Desvendando os segredos de negócios diretos ao consumidor bem-sucedidos

Consumers nowadays are flooded with options when it comes to online shopping, this makes it so hard for e-commerce brands to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Forget the time when advertising was the main way for brands to attract customers. Today, running 2 or 3 campaigns per year will not help you anymore into growing your business and that’s because consumers’ behaviour have changed.

Consumers, now, are educated, well informed, and have access to an unlimited amount of information and data thanks to internet but, despite connecting us to the entire world transactionally, internet has created a huge social gap that is left unfulfilled. 

The most successful e-commerce brands understood it: it’s not about advertising and selling. Even if it still helps, it is not what will make you stand out from the crowd (and omg the crowd is huge). It is about filling that social gap for the customers. It is about creating a more “human” experience, it is about building a relationship that is beyond just a simple transaction. 

The recipe for success is about serving customers, solving their problems, educating them, building trust, and bringing them together behind a larger cause. The recipe for success is about building a strong community behind your brand.

In fact, marketing today has become so intrusive that people are tired from it. I mean come on, who enjoys being interrupted by 3 ads while watching their favourite YouTube channel?

Let me give you the answer: absolutely no one. (Yeah not even the person who made these ads!!)

Consumers today want to know what makes your brand different, and it has nothing to do with the 50 cents discount you launched yesterday. They want to know about your values, your story and what you do daily as a business to make the world a better place. 

"People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe” - Simon Sinek

To stand out from the crowd, to reach and attract more customers, building a community should be at the center of your priorities. That’s why we prepared for you this list of X ways to help you build and grow your community but before we dive into it, let’s first define what a community is:

Community is a group of people that care about each other and feel they belong together. - Fabian Pfortmuller

To put it in a business context, building community around your e-commerce brand is about caring and creating a strong sense of belonging with your customers. This means that it is less about you and your business and more about the people you’re serving as a brand.

Now, let’s move to the 5 steps guide to build a community:

1. Build your brand identity:

It is clearly impossible to build a community around a business that you don’t understand, so the first thing to do is to build your brand’s identity internally. 

For that you will need to define what your brand stands for and what makes it different from your competitors. Think about why you launched your e-commerce in the first place (hopefully, it’s not just about making money) and what is the added value that you want to bring into your customers’ lives. It could be anything ; you might have created shoes for travellers like Tropicfeel did because you did not find the right product when you were travelling, or maybe 

During this phase, you will have to work on your brand’s purpose and core values. These will be the pillars on which your community will be built upon. 

To help you during this phase, you can ask yourself some of the following questions:

• Which problems are you trying to solve everyday?
• For which purpose did you create our brand?
• What are your values? and which ones do you want to convey as a brand?
• What is your vision for the future and how do you want to shape it?
• Which impact do you want to have as a brand?
  

Once you define your values and your purpose as a brand, don’t forget to formulate in your communication efforts to make it easy for people to understand what your brand is all about, so that they understand which purpose they’re supporting when they choose to buy your products.

Another important point is to design your brand’s visual identity which should embrace and visually translate your brand’s personality and thus make it easy for people to recognize your brand (just like the swoosh!)

Tropicfeel, for example, has built a strong brand identity. They aim, through their products, to build a positive relationship with the environment by becoming a carbon neutral company.

They also encourage their customers to make responsible travel the common way. This helped them create their community of fellow travelers who share the same passion and are now ambassadors for the brand.

2. Understand your target audience:

Understanding your target audience is another important step for building a strong community around your brand. During this phase, you’ll need to make a deep analysis of your data to better understand who your customers are and what they are interested in.

This will help you to tailor the right messages and to better align what matters for you and what matters for your customers.

Take a look at the existing data on your website and social media and analyse their demographics (age, income, country, stage of life…). Try to bring out trends and averages, this will help you get a first insight on how your typical customer looks like. 

You can also contact some of your most loyal customers and schedule an interview with them. This will allow you to take a deeper look into your customers’ minds and will help you get more details about their behaviours and interests. You also have the opportunity to run surveys via email or on your website. Think about adding a promo-code or a coupon as an incentive for your customers who fill the survey.

To illustrate, Beardbrand found out, after analysing the results of a survey they launched, that a big part of their community members consider travelling as one of their biggest passion. To serve them better, Beardbrand decided to launch small and travel-friendly products specifically made to  optimize the experience of their customers while they are travelling (that’s what we call serving customers!!!)

