Die Geheimnisse erfolgreicher Direct-to-Consumer-Unternehmen lüften

E-commerce represents a tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs to launch their brand. Logically, many are storming this new Eldorado to grow their business. The result is an increasingly saturated sector, in which it is difficult to carve out a niche for yourself, and especially to keep it. This is where the post-purchase experience comes into play…

To ensure their sustainability and profitability, brands tend to focus on generating new sales. But in reality, their work has only just begun! It is by maintaining contact, and multiplying touchpoints with your post-purchase customers that you can ensure that they become loyal supporters.

Today, due to the saturation of the e-commerce market, consumer loyalty is no longer based on the price or quality of a product. What deeply connects them to one brand rather than another is the experience it offers them. If you fail to meet their demands, your customers will leave you.

To avoid unwanted disruption, Bigblue shares its checklist for nurturing your post-purchase experience. Discover the processes and solutions that will help you deliver a consistent experience across all your sales channels! 

The post-purchase experience: a key factor in customer satisfaction

Many brands spend a lot of time and money on designing their e-commerce platform or integrating the latest technology to wow their customers.

However, these elements are not as critical to the customer experience as many companies think. Consumers expect the site they are about to order from to work perfectly and continuously. So they don't even pay attention to this aspect of their experience anymore, unless it's malfunctioning.

Their only requirement is that the design of the website or application is modern and user-friendly. And that the automation tools facilitate their shopping experience. But these things don't matter if your brand can't deliver their product quickly and in the least restrictive way possible...

The speed, convenience, availability and friendliness of your customer service is what determines the quality of your post-purchase experience. Each of these factors will have an impact of more than 70% on consumer satisfaction. One more reason to give them special importance!

Exceeding customer expectations to boost business results

When your brand meets or exceeds the expectations of its customers, there are undeniable business benefits. In particular, a greater capacity to retain existing customers, but also to increase the amount of their average basket.

The customer experience has thus become the new battleground for e-commerce players. This is precisely because in a saturated market, acquiring new customers is becoming increasingly complex and expensive. In its report on the future of customer experience, PwC found that one in three customers will stop buying from a brand they like after one bad experience. 92% will completely cut ties with a company after two or three negative interactions.

Another very important figure to remember is that 86% of customers say that the post-purchase experience is fundamental to their decision to buy from the same brand again.

The loyalty loop

Your goal in building customer loyalty, and therefore the sustainability of your brand, is to activate the loyalty loop. After all, a satisfied customer will spend 67% more than a new customer placing their first order.

Why is this? Simply because the main effect of the loyalty loop is to shorten the buying journey. For a new customer, there are 4 stages in the buying journey:

• Initial consideration ;
• Active evaluation;
• Researching potential purchases;
• Conclusion (purchase).

A customer who has already purchased from your brand will tend to simplify or even skip the active evaluation stage. This allows you to boost your conversion rate, and increase the amount of your average cart.

But to activate the loyalty loop, your brand must take care of its post-purchase experience. Once the order has been placed, the consumer will look at how you continue to meet their expectations, to determine whether they will order from your site again.

For example, over 60% of facial care customers conduct post-purchase research online. To retain them, companies need only take advantage of this great contact opportunity to strengthen the customer relationship.

The objective and subjective approach to the post-purchase experience

To justify the investment you are about to make in your post-purchase experience, you can take two complementary approaches.

• The objective approach: Lifetime Value (LTV). The objective approach: Lifetime Value (LTV), as figures show that brands that keep their customers happy for 100 days will keep them loyal for the next 5 years. Investing in your customer experience can potentially double your revenue in just 36 months!
• The subjective approach. It makes sense that the attention you pay to your customers' satisfaction, even after they have placed their order, will make them feel valued and that their needs are being heard. These efforts have a tangible impact, which you can measure in ROI. But above all, they will allow you to build a lasting relationship with your customers, arousing their emotions and generating positive memories.

The Bigblue checklist for a 5-stars post-purchase experience

Now that we have deciphered the importance of your post-purchase experience, let's move on to the practical tips for improving it.

Here are all the ingredients you need to include in your customer experience to make sure it works!

1. Facilitate post-purchase communication

After checking out, your customers will have many questions that your brand needs to make sure it answers. The challenge is to make the information they need readily available.

This will not only allow you to meet and anticipate their expectations, but it will also save your support team a lot of time, as consumers won't have to turn to them for answers.

According to Zendesk, 91% of your customers would use an online FAQ if it were available and adapted to their needs. So make sure you take care of this page on your website (which is also an excellent SEO tool). And make it more visible in your post-purchase experience (by adding a link in the order confirmation or follow-up email, for example).

2. Offer self-service tracking

Did you know that the "My Account" page in your customer area generates 64% of the return traffic to your site?

To optimise it even more, you just need to enrich your post-purchase experience by adding the features your customers need. In particular, you can add an order tracking tool, which they can use on a self-service basis.

Once they have placed an order, consumers feel the need to track it. Yet 56% of e-commerce sites do not merge post-purchase tracking into their website.

Seize this opportunity to stand out from your competitors, and enrich your customer area with a powerful tracking tool that will reassure them while facilitating the receipt of their package!

You can also take advantage of this page (and the traction it generates) to mention :

• Information about the order (name and characteristics of the product, price and quantity ordered);
• The status of the order and the date on which it was confirmed;
• Information about the shipment and receipt of the products;
• Tips on how to use or maintain your product (as Veja does with its sneakers);
• The announcement of your next collection, or complementary products that could generate cross- or up-selling opportunities).

💡Bigblue Tip

The French brand OMA&ME provides its customers the most accurate delivery experience ever thanks to Bigblue’s Tracking Page. A unique interface where customers can track their orders in real time.

3. Send a follow-up email with recommendations and discounts

Speaking of upselling, another opportunity to build customer loyalty and drive purchase intent comes in the form of your follow-up mailing. Order follow-up (or confirmation) emails have the highest click-through, open and conversion rates. On average 70%, compared to less than 20% for other emails!

Given that 75% of customers are likely to buy products based on personalised recommendations, it would be a shame not to take advantage of this extra touchpoint to recommend your products to them. 1 in 4 customers will click on a recommended product when they are following their order.

Therefore, consider presenting additional products in the order tracking email. Just make sure (based on the purchase history) that it is not an item that the customer has already returned. Even better: give them a discount to encourage them to buy from your brand again.

4. Take care of your post-purchase experience to activate word of mouth

An optimised post-purchase customer experience will also encourage your customers to become true ambassadors of your brand. Indeed, 92% of consumers say they trust product recommendations from family and friends!

By ensuring that you respond to, and even anticipate, your customers' needs once they have placed their order, you give them a good reason to buy again. But also to share their experience within their network and therefore to vouch for your brand...

A good way to boost this dynamic is simply to encourage your customers to "sponsor" their friends and family in exchange for a promotional code. This is what the Spanish brand Alohas does with success.

