just being seen on a very popular site can be enough for many people.

Visual commerce ties into the best features of the online landscape, from the ability to capture images on the go, to the powerful voice-of-consumer and the influence of user-generated content. It is important that retailers make this an integral part of their digital footprint.

About The Author:

Richard Sexton is an ecommerce visionary with almost 20 years experience in selling online. His story has been well documented by Google, Entrepreneur, Internet Retailer, and other media channels, and he is a frequent speaker at e-commerce conferences across the country.

Richard started a local art and furniture gallery in Charlotte, NC in 1996 and grew that enterprise into a much bigger business when it went online in 1998. That company, Carolina Rustica, was recognized as an early leader in Internet retail technology and cutting-edge ecommerce ecosystems. The company is now a nationally-recognized omnichannel retailer of high end furniture.

In 2012, Richard sold the company to Mattress USA, in Brighton, Mich. He continued in his role as president until early 2015, when he launched OmniMarketing2020, a consulting firm for large and small ecommerce businesses. He is also the Digital Strategist for AAA of the Carolinas.

Richard received an M.S. in Management Science from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and was one of a handful of students selected to be an Austin Scholar, Kellogg’s highest academic recognition

5 Must-Have Strategies for 10X Social ROI – Webinar

Social media features by default in all marketing plans of today’s marketers. But they are still often clueless on how to harness the true power of social channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Email effectively to achieve maximum social ROI. To help marketers get maximum juice out of their social media efforts, Yahoo! and ShopSocially joined hands to present a joint webinar to showcase 5 must-have strategies to generate 10X social ROI. This blog post has recording and other details of this webinar.

Recording of the Webinar:

Presentation used in the Webinar:

5 Must-Have Strategies to Boost Conversion, Get Referrals, and Generate 10x ROI – Webinar by ShopSocially and Yahoo! from Shop Socially

5 Must-Have Strategies for 10X Social ROI:

1. Move to Viral Email Acquisition: Marketers should replace their traditional email marketing widgets with Facebook Connect. This will acquire not only email but complete social profile of user. Rich social profile data like birthday, gender, location, interests, friends, etc. can be collected via this method. ShopSocially’s Social Connect app helps you achieve this.

2. Drive Customer Acquisition via Referral Programs: All marketers know referral marketing but very few actually add the social flavour to it. To maximize social ROI, customer referrals should be made social in nature. Your customers recommending your site to their friends on social media becomes the most potent brand endorsement you can ever get. ShopSocially’s Refer-a-Friend app can enable this for your site.

3. Encourage Visual Commerce by Converting Selfies into Sales: Its a visual web today, and selfies are the best manifestation of it. Your customers are already sharing photos of your brand or products on channels like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Aggregating them via a hashtag into a nice visually attractive gallery can convert these selfies into a sales machine. Adding such gallery on your product page acts as social proof and increases conversions. ShopSocially’s Photomonials app is what you need to employ this strategy.

4. Use Social Login to Increase Conversions: In today’s socially connected world, enabling social login is an intuitive thing, but is often ignored by marketers. Social Login seamlessly extends users’ default social browsing behaviour onto your site and reduces “password fatigue” of remembering login details across multiple sites. Social Login reduces transaction/ cart abandonment rate, increases user engagement and drives sales conversion uplift. Use ShopSocially’s Social Login app to get this strategy for your site.

5. Increase Loyalty by Rewarding Customers for Social Actions: Loyalty program has been one of the surest ways of increasing customer loyalty and driving sales from existing customers. But in today’s social media dominated world, these loyalty programs now need to incorporate social into it. Reward your customers with loyalty points for their social actions on your site. This will increase social actions on your site and enhance customer loyalty, driving multiple repeat purchases. ShopSocially’s Social Loyalty Program is the go-to app for this.

Excerpt from the Question and Answers Section of Webinar

Question: How does social couponing help in referral marketing?
Answer: By using social couponing in referral marketing, we get customers to invest their social capital in availing the offer. As users put an effort to refer the site to their friends, they feel they have “earned” the coupon. This makes them value the coupon more than other giveaway coupons, leading to a higher conversion of coupon and an uplift in sales conversion rate.

Question: How can we use A/B testing for social media campaign? Can you share some test scenarios?
Answer: A/B testing can be used to test various scenarios and evaluate the impact of social campaign in clear business terms. Some sample scenarios are to test campaign creative, placement of app on site, campaign incentive strategy and so on.

ShopSocially is a comprehensive platform for social, referral and retention needs of marketers. 1000s of marketers are using ShopSocially platform to enable referral marketing, visual commerce, customer loyalty, social login and social gamification programs on their site.