3. Be a knowledge source about your industry:

Now that you have established your brand identity and that you perfectly understand your customers and their interest, the most important is to create content that brings an added value to them. 

Customers nowadays want to see unique, original and exclusive content, and since you already know their interests; make sure to create content that educates them, solves their pain points, and helps them in their daily life. This will show them that you care and thus will help you attract more members to your community and drive more engagement towards your brand.

Ensure that your content is aligned with your brand’s identity and it serves your customers.

This will help you become a knowledgeable source about your industry and will clearly differentiate you from your competitors.

4. Use storytelling and User Generated Content:

User generated content and storytelling are two great ways to attract more people and generate more engagement from your community.

User Generated Content is defined as any type of content that has been created and put out there by customers. It can refer to pictures, videos, testimonials, reviews, tweets, and blog posts. It is the act of users promoting a brand rather than the brand itself.

Sharing user-generated content on your website and on social media shows that you value your customers and their experience with your brand. It is also a great tool to build trust and reinforce the relationship between you and your customers. (and I mean come on, you don’t have to put any effort into it, customers do everything for you)

The easiest way to implement user-generated content is by creating a proper #hashtag for your brand on social media and encouraging your customers to use it while sharing their pictures, videos, and testimonials. This will allow you to have access to a large amount of real life stories, that you can use to storytell around the impact of your brand.

Storytelling about the origin of your brand and its continuous development helps you illustrate your beliefs and your cause and thus makes it easier for people to relate and create an emotional bond.

You can also reach out to influencers who are in your niche and who care about the same cause as you. These influencers have already a well established community that could also be interested to join yours. Actually, their influence is so considerable that 30% of consumers are more likely to buy a product recommended by an influencer as they relate more to them and value their opinions.

Daniel Wellington, for example, is one the brands that invested early in influencers marketing and user-generated content. Their content focuses on storytelling and sharing their customers adventures.

Their strategy proved to be so successful that the brand has almost 5 million followers on instagram and more than 2.200.000 posts overall with the hashtag #DanielWellington. 

Using these strategies will help you to grow your community by leveraging the power of social media and word of mouth.

5. Collaborate with like minded companies:

Working with companies that share the same vision and culture as yours is a great way to grow your community. It gives you the opportunity to leverage each company’s community and will help you reach a bigger audience. At the same time, it is a big statement about your engagement towards your cause and the people that support it.

The perfect example to illustrate this is the collaboration of Red Bull and GoPro. Both companies teamed up to produce incredible video content captured by GoPro’s technology during Red Bull’s events. According to Nick Woodman, the CEO of GoPro, this collaboration allowed them to upgrade their storytelling to a whole new level and helped them reach a broader global audience.

Collaborating on marketing campaigns with partners that share the same values and purpose is definitely a great way to create engaging content and leverage both communities to reach an even bigger audience (don’t worry the cake is big enough for everyone).

6. Conclusion:

To conclude, remember that building a community around your e-commerce brand doesn’t happen overnight. It is a task that takes time and effort, so make sure to constantly listen, communicate and remind your audience (and yourself) about your shared purpose. 

The key factor of success is to stay true to your values and to keep serving customers, this will undoubtedly pay its dividends.

And since I'm advising to build a community, who would I be if I was not applying my advice (the youtube ads guy maybe), feel free to join our community on facebook.

Congratulations, after months of planning, stress, and hard work, you’ve finally made it. You reached your crowdfunding goal. 

This means that you’ve got the market validation, the customers, and the funds (really soon). Three essential factors for any successful brand. Now that your campaign is coming to an end and you’ve got all these elements by your side, what’s next?

One of the logical routes to follow is to keep moving forward with your project and create your own e-commerce brand.
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Cards Against Humanity, Tropicfeel, Nomatic, many successful crowdfunding campaigns have grown into wildly flourishing e-commerce businesses, and today it might be your turn. Because of that, we want to make sure you’re prepared for it ahead of time.

Here is a guide to help you transition from crowdfunding to e-commerce:

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1. As soon as the campaign is funded:

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• Communication:

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Between the moment your campaign is funded and before it ends, make sure to update your backers about the advancement. Give them details about manufacturing, shipping, and stretch goals. This will build trust between you and your backers, who as long as they have a clear understanding of how things are developing, will remain supportive and flexible. It will also help to set clear expectations.
Don’t forget to communicate with your community about your future plans of expanding into e-commerce. 
Communicating clearly and consistently with your backers will give them a sneak peek of what it’s like to be your customer and how good they, their friends and family will be treated.