5. Do not underestimate the importance of customer support

Your customer support is an indispensable part of the post-purchase experience. It therefore has a considerable impact on the satisfaction of your customers. So focus on their pain points, making sure your after-sales service is available and responsive, especially when it comes to managing returns.

There are many reasons why your customers may want to return or exchange an item. If you're in the fashion business, they are even more likely to do so (between 15% and 20%). But when it comes to returns, human beings still provide the best service. To avoid time-consuming exchanges with your support, consider simplifying your returns policy. And once again, make it accessible and understandable, especially via your FAQ.

By facilitating returns directly from our portal, Bigblue has reduced support tickets for From Future by 20%. That's a 30% time saving for their operations team.

6. Measuring customer satisfaction to continuously improve the post-purchase experience

It's one thing to keep your customers happy. But it's another to ensure that they are actually satisfied with your post-purchase experience! In fact, only 1 out of 26 dissatisfied customers really complains.

So think about giving your customers a voice and offer them the opportunity to share their feedback with you. This is very valuable data for improving what needs to be improved. And to evolve your post-purchase experience in line with the naturally changing needs of consumers.

At Bigblue, your customers' satisfaction is our priority. That's why 94.3% of our shoppers are satisfied with their experience. Discover our tools to improve your post-purchase experience and get your brand off the ground!

Like many e-tailers, you are probably experiencing customer support overload. It's mathematical: you receive too many support tickets + your brand doesn't have enough agents available or time to answer them = your customers are unhappy and no longer buy from your e-commerce website.

On average, the technical support of an e-commerce brand receives 492 tickets every month. That's more than a hundred tickets a week, and about fifteen every day. Whatever the size of your team, you are probably not equipped to deal with such demand. And even if you were, you probably have better things to do with your time: boosting your marketing strategy, launching new products…

The good news is that the answer to dealing with such a flood of support tickets is not necessarily to hire more agents. Instead, a much better approach is to prevent potential friction in your current post-purchase experience! It will also allow you, when a support ticket cannot be avoided, to handle it more efficiently (and proactively) by finding the right balance between automation and customisation. 

So it's worth the effort! Providing your customers with an excellent post-purchase experience will indeed turn them into loyal customers. Which is no small feat, considering that repeat sales cost you 7 times less than acquiring new buyers. 

Thanks to Bigblue, our customers cut the number of support tickets in half. In this article, we explain how you can focus on the aspects of your experience that matter most to your customers and make your e-commerce support more effective!

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What do your customers want from their post-purchase experience?

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One of the main reasons why an e-commerce brand fails to meet its sales targets is because of the dissonance between what it considers important and what really matters to its customers. If you want to boost your conversion rate, and keep your buyers coming back, the best approach is simply to meet their needs. But also, to do it better than your competitors…

However, what consumers want is a consistent, user-friendly and fast shopping experience. They tend to buy from an e-tailer if it has been able to deliver exceptional value. And with a minimum of friction and stress. Conversely, almost one in three say they will turn away from a brand they love after just one bad experience! 

Which doesn't really leave you much room for error....

A good post-purchase experience can even increase your average ticket. 40% of consumers say they are willing to pay more for more convenience and a user-friendly experience. This brings us to the crux of your e-commerce support: the combination of effective technology and a human touch that makes your customers feel heard and valued. 

Almost 80% of consumers stress the importance of competent help and friendly service. Your challenge is to use the right technologies to minimise friction. You also need to make your shopping experience more human and offer personalised and proactive help when it is needed!

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The self-service approach

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The first step to reducing your tickets is simply to answer the questions your customers might have before they even ask them. This is the famous "better safe than sorry" approach. 

The self-service strategy, applied to e-commerce support, is particularly interesting for small teams that have to manage a large customer base. It is simply a matter of providing customers with an information base that is sufficiently detailed and didactic to answer any questions they may have about the delivery of their order or the return of an item. 

Very simple resources such as an FAQ (frequently asked questions) page, informative blog posts or even video tutorials can help you significantly reduce enquiries. 

At Bigblue, we do our best to make sure that the product delivery information is as clear as possible. But also, to make sure it's available when your customers need it, and without them having to search for it. For example, our brand tracking emails show them the status of their package or return. 

Our branded returns portal also gives your buyers all the information about your product return policy. They can initiate a return or exchange request from within the platform and don't have to worry about it.

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The self-service approach can also be boosted with two very effective tools…

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Your brand community

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Your most loyal buyers can be a valuable resource for your e-commerce support. A discussion forum on your e-shop will allow new customers to ask their questions to the community and receive clear answers based on concrete purchase experiences. This is a good way to relieve your support agents. It is also a way to motivate your customers by offering coupons (or other benefits) to the most active ones!

Brands that use this strategy report a 56% reduction in support tickets.

Bigblue Tip 💡

‍92% of customers are more likely to trust a brand that has been recommended by their peers. Integrating UGCs into your customer support tools and marketing strategy is a great way to boost your sales! Discover UGC experts' secrets to double your sales.

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Artificial intelligence

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AI-powered chatbots can redirect your customers to your FAQ section or a relevant blog post based on their question.

So they take over the simplest queries from your agents. And in the process, they collect relevant data before connecting them with a real agent when they need further assistance.

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The right balance between automation and personalisation

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As mentioned above regarding product returns, you can't always avoid the inevitable. Applied to your e-commerce support, this implies that despite your best efforts, some of your buyers will need more concrete help and will ask you for it by sending a support ticket.

The trick is to find the right balance between automated handling of these support tickets and a more human approach. This strategy will allow you to save time on the simplest requests and to offer personalised help when needed.

On the one hand, automating the most repetitive tasks will allow your agents to save time by sending pre-written contextual messages to your customers. This requires you to analyze the most common questions or requests. But also a little A/B testing to formulate a short and direct answer allowing an efficient resolution. For example, by redirecting them to a more detailed article on your website!

Instead of rewriting each response email, you can now use these pre-recorded templates. This will allow your brand to reduce the time spent on the most complex support tickets by 80%!

Automation can also help you redirect the most complex or urgent requests to the right teams more efficiently. And therefore, resolve the issue more quickly.

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Streamline the handling of e-commerce support tickets

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Support tools, such as Intercom, allow you to streamline your workflow. For example, by filtering new support tickets based on user data (such as subscription type, where relevant). Then, assigning them to the agent or chatbot that would be best suited to resolve them.

Tickets are also prioritized automatically, based on the severity of the stated problem. And the agents are notified on Slack to speed up its resolution.

Here again, AI does a lot to streamline a process that would be extremely time-consuming if it were manual. Above all, it classifies the most urgent requests and allows your e-commerce business to be proactive in resolving a problem!

Thanks to Bigblue, you can also receive the rate given by your customers to their delivery experience. If something went wrong, you know immediately and can contact your customer before they do to reassure them or resolve their issue. Rather than letting a disgruntled shopper turn away from your brand after a bad experience, you have the opportunity to reverse the trend. It's a great way to prove to them that their needs are being taken care of and that your brand is doing its best to meet them!