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• Anticipate demand:

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Exceeding your campaign funding goal often means that you have enough funds to get going until you start selling. These funds should help you invest in your e-commerce business and cover your manufacturing costs.
So make sure to take this opportunity and to anticipate the demand and integrate e-commerce quantities in your manufacturing plans.
This will allow you to have enough quantity to fulfill all your backers’ rewards and keep a certain amount of your products to kickstart (yeah, if crowdfunding is a kick-starter, e-commerce should be called a grow-bigger) your e-commerce operations.

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• Focus on marketing:

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One common mistake that creators do is forgetting marketing and promotion once their campaign is funded. So make sure to continue your marketing efforts to attract more and more backers and to raise more funds and at the same time start to prepare your branding and tailor your messages for your e-commerce. This is also a great opportunity to grow your email list and have great exposure
A good thing you can do is to design flyers, stickers and promo material to redirect and attract people to your e-commerce and insert them in your backers' parcels. By the time they will receive their rewards, your website will be fully operational and this will help to anchor your brand into your backers’ minds and redirect them to your e-commerce for other purchases.

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During this phase, don’t over-promote your e-commerce (I mean, you don’t have the e-commerce yet anyway) and focus your marketing efforts on your crowdfunding because your campaign is still running and the more you raise, the better it is for the future anyway.

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2. As soon as the campaign is over and manufacturing starts:

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• Choose your e-commerce platform and launch your website:

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You can opt to hire a developer and design your website from scratch or choose a CMS to create your e-commerce. I personally recommend the second option. It's cost-effective, it helps you gain time (1 or 2 days to fully set up your store), and it offers all the features needed to run a high performing e-store.
There are many CMS out there and the most known are Magento, Shopify or WooCommerce.
Since this is a highly important choice, I advise you to check out all the options available before making your choice. There are many factors to take into consideration such as features, SEO, customization, or scalability. So make sure to choose a platform that checks all the important boxes.
Launching your website as soon as your campaign is over will help you keep the momentum and take pre-orders. It is also the perfect opportunity to redirect potential backers (and future customers) who might have missed your crowdfunding to your website. This is the perfect way to take advantage of the traffic generated from Kickstarter to your website and gain early exposure.

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To know more, check out the article: The 9 best CMS to start your online business‍

• ‍Choose a logistics provider:

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Your campaign won’t be successful unless you deliver the rewards to your backers' doorsteps, and for that, you’ll need to choose a logistics provider that can fulfill your rewards worldwide for a pretty attractive cost and this represents the prelude to your e-commerce fulfillment.
So make sure to choose a provider that is able to handle both your crowdfunding and your e-commerce orders. Having the same provider for both of them will help you in negotiating a better deal (price-wise) and create a strong relationship over the long-run.
Choosing the right provider will also give you access to resources and knowledge you might not have had access to by yourself. Due to his expertise, you’ll be able to offer much more shipping solutions to your customers and you’ll have fewer things to worry about and thus you will be able to focus on other core areas of your business such as marketing and product development.
There are many factors that you need to take into consideration before choosing your logistics provider like scalability (highly important for all your future partnerships), worldwide shipping, ability to integrate with your current CMS, and the area of expertise. For example, some providers are specialized in shipping big size furniture while you’re selling board games, this is clearly not a great match (so, swipe left).

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To know more check out the article: How to choose the perfect logistics provider for your e-commerce

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3. As soon as the manufacturing is over and delivery starts:

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• Deliver rewards to your backers:

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Even if it might seem obvious, I wanted to stress on this phase because exceeding your crowdfunding goal doesn’t mean it’s the end of the adventure, there’s still a big step before the (crowdfunding) finish line: delivering the rewards to your backers (as promised). 
Successfully delivering rewards to ALL your backers is crucial for the development of your project since you need to meet the heavy expectations you have on your shoulders. Once you’ve done this, it also means that your crowdfunding is over and that you can now fully focus on your e-commerce operations.
Failing during this stage would lead to another bigger failure in the e-commerce world. To illustrate, let’s take a look at the Coolest Cooler campaign, which raised 13 million dollars in 2014 on Kickstarter, due to some logistics and planning problems the company failed to deliver the rewards to the backers. After 2 years, they decided to start selling on Amazon, no need to tell you that the brand received so many negative feedbacks and reviews that they almost didn’t sell anything after all. 5 years later, Coolest Cooler still didn’t deliver their backers and is now known as one of the biggest failures in the crowdfunding world.
So rather than taking this part as a pain, see it as an opportunity to attract and retain your backers. Think of rewards’ delivery as if it was for e-commerce and make sure to provide personalization to your backers. You can, for example, include special items (gifts, miniatures…) to their rewards or provide customized packages, you can use Packhelp for instance, a customization service that helps you create branded boxes. Don’t forget to join the flyers and free stickers that redirect your backers to your website and try to include coupons and vouchers to encourage them to buy from your e-commerce.

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To know more, check our article on how to provide free shipping during your crowdfunding campaign.

• Organize your data:

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Now that your crowdfunding fulfillment is successfully done and your campaign is officially over. You can focus all your efforts on your e-commerce. At this point, you should already have a big amount of data so make sure to organize it.

Try to segment your database and extract which are the main characteristics of your target persona. Separate backers from e-commerce customers. Segment them by age, interests, platforms they used to reach out to you, which channels do they use the most or prefer to get contacted through.

Since backers were there with you from the beginning of the adventure, they’re your biggest support and they can play a big part in helping you attract more and more customers. 

Backers feel a strong sense of belonging to the crowdfunding community, so you can be sure they will be there to help you. Don’t hesitate to ask them for feedback about your product, your marketing, or your project as a whole. You can also ask them for reviews (and if all the steps above went well, you’ll be flooded with 5 stars reviews).

Make sure that your marketing efforts are interactive, try to focus on 1 or 2 communication channels and make sure to redirect all these customers to your website. Create content and focus on SEO to gain more domain authority and thus rank higher on search engines.

Finally, succeeding during your crowdfunding campaign gives you all the necessary tools to succeed in your e-commerce journey. You have the funds, the customers, the market validation and a product that people want and this makes it the perfect recipe for success, the only thing that remains to be done is to go for it ;)

You’ve been a board game fan for years, you’ve played 7 Wonders or Pandemic. Slowly you started to develop game ideas, then you decided to make your own board game as a hobby. It’s going pretty well; your family loves it, your friends like it, your fellow gamers at your board-game cafe enjoy it, and the board-game community endorses it.

After facing positive feedback from your circles, you decide to unveil your amazing boardgame to the world, commercialize it, and why not make a living from your passion. 

And here’s when challenges start! 

Launching your own game is a journey full of challenges, you’ll need to find a manufacturer, a warehouse, and then send your product to customers and retailers.

All of this implies dealing with customs clearance, which is a scary and overwhelming step for every newcomer in the industry. Let’s face the facts, no one likes to deal with customs and all the administrative tasks it implies, but if you want to succeed in your game quest, you still need to go through it.

In today’s article, we prepared for you all the necessary information for a painless custom clearance and importation process to avoid getting your board game stuck in European customs.

First, let’s start by defining what is a toy and what isn’t a toy because this is what will determine the documents needed for customs clearance.

1. Toys:

According to the European Commission, a toy can be any product designed, whether or not exclusively, for the use in play by children under 14 years of age.

To avoid any confusion, we’ll go deeper into the definition. 

In Europe, games are categorized depending on the target audience’s age. So games that are meant to be played by children under 14 years of age are considered toys and consequently are subject to the requirement of The Toy Safety Directive.

The Toy Safety Directive is a directive that lays down the safety criteria that toys must meet before they can be marketed in the EU. Toys must also comply with any other EU legislation applicable to them. The essential safety requirements cove

- General risks: the health and safety of children, as well as other people such as parents or caregivers
- Particular risks: physical and mechanical, flammability, chemical, electrical, hygiene and radioactivity risks

However, if your game is destined for +14 years old players, then your product isn’t considered as a toy and thus isn’t subject to the same requirements.

In case your game is targeting a large audience of children and teenagers between 12 and 16 years old, you’ll still need to comply with the requirements of the Toy Safety Directive even if your game isn’t exclusively designed for children under 14 years old. 

To put it simply, if your target audience includes players younger than 14 years old, you’ll have to comply with all the special requirements of the Toy Safety Directive (TSD). 