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Adopt a multi-channel approach to e-commerce support

Customer queries can be communicated to you in many ways - not just via a support ticket. If a buyer has discovered you on a particular channel (e.g. your Instagram account), they may be tempted to contact you through that channel. This strategy is all the more common when your e-commerce support is slow to respond to them on another platform (e.g. via email).

It is also double-edged, as the response you can give on your social networks will be visible (and therefore useful) to a larger number of potential buyers. It will also show your responsiveness and the professionalism of your support. On the other hand, it makes the problems your customers are facing visible to a wider audience.  By doing so, you may risk dissuading a future buyer from placing an order!

This is why it is essential for your support team to have an overview of what is being said about your brand and what your customers are saying about it. It is also important that they can resolve issues raised in a dedicated channel.

In addition to the live chat available on their website, some brands (such as Nordstrom) choose to offer their customers instant access to their support team via Slack.  The interactive platform allows all customers to receive an answer or even a quick solution to their query. They can also access the queries of other shoppers, without any potential negative impact on your brand image. 

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E-commerce support: good tools that work together

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Your e-commerce support is the keystone of your post-purchase experience. It is therefore a powerful lever to boost your customer satisfaction and generate repeat sales.

To reduce your support tickets and save time on what your agents have to deal with, you need to be on two fronts:

• Your buyers' dissatisfaction. By minimising fictions, you will prevent them from needing your support;
• The time it takes to resolve a problem: if it takes too long, it will affect your customers' experience and limit your retention capacity.

Thus, many tools are available today to optimise your e-commerce support and allow you to save time! The challenge for you? Choose the most efficient and relevant ones for your company. But also to integrate them so that you don't find yourself constantly switching from one to the other.

Integrating your support tools will also allow you to make the most of the data they collect for your brand. You'll be able to analyze the KPIs of your ticketing system to identify sticking points. And eventually, you'll help your teams improve these key metrics (average resolution or response time, etc).

Improve your post-purchase experience and reduce the time you spend on e-commerce support by choosing the right tools. With Bigblue, you can take a more proactive approach and resolve customer queries (return requests, delivery tracking) without mobilizing your agents!

Thanks to our integration with the support tools Gorgias and Zendesk, your customer support team gets the information they need directly in the support ticket! From the moment we started to use the Bigblue+Gorgias integration, we reduced our time spent on ticket by 50%, Simon de Swarte, CMO & Co-Founder of the sneakers brand CAVAL said.

Curious to read more on how Caval cut his support workload with our app. → Read the full story

SEO is a very important acquisition lever for e-commerce sites that are very dependent on their online visibility. Working on SEO (or Search Engine Optimisation) has become almost mandatory to develop the sales of your e-commerce site and your referencing on search engines will allow you to attract more customers.

What are the main marketing levers for e-commerce? What are the benefits of SEO for e-commerce and how to implement a good SEO strategy? In this article, we take a look at the key elements to take into account to boost your e-commerce site and sell more!

What are the main marketing levers for e-commerce?

E-commerce marketing consists of using different levers and strategies to :

• Increase traffic to your e-commerce site
• Convert these visitors into customers
• Retain these new customers

There are different type of content marketing and methods to increase the performance of an e-commerce site:

• Emailing is one of the main levers of traffic acquisition. Your audience expects news and promotions to be sent by email. Think of making a newsletter or prospecting email campaigns. For this, you can turn to an email sequencing tool like LaGrowthMachine.

• The blog that will allow you to feed your website with content. It improves your search engine ranking and can be part of an inbound marketing strategy.

• SEA (or Search Engine Advertising) with Google Adwords will allow you to obtain immediate visibility on search engines by paying. It is a cost per click and allows you to get quick results with high transformation rates if the keywords are well studied beforehand.

• Social networks will allow you to communicate directly with your audience and this will impact your reputation. Using them also allows you to be close to your customers and to measure their satisfaction (comments, opinions, etc.).

• Retargeting (or advertising retargeting) will propose to the user to come back to your website if they have left it previously. This technique uses the user's browsing data (cookies) to consult their visit to the website. Thanks to retargeting, you can offer tailor-made advertisements (e.g. products that the user has looked at).

• SEO is a long-term investment and must be worked on consistently and regularly. Results will start to appear at least after 3-6 months. It will allow you to acquire quality traffic in addition to gaining notoriety thanks to your good positioning on search engines.

Now that you know the different marketing levers for e-commerce, the hardest part remains. Indeed, the levers presented will only be useful if a strategy with precise objectives has been put in place. Remember that the number one objective is to obtain quality traffic. Indeed, if your visitors arrive on your site and leave it 5 seconds later, it is useless (bounce rate).

In the following, we will use the example of SEO to list the advantages of this strategy and how to implement it to get the maximum benefit.

What are the advantages of SEO for e-commerce?

A well-referenced e-commerce site is like a shop on the Champs Elysées. There will be a lot of traffic in front of the shop and it will therefore have a better chance of attracting customers. On the other hand, a poorly referenced e-commerce site is more like a shop hidden at the end of a street with little traffic.

The first page of Google has a click rate of +90%. This means that if you are on the 2nd or 3rd page of a search engine, you have very little chance of being seen. Internet users trust Google for their search results and as they are increasingly looking for quick information, they will consider the first results as the most relevant.

With a relevant SEO strategy on your e-commerce site, you will be able to

• Increase your brand awareness
• Capture more traffic to your online shop
• Win over new customers
• Increase your turnover

SEO is also the most profitable acquisition lever. Indeed, it has the advantage of bringing you customers for free. It is true that to improve your natural referencing, you will have to use a lot of resources in time and money but once you are well positioned on different keywords, the traffic you will get will simply be free!

Here are some of the benefits of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO):

• Having visitors interested in your products
• Improving conversion rates
• Increasing your visibility and therefore lowering that of your competitors
• Anticipate sales through constant traffic on different keywords

How to implement an SEO strategy in e-commerce?

In order to implement an effective SEO strategy that will allow you to appear in the first results of search engines, it is important to follow the following steps:

Research effective keywords

This step is essential to ensure that you rank high in search results. Choose keywords that are relevant to your business and long-tail keywords can also help you rank quickly in certain niches where your competitors are not yet present. Think in terms of user requests and you can also use tools like answerthepublic.com which will allow you to know what is or is not searched for in your sector of activity.

💡 Bigblue Tip

Semrush offers the "Keyword Gap" tool that allows you to find the keywords used by your competitors that you will need to rank for in Google searches!

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Optimise SEO with links and navigation

To rank your pages, Google crawls them with the help of robots that will go to your site. Linking your pages together will facilitate the exploration of your e-commerce site. This is called internal linking. Try as much as possible to position links between pages that may be complementary.

Optimise the content of your site's product pages

When a customer wants to buy on your website, it is important to understand that they cannot see the item in real life, nor can they touch it. The aim here is to answer any questions they may have. First of all, write attractive product descriptions. They should be very detailed and mention all the features of the product you are selling. You can also add presentation videos, assembly or user guides to your customers to advise and help them.