2. The importance of respecting the TSD:

Respecting the Toy Safety Directive is highly important if you want to successfully sell your game in Europe and has many advantages:

• It ensures that your product won’t accidentally harm children.
• It helps to avoid fines and product recalls.
• It can reveal product-related problems before going to market, therefore, it helps in saving money.
• It helps in increasing customers’ trust in your brand and your products.
• It shows that you are committed to safety and that you care about your customers (and you’re not an as***le btw).
  

Taking a look at these advantages will help you understand that TSD shouldn’t be seen as a pain anymore but as an opportunity to prove that your game is on point with the safety standards and that it won’t harm any child’s life.

3. Marking:

Now that you understand what differentiates a toy and a game and you grasp the importance of complying with the TSD. Let’s get into the heart of our subject and explore the marking process that you need to go through so that your games won’t be stuck at customs because of your new (warm and welcoming) friend (the customs officer).

Here are the mandatory requirements for marking:

• Age restrictions: minimum or maximum age of the user
• Warnings must also be included in the product. It has to be preceded by the words “Warning” or “Warnings”.
• Identification number: Toys made available in the EU market must have a type, batch, serial or model number or other element allowing for the identification of the toy.
• Contact details: it shall indicate the name, registered trade name or trademark of the manufacturer and the address at which they can be contacted on the toy.
  If the toy is marketed under another person’s name or trademark, that person will be considered as the manufacturer.
  

Note that these requirements apply for any game even if its target audience is above 14.

Forget one of these 4 requirements and your products will be stuck at customs for a while. It will lead to a more in-depth inspection of your cargo (which will probably take some time). Whereas a well-done marking will facilitate the identification of your products and will lead to a quick and smooth clearance process.

You can also add non-mandatory marking to your products such as the maximum weight of the user or if the toy must be used under an adult’s supervision.

4. CE Marking:

The CE mark is a mandatory legal mark applied to all toys (remember, toys are designed for kids under 14 years of age) sold within the EU, It is often described as the product’s trade passport mark. CE Mark proves that your product conforms to the minimum standards needed to be sold within the EU.

If your product’s target audience is older than 14 and your product holds a “+14 mark”, you don’t need the CE Mark to be sold within the EU.

The CE mark has to be visible and readable on the packaging and should be placed next to other warnings or instructions of use.

In order to apply the CE mark, your product needs to go through the EN71 tests.

IMPORTANT : CE mark has to come with a Declaration of conformity and EN71 test reports.

5. EN71 Standards:

EN71 is a set of safety standards that applies to all toys sold in the EU and this test also covers the requirements to sell on American soil (if uncle Donald doesn’t decide to change them). It ensures that all the toys sold in the EU meet minimum safety standards. The EN71 is made up of 13 parts, but the first 3 parts are mostly used:

• EN71-1: Mechanical and physical properties
  This part is about checking to see if any physical or mechanical feature of the toy can injure a child. It helps in determining if there are share points on the toy or if there are parts that can easily be swallowed.
  

• EN71-2: Flammability
  This part tests the number of different factors that could lead to an injury to a child because of flammability. It helps in determining the presence of flammable materials in the toy, how long the item burns and how quickly the fire spread across it.
  
  
• EN71-3: Specification for migration of certain elements
  This part restricts the amount of lead released AND identifies eighteen additional other toxic elements that can be even more harmful than lead.
  

The tests can be done in two ways: either send your product to a lab and let them do it for you (usually starting from $500) or do the certification by yourself. I advise you to go for the first option. Self-certification is quite complicated and the regulations you need to follow are hard to find.

Once you’ve successfully completed the tests, you’ll get the EN71 report which you need to present to the customs officers (your warm and welcoming friends).

6. EC Declaration of conformity:

It is a written statement drawn up by the manufacturer to demonstrate the fulfillment of the EU requirements related to the product he manufactured and who’s bearing the CE marking.

You can find a template of EC declaration of conformity.

7. Summary

Here’s a picture to help you summarize everything:

Once you’ve gone through all of these elements and made sure that your product has all the above-mentioned requirements and markings, your board game is ready to be sold in the EU and you can be sure your cargo won’t be stuck at the customs (at least not for these reasons).

Congratulations! You’ve become an expert in board games customs clearance!

Loyalty is a big word. Almost every business decision is inspired by the idea of building customer loyalty because it leads to repeat purchases, higher customer satisfaction, enhanced brand recognition, and increased revenues. 