💡 Bigblue Tip

As they can change regularly (especially in the clothing sector), do not waste too much time putting many keywords on your product pages. We recommend you instead to optimising your category pages!

Creating a blog

The aim of the blog is to help users choose their product. It will also have a role to play in your search engine positioning. Update it regularly, offering visitors to your site content related to your sector of activity. Above all, do not use duplicate content. Google doesn't like it and you risk losing a lot of visibility on your website.

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Improve the user experience and usability of your e-commerce website

It is important to design your e-commerce site well so that navigation on it is as smooth as possible. Think UX and UI design so that your visitors stay on your site as long as possible and get to the end of the purchase process. A slow loading page, a misunderstanding in the sales path can frustrate the consumer and make him leave your online shop.

💡 Bigblue Tip

By June 2022, the share of mobile traffic reached 65.5%. Moreover, about 30% of e-commerce visitors don't make it to the bottom of a page. If your customer have to scroll, you're likely losing an equivalent potential revenue with each visit! If you are looking for inspiration, we recommend you to have a look on websites like 900.Care one's.

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Measure the results of your strategy

The implementation of SEO marketing operations must be measurable to know if you are going in the right direction. Google Analytics will allow you to analyse your traffic and see where it is coming from. This way you can see if the increase in traffic has led to an increase in turnover and you can then monitor your strategy with the help of statistics.

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Conclusion

If you are looking at an SEO strategy for the first time, the first thing to remember is that it is a medium to long term acquisition strategy. The ROI (or Return of Investment) of SEO will not be immediate and is part of a process of continuous improvement of your web presence. Move forward regularly and be patient!

Forget the quantitative and focus mainly on the qualitative aspect to attract an audience that is most likely to become your customers. Capturing an unqualified audience can be detrimental to your website's SEO.

Finally, think mobile. Adapting your website to mobile phones has become essential as more and more people buy from their phones. Your website must therefore be responsive design and offer a smooth shopping experience on smartphones.

Optimising acquisition costs and marketing channels is extremely important. Still, many brands overlook just how equally important it is to optimise their inventory management, one of the critical factors in online sales success.

According to an estimate by IHL Group, e-tailers can pursue $117 million in additional revenue for every $1 billion in sales by addressing inefficiencies and disconnected inventory data across their organisation.

This article will break down the common mistakes to avoid and the best practices to improve your inventory management.

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1. Inventory management: common mistakes to avoid

Inventory forecasting will never be 100% accurate, but you can take specific measurements to avoid the most common inventory management errors and minimise the impact on your revenue.

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According to IHL Group, inventory management errors are responsible for $1.75 trillions in losses each year for D2C brands:

• Avoidable returns: $642.6 billion annually
• Out-of-stocks: $634.1 billion per year
• Overstocks: $471.9 billion per year

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A. Out-of-stocks

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‍In 2021, Meta's advertising revenue reached the $117 billion mark and Google's $209 billion... The numbers reflect the increasing investment brands are making in customer acquisition.

Knowing that 80% of consumers are willing to switch brands and buy from another website if the product they want is out of stock on your site. Nothing is more painful for a brand than losing a sale to a competitor after spending money to drive traffic to their product pages 🙄. 

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💡 Bigblue tips 

We will address the importance of integrating the data of your e-commerce with your warehouse, but if you are on Shopify, you have the option to:

• stop selling a product (hide the product or display that it is "out of stock" on the product page)
• put an item on pre-order

Our recommendation is to synchronise your data in real-time or every hour between your e-commerce store and your warehouse. And don't forget to remove out of stock products from your marketing campaigns to avoid unhappy customers.

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B. Overstocking

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To compensate for out-of-stocks, you may tend to overstock... but remember that the more products you bring to the warehouse, the higher your storage costs will be. 

We had an example of a brand launched in 2020. At the beginning of our collaboration, we found out that they had just bought an entire year's worth of sales of a single item. Their forecasts were inaccurate, and they still have not sold all the units. It was risky and cost-intensive for a new brand, which led to a cash flow problem.

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2. Stock management: best practices

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A. Track sales on your CMS and anticipate seasonality

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Nothing is more reliable than your order history on your Shopify or CMS to prepare your inventory forecast. 

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💡 Bigblue tips

To avoid mistakes, we advise you to take into account and anticipate your temporary operations and marketing campaigns, for example:

• Your campaigns with influencers
• The peak period and sales, for example, Black Friday and Christmas
• Your press campaigns and TV appearances

Pap et Pille, a brand that we love that trusts Bigblue with delivering their cookies (on both B2C and B2B), participated in the TV show Qui Veut Être mon Associé last December. Their orders exploded by more than 100% the next day following their appearance!

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B. Anticipate the delivery times and warehouse management

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It is also necessary to consider the time needed to bring the goods to the warehouse. An essential step to avoid stock-outs before intensive sales periods, Black Friday or Christmas sales, for example. 

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💡 Bigblue tips

• Plan for one month of buffer at least: make sure your products arrive at the warehouse a month before Black Friday and the sales period.
• For greener logistics, favour ship and rail freight. This type of transport takes two months from China at a lower cost under normal circumstances.
• In case of emergency, opt for air freight (able to deliver within one week).
• If you have several warehouses, look at your options to repatriate your stocks quickly.

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C. Restock as often as possible

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To avoid overstocking errors and optimise your logistics costs, you need an accurate estimate of the time to sell your inventory. To calculate it, have a look at your sales history, production costs, and replenishment times and costs.

You can rely on an Excel file to track your inventory. But there are solutions to save you time.

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💡 Track your merchandise inventory with Bigblue and determine your best sellers by week and month, quantities sold, and days to deplete based on your order history. You can also set up alerts to restock them.

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D. Test pre-orders to launch a collection

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Pre-orders are an exciting option to test the market before you launch a brand or before releasing the production of your new collection. Below is an excellent example of the brand Asphalte that works exclusively with pre-orders for each product. They received 13,303 pre-orders for their new jeans.

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Or the case of Zèta Shoes, with whom we have collaborated since the launch of its Ulule campaign that exploded their objectives by 2.683%. From one day to the next, Laure Babin, founder of Zèta-Shoes, found herself sending 2,700 pairs of shoes instead of the 100 orders initially planned.

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E. Add the returned products back to your stock

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A well thought out returns policy is imperative as 92% of shoppers have indicated that they would buy from the same store again if the returns process is simple. 

A good returns management can work as a safety stock buffer. To play this card, you will need to have a solid integration between your warehouse and your CMS and take into account the return and processing times at the warehouse and the ratio of damaged products that cannot be put back in stock.

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💡 Bigblue tips

Facilitate returns; despite their bad reputation, they can become your best customer retention lever. You can use a returns portal to collect information on 

• The most frequently returned items and adapt your collections
• Reasons for returns: wrong size, damaged item, style. Based on the reasons for return, you will be able to anticipate which items can be put back in stock.
• Offer the possibility of printing return labels at the post office to make it easier for customers and shorten delays.

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F. Manage your packaging inventory

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It's important to remember that you’ll also need to replenish your packaging to ship packages. Bigblue provides you with standard, plastic-free packaging. Still, if you want to offer a fully customised, branded unboxing experience, you'll need a restocking plan for your: flyers, custom envelopes and boxes, samples, and wrapping paper.

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Runa Capital led the round with LPV as the secondary lead investor and additional participation from existing investor Samaipata. Bigblue provides customers with prime-like deliveries, branded tracking emails and a dedicated returns portal to enable a superior experience.

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^{E-commerce giants like Amazon and Zalando have invested billions in software and infrastructure to provide the best experience for their customers. Still, these solutions are only optimised for their businesses. To sell effectively, e-commerce brands search for solutions tailored specifically to their needs — Bigblue offers an all-in-one platform optimised for each independent brand and helps companies selling online deliver the best and most unique customer experience.}

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Bigblue provides shipping automation, transport optimisation, branded post-purchase communications, and more. The company operates an intelligent European warehouse and carrier network that uses AI to pick the best shipping method for each shipment and ensure fast and green fulfilment.

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With Bigblue, brands can add a personalized insert to their packages, customize their packaging, or tell their story in shipping notifications. 

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Bigblue counts more than 300 client brands, and in 2022 will ship 4 million parcels from 3 different countries. Bigblue's all-inclusive pricing and native integrations with Shopify and other leading e-commerce platforms make it easy for sellers to quickly set up their account, send inventory, and start selling with fast, branded fulfilment in as little as one week.

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Powering independent brands in France since 2018, Bigblue does not simply offer a fulfilment solution that matches Amazon standards – we aim to make it easy for brands to grow online. With this new round, we will support scaling service offerings for Bigblue's growing base of online merchants, fuel hiring efforts, and continue to position the company as the leader in the D2C fulfilment space. - Tim Dumain, co-founder at Bigblue.

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With its new program Fast Tags, Bigblue helps brands to reduce their marketing costs: it automatically pushes eligible buyers a 98% accurate 1-day delivery time along their purchase journey.

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_{Fast Tags' early adopters have seen a significant increase of 20-40% in conversion, with substantial savings in acquisition costs.}

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Since its inception, Bigblue has been committed to making logistics greener and helping brands move towards sustainability.

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This becomes relevant since 85% of people globally prefer to buy from sustainable brands, and logistics has a key role to play in improving the environmental impact of e-commerce. Bigblue works hand-in-hand with its merchants to match their sustainability expectations: its proprietary technology optimises transport routes and truck filling, reducing carbon emissions by 25%.

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In addition, parcels are delivered via cargo bikes and electric vehicles in major cities, all packaging is plastic-free and recyclable, and the company's warehouses are Ecocert certified.

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Runa Capital sees Bigblue as a crucial part of the online merchants' tech stack and believes that the e-commerce market will continue to grow at an impressive pace in the future. We're confident the team has everything to become the European leader in e-commerce fulfilment. We appreciate the platform's potential, and are happy to support the team on its way to success. - Dmitry Chikhachev, General Partner at Runa Capital.

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With the 15 million funding, Bigblue plans to hire 100 new people over the next 12 months in sales, marketing and operations and triple its engineering staff. The start-up opened its first international office in Madrid in January and will expand to the rest of Europe over the next year.

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This European expansion comes with ambitious goals: the team plans to expand low-carbon 1-day delivery to all of Western Europe, help national brands to become European by supporting them in their internationalization, continue to improve the post-shopping experience and extend its Fast Tag Program to help more brands get rid of overwhelming acquisition costs.

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About Bigblue

Bigblue is an order fulfilment platform that enables e-commerce merchants to offer their customers the ultimate delivery experience, thereby helping merchants increase sales and maximize return on ad spend. The Paris-based company operates an intelligent European warehouse and carrier network that uses AI to pick the best shipping method for each shipment and ensure fast and green fulfillment. All Bigblue services are included in a single cost so sellers know exactly what they will pay on day one. The company has native integrations with Shopify and other leading e-commerce platforms, allowing sellers to create an account in minutes, send inventory into the Bigblue network, and start selling with fast, branded fulfillment in as little as one week. Bigblue already has 300 client brands.

For more information, visit https://bigblue.co/.

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About Runa Capital

Runa Capital was launched in 2010 by the founders of Acronis, Parallels, and Acumatica, and has since become a leading global VC firm. Runa Capital is investing from Fund III, which focuses on early-stage investments in deep tech, including quantum technologies and cloud infrastructure, and SaaS, including vertical solutions for the healthcare, finance, and education industries. Runa Capital has invested in more than 80 companies across Europe and North America, including Mambu, Smava, Nginx, MariaDB, Brainly, Acumatica, and others.

For more information, visit www.runacap.com.

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About La Poste Ventures

La Poste Ventures is the Corporate Venture Capital of La Poste Group, endowed with 50 million euros, based in Paris and operated by XAnge. La Poste Ventures is involved in Seed and Series A fundraising, investing 300,000 to 3 million euros. His investment thesis focuses on La Poste's strategic sectors, particularly SaaS, transport and logistics, health, ecological transition and the circular economy.

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XAnge is an early-stage investment fund based in Paris and Munich with 600 million euros under management. Its investment team supports European entrepreneurs who aim to change everyday life through technology by investing amounts of 500,000 to 10 million euros from the start-up phase. With an investment thesis centred on bringing technologies to as many people as possible, XAnge invests in the deeptech, healthcare, fintech, SaaS and e-commerce sectors. XAnge has, for example, supported Lydia (Finance), Welcome to the Jungle (Human Resources), Believe (Music), MrSpex (eCommerce) and Ledger (cryptocurrencies). XAnge operates the La Poste Ventures fund alongside La Poste experts.

The evolution of the consumer journey has logically led to profound changes in purchasing expectations in both BtoB and BtoC sales. A study conducted by Forrester Consulting shows that while traditional BtoB journeys were predominantly offline and linear, the transition is increasingly towards a digital and omnichannel experience. 

Conversely, brands following the Direct To Consumer model that characterises DNVBs (for Digital Native Vertical Brands) seem to be migrating from a 100% digital journey to a shopping experience that includes the physical shop. This is the case of Tediber, the e-tailer specialising in mattresses, which has opened its famous 'Night Boxes'. These are physical shops, spread across the four corners of France.

Whatever your sector and sales model, the trend is to systematically put the consumer journey back at the heart of strategies, leaning towards more options and omnichannel flexibility. 

ONVBs (trading digital for omnichannel) are therefore officially the new DNVBs. 

But to become omnichannel, and take advantage of this model to boost sales and profits, brands now face a number of challenges. 

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The DNVB model: victim of its own success?

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The Digital Native Vertical Brands (DNVB) model has inspired thousands of entrepreneurs. And almost every product, even the most niche, has had its DNVB version. The low barriers to entry in digital commerce have been a key factor in the DNVB tsunami. But this success is also a risk to the viability of the model, generating ruthless competition on margins and acquisition costs... A competition that has been accentuated by the fact that most DNVBs focus on the same target of digital natives. 