In fact, 80 percent of your company’s future revenues will come from just 20 percent of your existing customers (yeah, yeah, the old but gold Pareto rule).

So now, more than ever, it is necessary for e-commerce stores to make customer loyalty at the heart of their strategy. Loyalty means building a strong bond with your customers, and this bond comes from experiencing multiple positive interactions with your brand. Keep in mind that consistency is key.

Having a great product and a beautiful e-commerce website isn’t enough anymore and since almost all the interactions happen online, building a loyal customer base is harder than ever and to do that you’ll need to put all your effort on a more concrete and physical factors (I’ll let you guess which ones it is): Logistics and shipping. 

In today’s article, we’ll explore how logistics can help you build a strong relationship with your customers and increase customer loyalty. For that we designed a list of important factor you’ll need to take into consideration:

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1. Shipping is a key factor for e-commerce:

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Shipping and logistics are a determining factor in the purchase decision of online shoppers, actually, almost half of the shoppers (46%) said that one of the key factors in the online buying decision is a convenient and personalized delivery service, according to a survey by Sorted. 

Understanding the importance of omnichannel logistics and shipping for your e-commerce success and focusing on providing the best delivery experience is the first step for building better and long-lasting relationships with your customers. 

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2. Forecasting is mandatory:

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One of the most frustrating things for customers is to select the product they look for to find it out of stock. To avoid that, you’ll need to master the art of supply and demand. So make sure to commit some time to regularly review your forecast and calculate your safety stock. 

Forecasting will help you anticipate future peaks in demand and be fully prepared in terms of supply and production.

Maintaining an accurate inventory is key to ensure success in your operations. For that, you can implement a livestock counter and activate alerts to notify you when an item reaches low numbers.

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3. Choose the right logistics provider:

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When it comes to managing your logistics, you can either do it in-house or outsource it to a logistics provider. If you opt for the latter option, make sure you choose the right one.

Customers don’t see a difference between the carrier delivering their order and the brand they buy from; for them, it is all the same shopping experience. This means your provider will be a direct reflection of your brand. Your partner’s employees will be the ones facing and interacting with customers when the product is delivered, and their contribution plays a huge part in your customers’ satisfaction.

Since cashiers, shop employees, and other crucial customer-facing roles are removed from the equation in e-commerce, it is important for digital-native brands to choose a provider that communicates the same message and values.

There are many factors to consider while choosing a logistics solution and having a partner that performs at the same standards as yours is crucial for your overall success.

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4. Transparency is a must-have:

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Loyalty begins with trust and to ensure trust, you’ll need to be 100 percent honest and transparent with your customers.

Customers nowadays think and compare offers before making their buying decisions. To do that, they need to know the exact price of the order (shipping included) before entering their payment details. 

To provide maximum transparency, make sure to clearly specify your different shipping options, expected dates for delivery, shipping costs and all the taxes associated with it, and return conditions. This will also allow a smooth checkout process and an increase in conversion rates.

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5. Offer different shipping options:

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Customers are all different. Some of them have already finished their fall’s shopping by June, while some others didn’t even buy a swimsuit for their next week’s holidays in Spain.  

As an e-commerce, you should be able to satisfy both types of customers. Those who perceive time as a luxury they can’t afford and those who have plenty of time (4 or 5 days, don't push it!!) to wait for their shipment to arrive. 

To satisfy them, you will have to offer different shipping options. There are many options to explore. You can provide express delivery for your impatient customers or (cheaper) standard delivery for the ones who aren’t in a rush. You can also opt for click and collect or in-store pickup.

Free shipping is also an option you must consider. According to Pitneybowes, 91% of customers leave when shipping isn’t free or fast enough and 79% prefer the shipping to be free rather than fast. So if you can afford it, make sure to offer it as it is a big boost for sales, marketing, and conversion rates.

Another highly important factor to implement is live-tracking. Giving your customers the opportunity to track and see at which stage their order is, is crucial for customer satisfaction. You can set an automatic tracking email to update your customers about their orders.

Remember, customers nowadays are self-centric and they expect you to provide the options that fit in with their lifestyle and needs. 

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6. Positively surprise your customers:

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To convince customers to buy again and again from your e-commerce, you’ll need to stand out (positively!) from the crowd. 

Think about a new customer who purchased at your store for the first time and just received their order, if everything went fine, they should already be satisfied. Surprising them with a discount voucher is an invaluable opportunity to upgrade their experience and make them think about their next purchase. 