And while their model was based on disintermediation, to increase their margins (and share them with their clients on a "fair price" basis), most DNVBs have become so dependent on online acquisition that their margins are now almost entirely captured by Google and Facebook. 

This is why more and more DNVBs are now turning to physical outlets. But just as physical distribution networks are having difficulties with e-commerce, pure players are also finding it difficult to master physical distribution...

In both cases, the reason is simple: it is a completely different business.

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Omnichannel-native brands: the birth of a new model for BtoB and BtoC sales?

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In this context, we are witnessing the emergence of a new brand model that is structurally omnichannel: the ONVB, for Omnichannel Native Vertical Brands. The concept of omnichannel is not new, but it is the "native" aspect of ONVBs that makes this model innovative. 

Indeed, from the outset, ONVBs are designed to use multiple distribution channels (e-commerce, points of sale, pop-up stores, retailers, etc.). Thus, the brand, the audience, the products, the margin level, the returns policy, the internal organisation, recruitment, IT processes (CRM, payment, stock management), the customer experience, logistics, communication, etc., are all designed for an omnichannel approach. 

As a result, the ONVB does not suffer from the technical or organisational debt that weighs on the historical players! 

Among the many advantages of this model, we can mention : 

• Reduced dependence on paid acquisition. ONVBs can better adjust their acquisition efforts to market conditions;
• A larger, international audience at their fingertips. Unlike their predecessors, ONVBs are free to deploy themselves widely on indirect channels. They therefore attract a wider audience, less sensitive to the exclusive character of their brand. Pop-up stores in shopping centres are another excellent example of an effective acquisition channel for ONVBs. They allow the brand and its products to be exposed to potential new customers at a very competitive price. It is also an opportunity to interact physically with customers (via storytelling, customer feedback, etc.). ONVBs can also use digital tools to test new distribution areas in a more cost-effective way. And then leverage their distribution partners to roll out their brand on a larger scale.

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The first successes of the ONVB

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The first ONVBs were developed on instinct by entrepreneurs who better analysed the limitations of the previous model. In France, the forerunner was perhaps Bobbies, launched in 2010 with a simple showroom, quickly followed by an online shop and an indirect sales strategy. This was followed by the opening of its first own physical shop in 2013. In 2014, Merci Handy simultaneously launched its coloured antibacterial gels in e-commerce and wholesale. Its network now includes nearly 3,000 retailers.

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🌟👖 The example of LEPANTALON

While the transition from the DNVB model to omnichannel may seem more complex, there are many success stories. This is the case, for example, of the brand LEPANTALON, which began with Direct To Consumer, distributing its products exclusively on its own website. Then in its own shops and physical points of sale, in particular to allow customers to try on their clothes and become more familiar with the brand's sizes. 

Today, LEPANTALON's acquisition levers are fully omnichannel. In-store interactions help to increase traffic on the website, and vice versa.  

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The challenges of omnichannel: a more attractive, but also more demanding strategy

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The ONVBs can therefore be seen as a natural evolution, or rather an evolution of the DNVB model. Omnichannel thus takes up the main assets of the latter, with particular emphasis on the customer experience, lean launches, brand differentiation and transparent, local communication.  

However, as we have just seen, the barriers to entry remain higher. To be successful in indirect sales, the brand must be stronger and the storytelling more universal. The ONVB model also requires a much wider range of skills. It includes everything from deploying and managing dozens of outlets to hundreds of resellers. 😱 The model also takes longer to deploy. On average, it would take 2-3 years to be operational across all channels, compared to just 6 months for DNVB. 

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Among the other challenges that have emerged with omnichannel, especially in BtoB selling, merchants face: 

• Back-office integration between channels; 
• Difficulties in sharing customer data and analysis across channels, countries or trade areas; 
• Limiting constraints imposed by distribution partners, franchises or wholesalers; 
• Potential conflicts between different channel organisations;
• But also implementation difficulties (such as lack of commercial incentives). Or limited staff skills and management resistance. 

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Creating a consistent online and offline sales experience: the main challenge of multi-channel (BtoB and BtoC)

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In contrast to the massive wave of DNVBs, it is likely that not as many omnichannel brands will emerge. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, as this lesser competitive pressure will leave higher margins for the ONVBs that will come out on top! 👀 

To achieve this, it will start with a successful transition from a 100% digital model to opening physical shops. An exciting moment for brands, but also a colossal challenge to manage a network of shops. And above all to adapt their strategies, as digital success does not automatically translate into physical success. 

💡 Bigblue's tips

Below we share with you the 3 levers to pull to ease the path to omnichannel. 

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1. Controlling your communication

The challenge of communication systematically arises in a more frontal manner when the number of physical points of sale increases dramatically. The transition from digital to physical necessarily requires tuning the violins. 🎻

Your brand must start by clearly defining its brand universe and thinking about its online and in-store translations. It must also set up communication channels adapted to its new partners. And thus, ensure a good dissemination of information through its network of shops, but also towards its retailers. 

The best way to get rid of this problem is to use a platform that allows seamless and instant communication between the shop teams, the area managers and the head office. 

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2. Managing your teams in omnichannel

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In-store visits also become necessary as your network grows. Having a complete overview of what is happening in your outlets is easy when there are only a few to monitor. But then again, the game changes when you are talking about dozens or even hundreds of shops!

DNVBs that are just starting to develop their physical offerings have a clean slate that can help them avoid falling into bad habits. The key is to learn from the failures of the retailers who came before them. The very ones who simply digitised their in-store management processes. Don't make that mistake, failure is guaranteed! 😵

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🌟👖 LEPANTALON’s example

LEPANTALON, for example, has worked hard on the recruitment and training of its teams. The brand has worked to find ambassadors, sticking with its values. It especially values friendliness and smiles, the attitude of advicing and listening rather than an aggressive sales approach, which does not fit with its online shopping experience. 

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3. Ensure brand consistency

As its presence diversifies from online to physical shops, but also to concept stores and pop-ups in department stores, the omnichannel brand must fight to keep its universe from being diluted. This is as true for BtoB sales as for BtoC.

To maintain consistency in your image and customer experience, you need to set standards. For digital native brands, who are also true pioneers of the experiential retail model, it is even more important to cultivate a good reputation by creating a unique and engaging brand experience.

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🌟👖 LEPANTALON’s example

LEPANTALON once again gives us keys to prevent scaling your network from becoming an obstacle. To maintain a consistent brand identity, it is thus crucial that each channel follows the same vision. The first step is to put it on paper. Then deploy it with the same common thread that will be applied to both channels. For the in-store channel, the brand focused on the interior design, for example, in line with the DNA created online. 

In general, this goal of consistency is easier to achieve by monitoring compliance with head office guidelines using a centralised digital platform. 

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The importance of an integrated SaaS for omnichannel operations in both B2B and B2C sales

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Regardless of the sales model (B2B or B2C) or the industry, the key to success for brands is to offer their customers an omnichannel journey. From their point of view, it doesn't matter whether they buy online or offline. It's all about finding the most convenient and fastest channel at any given time.  

To stimulate and coordinate their omnichannel efforts, merchants need the support of technology partners. This includes a SaaS solution, such as Shopify and Bigblue, that will allow them to manage their operations (CRM, online sales, logistics, and corporate resources). Brands that choose this approach argue that it offers them a faster implementation speed and better stimulates continuous innovation. It will therefore ultimately be more cost-effective than an on-premise solution!

Discover how Bigblue can help you sell everywhere! We provide easy fulfillment for your wholesale orders, retail locations, pop-up stores, and more. The flexibility of e-commerce delivery for your BtoB sales locations.

Shopify is one of the most advanced and popular e-commerce solutions for merchants - and a good reason! Undoubtedly, the CMS offers the most tools and, therefore, the most possibilities to customise your customer experience. But as complete and efficient as Shopify is, it can only partially compete with the power of marketplaces like Amazon. 

With more than 152 million monthly visits in France in 2021, Amazon is the undisputed leader in e-commerce. And the champion of customer satisfaction, with 89% of its users saying they prefer to buy on Amazon. You can now enjoy both e-commerce worlds by learning how to sell on Amazon using the Shopify CMS. 

Before we see how-to, let's understand why this is the best option for your brand! 

How to distinguish the advantages and disadvantages of selling on Amazon?

It's no longer a secret: Marketplaces represent a tremendous opportunity for your brand. In 2020, the world's leading marketplaces represented a sales volume of $2.67 trillion. That's 62% of online sales that year! 😱

The question for merchants is whether it is more relevant to start their store or sell directly on Amazon. The answer is that it is best to do both. However, before making a decision, it is essential to understand the strengths and weaknesses of marketplaces.

A platform like Amazon provides enormous visibility to your products and allows you to reach more potential customers. Amazon alone has over 300 million active accounts worldwide. You can become a seller in a few minutes and get a worldwide audience just as quickly. It's an excellent opportunity to reach new audiences and showcase your products at scale!

But all this comes at a price...

Turning obstacles into opportunities 

In addition to competition and costs, Amazon has faced criticism for limiting sellers' access to valuable sales and customer data. You can gain a competitive edge and improve your business by understanding your sales pipeline, including customer buying behaviours and annual fluctuations.

Amazon's platform offers its users many choices and quick and convenient options to find the product they are interested in and have it delivered in record time. The overall customer experience needs to be on par with an independent store, where visitors can discover new items organically. This is also true for the post-purchase experience, a critical moment to build customer loyalty.

The lack of branding and control over the final experience delivered to the customer and the data that would allow measuring the ROI are good news for you. Instead, it's a unique opportunity to take advantage of Amazon's traffic while enjoying the specific benefits of your CMS. 

You reduce your dependence on a single business model by multiplying your sales channels. And you give your customers more options to discover your products and engage with your brand!

Shopify: a complete solution to brand your customer experience

Among the options you can offer your customers to discover your brand and buy your product, we have to mention Shopify. The latter allows you to create your online store via various custom themes. In addition to facilitating the branding of your e-commerce site, Shopify is accessible to beginners and requires no prior knowledge!

The solution is hosted, which means it runs on its servers. So you don't need to worry about hosting your store, either. Product listing, payment module, and even marketing tools (mailing, blog, etc.) are provided and ready to use. 

The benefits of Shopify

The numbers speak for themselves. 1.75 million merchants sell using the Shopify platform. The latter processed $119.58 billion in order value in 2020.

Why is it so popular?

Its simplicity

Its intuitive interface allows merchants to focus on managing their business. The "drag & drop" mode makes it easy to customise your store;

Its technical support

A dedicated team is available 24/7. A reassuring element for beginners who would need help to familiarise themselves with Shopify;

Endless customisation possibilities

Shopify allows you to create a store that looks like your brand and world. With a wide selection of themes, some of which are free, you can customise your customer experience and quickly adapt it to their feedback;

Shopify’s app store

‍With over 1,200 plugins and apps, Shopify allows you to streamline and automate your sales channels. If you're not familiar with accounting or inventory management, there's bound to be an app that can do it for you;

Its marketing opportunities.

‍The more your store is visited, the more your sales increase. Shopify allows you to increase your traffic organically, thanks to its many SEO tools. You can also easily create your coupons or promote your brand on social networks. For example, connecting your different ads accounts (on TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram) to the Shopify CMS. Then measure your ROI thanks to add-ons that allow you to deepen the data of your page;

Its ability to grow with you

‍Shopify adapts to the size of your business and brings you specific tools according to your brand's growth stages. 

The disadvantages of Shopify

Despite its many advantages for your brand, Shopify also has some disadvantages. For example, customising your online store takes a lot of work. 

To go beyond the choice of themes offered on the application, you will have to go through the Shopify Liquid configuration tool. In practice, the latter will undoubtedly prove too technical for inexperienced merchants. Unlike WordPress, which relies on PHP to customise its themes, the Shopify method will be more challenging to master. 

The other disadvantage of Shopify lies in the content marketing side. Create a blog and optimise it for SEO to increase your organic traffic. Or make it easy to integrate your social networks into your store to boost your brand visibility. But Shopify could still improve their editor (especially for galleries) or product integration in blog posts. 

You can install the relevant applications from your App Store to add some of these missing features. However, these extensions present new challenges and require a lot of your time. That's where Bigblue comes in! We make it easy for you to manage the more complex aspects of Shopify's CMS (especially around your inventory and shipping management) with the functionality of our platform. 

In practice: how to sell and combine the power of Amazon with Shopify’s customer experience?

So how do you make the most of both platforms? And more importantly, how do you sell on Amazon using Shopify's CMS?

To sell on Amazon, you have two basic options: 

• FBA (or Fulfillment by Amazon): This platform does everything. You send your inventory to an Amazon Fulfillment Center (FC), which ships the products and handles customer returns. You control the amount of stock you send to the FC. Then pay the storage fee plus a fulfilment fee for each unit sold. Amazon handles the payment and sends you your revenue every two weeks in this model. The catch is that you will have no control over your branding (customising packages, flyers, etc.). Nor any way to access your customers directly (or indirectly)!
• The MFN (Merchant Fulfillment Network): You interact directly with your customers and manage shipments, returns and support. The MFN (or FBM, for Fulfillment By Merchant) is a good option for made-to-order products. Or items that require a longer processing time. It's also the way to regain control of your customer data and control the experience you offer them. All you need to do is connect your CMS (in this case, Shopify) to Amazon. 

How to sell on Amazon using Shopify

E-tailers have been able to integrate Shopify with Amazon since September 2015. A long-awaited integration that allows them to connect their shop with the millions of potential customers of the American giant!