You can add a thank you note (politeness is always better) or gifts like stickers, samples, etc. in your shipments and even if it seems insignificant, adding up all these small gestures will have an undeniable impact on the bond you build with each customer.

Another important trend you should focus on is personalization. Customers nowadays want their purchase to be unique (because they’re unique, aren’t they?). So being able to personalize your packages is an excellent opportunity to prove them that you care and to strengthen your relationship with them.

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7. Implement convenient returns processes:

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When a customer receives an order and isn’t 100 percent satisfied (or just changed their mind, after all, the customer is always right), they are likely to send it back. While returns aren’t an ideal thing for e-commerce, it is something that cannot be avoided. Thus, the only option that lies before you is to make these returns an opportunity to boost customer satisfaction and loyalty.

According to Invesp, 92% of consumers will buy something again if returns are easy. So easing their return experience will not only help you gather positive reviews but also boost your sales.

The first thing to do is definitely to optimize your products’ pages by including high-quality pictures and detailed descriptions that accurately represent the product. This will help you reduce your return rate. 

You also have to build an effective return policy and to make it easily accessible on your website. Make sure to give clear instructions on how returns should be done and don’t forget to highlight the different options that your customers can choose to make their return (along with transparency, flexibility is the cherry on top of the cake). 

Don’t forget to include the return label in the parcel, this will save your customers’ time and it will let them handle almost all the process without needing your assistance. 

In case they do need your assistance, you should also make your customer service available to answer their inquiries. 

Having a smooth and painless return process will increase the trust customers have with your brand and ensure repeat purchases in the future.

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8. Ensure a great followup:

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Follow up is a must-have if you want to get closer to your customers and show them that you care about them. A few days after the order delivery, send them an email to collect their feedback and gauge their satisfaction.

Keep strengthening the relationship with different emails that highlight your new products, promotions, relevant content, and stories related to your brand and your customer base.

Finally, in order to increase customer loyalty toward your brand, you’ll need first to build trust with your customers and constantly (consistency is key here) nurture the relationship through all the different actions we highlighted above. This will undeniably make you stand out from the crowd and will ensure success for your e-commerce brand. 

It’s frustrating when you think of a customer getting all the way to the shopping cart, only to lose out on the sale. The good news is that there are proven ways to reduce your cart abandonment rates without totally overhauling your e-commerce store. In this post, we’ll share 7 proven tips to reduce cart abandonment.

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Let’s face it, we all have been, at least once, frustrated to get a customer filling his cart with items, only for him to leave before completing the purchase. Unlike in the real world where customers just walk into your store, fill their shopping cart and go to the cashier to pay, in the world of e-commerce, customers get distracted more frequently, whether it is by the ads of one of your competitors, or by this video of a small dog playing football. I mean, it already happened to all of us, start our shopping on an e-commerce website, then find ourselves 3 hours later watching the 4th episode in a row of our favorite TV show (Rick and Morty, of course) and never return to that website again.

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The good news is, there are proven strategies to reduce cart abandonment and checkout drops. In this article, we’re gonna discuss the main reasons behind these behaviors and provide practical solutions to implement in order to reduce your cart abandonment and checkout drops.

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But before we get started, let’s go through the basics and define the terms for those who may not know them.

• Shopping cart abandonment: When a customer adds an item to his shopping cart but leaves the e-commerce store before completing the purchase. ‍
• Checkout process: The process of buying the products after a customer puts them in his shopping cart. It includes several steps: filling in the shipping information, payment information, confirming the order and the payment.‍
• Checkout drop: When a customer leaves your website during the checkout process. 
  

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According to Statista, in 2018, 7 out of 10 shopping carts were abandoned, it's huge. Decreasing your cart abandonment rate can have a big impact on your bottom line and to do it, you’ll need first to understand the reasons behind it:

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As you can see in the graph above from Baymard’s study on cart abandonment, the main reasons behind these drops are related to:

• Extra costs (shipping, fees, taxes) that made the total cost either too high or unclear for the customer.
• The customer experience in itself with a complicated checkout process, a mandatory account creation or unclear return policies. 
• The payment, whether it is a lack of methods or a lack of trust.
  

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According to a study made by Business Insider, another reason for abandoning shopping carts is, customers aren’t ready to purchase as they were are browsing to compare final prices with other e-commerce websites or just wanted to save the cart for later.   