In concrete terms, you can add Amazon to your sales channels on Shopify and even create Amazon product listings from existing items. Using Bigblue's App, fully integrated with Amazon and Shopify, you can fulfil and track your orders in real-time, which can now be done directly in the Shopify admin panel. 

Bigblue also syncs your available inventory across all active sales channels. With multi-channel snapshots of your key SKUs and shipping costs, you now have a complete view of your business performance.

To complete the Shopify integration on Amazon and Bigblue, follow these steps: 

1. Add Amazon as a sales channel

Log in to your Shopify shop and click on the "+" icon next to "Sales Channels". Select Amazon and click "Add" to confirm.

2. Register with Amazon Seller Central

Register as a professional seller and upgrade to an Amazon Seller Central business account to find out how to sell on Amazon with Shopify.
Then, open the Amazon services and click on "Start Selling". You will be asked to fill in your name and email address and choose a password to create your seller account.
After creating your professional seller account, you will need to get approval from Amazon to validate that your products fit into the categories you entered.

3. Create Amazon listings of your products

Before you can start selling on Amazon, you must create product listings. The good news? You can now do this from within Shopify! Click on Amazon in the "Sales Channels" section, then click on "Create a Listing". Choose the product you want to list and click "Select a product".
If you already sell on Amazon, you can also migrate existing Amazon listings to your Shopify shop. Listings from your Professional Seller account will be visible on your Amazon listings page in Shopify.
Also, take the opportunity to set your inventory tracking policy from your shop's inventory settings. You can allow Shopify to do this, or you can do it manually.
That's it: you can now start selling on Amazon through Shopify!

Managing the duality of selling via Amazon and on your own Shopify CMS 

At first glance, Amazon may seem like an enemy threatening your business. The platform can help you grow your brand and boost your sales when used correctly!

However, this increased visibility comes at a cost. In particular, it implies losing control over your conversion and branding. It also risks damaging the experience you offer your customers and your ability to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. 

So to take advantage of Amazon's effectiveness while maintaining your brand and supporting its growth, the best solution is to combine Amazon and Shopify (and all your channels). 

At Bigblue, we are particularly fond of the approach of Diego Alary, the king of the "foodporn" recipe on TikTok. He has over 2.5 million followers on the social network and sells his recipe book on several different channels:

• on TikTok, via its Shopify CMS
• on its website hosted on Shopify
• via Amazon in MFN

All this is thanks to Bigblue's platform. With all of his sales information synced in real-time, Diego completely controls his ROI and can create a great shopping experience for his fans!
Think of your Shopify shop as your home base and Amazon and your social networks as the beacons to drive more traffic to it. You can significantly increase your sales with strategic planning, experimentation, and marketing hacks (including taking advantage of Shopify's social networking opportunities).
So think about combining the tools available to you, and let Bigblue handle your logistics too!

Congrats on making another sale! Hold off on popping the champagne, and keep it chilling in the fridge for the perfect celebration moment. Why? Checkout completion is only the beginning of your relationship with your customer. To build customer loyalty and convince more shoppers to buy from your online store, you need to offer a 5-star post-purchase experience. This will ensure the sustainability of your e-commerce business.

Here are 10 examples of e-merchants to inspire you!

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1. Jimmy Fairly

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Jimmy Fairly offers a top-notch post-purchase experience in e-commerce. They provide a kit for customers to get reimbursed by Social Security a yearly reminder to visit the optician. The eyewear manufacturer also seamlessly connects their online and in-store experiences.

Customers can visit a store to try on glasses and then receive a quote by email. Additionally, they can come to the store for adjustments or pick up an antifog kit, which is especially useful with the widespread use of masks.

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2. Tediber

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Tediber knows what makes a bedding brand great - comfort! They even send customers an eye mask one month after their mattress arrives.

Plus, their post-purchase email sequence is top-notch - they provide a precise delivery slot and even offer deliveries up to 10 pm for those who want their mattress after work. A guide is also provided to assemble and install the bed frame easily, or if you're feeling lazy, their trained delivery man can do it in under 3 minutes!

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3. Veja: a post-purchase experience oriented towards the maintenance of the sneakers

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It's an example of an excellent post-purchase experience in e-commerce from a brand supporting its customers using its product. Veja provides precise advice on cleaning, restoring, and recycling their shoes, helping extend their lives and keep customers satisfied.

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4. Blime: using video the right way

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Blime goes above and beyond to make sure its customers get the most out of their paint cans. The made-in-France paint company shares video tutorials to show them how to paint their walls properly, making the experience fun and enjoyable. Talk about customer support done right!

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5. Unbottled: delivery tracking with branded e-mails

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Your customers eagerly await news of their package after they make a purchase. Unbottled takes the extra step to brand its delivery tracking emails with its image and even encourages customers to share their experience on Instagram. On average, emails and tracking pages are viewed 4 times per purchase. It's a smart way to reach new consumers and provide a great post-purchase experience.

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6. Dermalogica 

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Skincare brand Dermalogica knows how important order tracking is to their post-purchase experience. Instead of giving customers a vague estimate of when their package will arrive, they provide the exact date. Plus, they include samples of their flagship products to replicate the in-store experience and subtly encourage repeat purchases. It's a great example of a brand focusing on customer satisfaction.

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7. Amazon: reinventing the wheel of the post-purchase experience

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When it comes to e-commerce, merchants can learn a lot from Amazon - especially when it comes to post-purchase experiences. Amazon offers free returns, multiple delivery options, packaging choices, and even a scheduled purchase option for certain items. For example, businesses can have a pack of post-its sent to them every four months. This kind of attention to detail makes Amazon successful and builds customer loyalty!

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8. Merci Handy

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To make online shopping as exciting as in-store, brands can add a bit of drama. Merci Handy does this beautifully by focusing on unboxing. Not only do they send their products in a nicely designed package, but they encourage customers to share the moment on social media. It's a super effective way to create buzz and build brand loyalty.

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9. My Lubie 

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The intimate care brand My Lubie knows how powerful social media can be in their post-purchase experience. They're especially active on TikTok, which is popular with their young target audience. 

Their CEO, Pierre Lagache, doesn't hesitate to get personal by regularly writing FAQs about the product. It's a great way to create a connection, answer customer questions, and build loyalty.

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10. Nike and their community! 

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Nike knows the importance of a strong community - especially in fashion e-commerce, the sector with the highest returns rates. With a clear and easy-to-use returns policy, they can keep their customers happy and coming back for more. In France, clothing returns make up more than 18% of all returns, so having a solid policy is key to success.

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In the world of fashion e-commerce, Nike is making waves by giving customers 60 days to return their shoes. They also inspire their community to become brand ambassadors through their running app and branded races. Nike sets itself apart from the competition by motivating its customers to excel and creating a sense of belonging to the Nike Run Club.

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<sub>Bigblue’s tips

The 10 brands we highlighted show how important a great post-purchase experience is. Take inspiration from them to:
- Remove customer concerns about receiving their package
- Help them use their product
- Provide value even after they've made a purchase
- Encourage them to return to your store</sub>

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