With that in mind, we can assume that it’s almost impossible to cut down your abandonment rate entirely as some people will inevitably leave before crossing the line and making a purchase. However, it’s definitely not impossible to address some of the issues stated above and thus improve your conversion rates. For that, in the next part of the article, we’ll be looking at 7 optimisation ways:

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1. Offer Free Shipping:

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As you’ve seen it above, shipping is the major reason for cart abandonment. I mean there’s nothing more frustrating than expecting to pay one price, then only to find at the end that you’ll have to pay outrageous shipping costs. In a study conducted by Invesp about the influence of free shipping in the online buying decision, orders with free shipping average around 30% higher in value and 93% of online customers are encouraged to buy more products if free shipping is available. So offering free shipping does not only help you decrease your cart abandonment rate but also increase your average order value.

You can also use it as a powerful marketing option to differentiate yourself from your competition but (yes, there’s always a but) free doesn’t mean free of cost. You’ll still need to pay for the logistics provider to get your products delivered to your customers.

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In the case offering free shipping is not profitable for your business, there are still many good ways to implement it. Offering it only when a certain threshold is reached for the order is one way out many others. Amazon, for example, uses the $25 as the threshold. Don’t set any random price, make sure that the amount you choose covers the shipping costs. 

Knowing that 9 out of 10 consumers say free shipping is the number 1 incentive to shop online more, showcasing it on your home page can help you convert more leads into customers as soon as they enter your website. Clarifying your shipping costs upfront will definitely help you build trust with your visitors. Daniel Wellington, for example, advertises it prominently on its homepage:

^{If you want to know more, check our article about the 4 best shipping strategies for an e-commerce website.}

2. Implement a single page checkout:

One of the best ways to reduce shopping cart abandonment and checkout drops is to eliminate all the unnecessary pages during the checkout process. 

As we’ve seen it above, one of the main reasons for customers leaving your website is, the checkout process is either too long or complicated. (customers don’t want to go through 5 or 6 different pages to complete their purchase) 

Providing a single page checkout gives customers an incentive to complete the transaction by having all the required fields on the same page and thus making simpler and faster. It also gives fewer reasons for your visitors to leave the page and skip off to another tab. 

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An important thing to keep in mind when designing your single page checkout is to de-clutter it as much as possible. Try to limit the amount of information you ask, use smart forms and leverage Google’s autofill to make it easier for users to check out. 

Also, make sure to remove on the checkout page all the links, ads and navigations that don’t support your end goal of converting the visitor into a customer. This will reduce the number of attractions that he has and thus boost your conversion rates.

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According to an experiment run by Invesp, in some cases, a single-page checkout is better than a multi-page, while in other cases multi-page converted better. When it comes to high priced products, the multi-page process performed better while single-page checkouts converted better when the average order value was low. So try to A/B test, and see which one is better for your business.

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In case, you opt for a multi-page checkout, make sure to include a progress indicator on the pages. This will reassure visitors regarding the time they’re going to spend on your website. It also makes the process clearer and easier to understand. 

You can also track during which stage of the checkout process your customers leave your website. This will help you determine where the leaky spots are in your funnel and thus take the necessary actions to boost your conversions. 

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^{TIP: Include the remember me button, so that your customers won’t have to fill all their information (if they want, of course) next time they purchase from your website.}

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3. Enable guest checkout:

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Asking your customers to mandatory create an account before completing the checkout process is definitely one of the most frustrating things for them (I am not surprised to see it ranked as the second biggest reason for cart abandonment). Filling the form, confirming an email address, and then returning to the checkout page is a lot to ask of a customer who may like your products but doesn’t necessarily want to build a relationship with you (and receive an email with your amazing offers every 2 or 3 days).

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In his article about enabling guest checkouts, Jared M. Spool tells the story of when one shopper told them that he was not there to enter into a relationship, but he just wanted to buy something. Deleting the mandatory sign up (by changing only one button) helped him increase a retailer’s site annual revenues by $300 million.

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Removing the mandatory sign-up will make the process easier for your customers and thus boost your sales and conversion rates. You might miss some of the data that every e-commerce wants, but if you offer a smooth experience, these customers are more likely to come back in the future.

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<sup>TIP: You can still integrate the option for signing up in some other stages:

- Ask users if they wanna sign up after completing their purchase on the ‘Thank You’ page (we hope you’ve got one).
- Allow users to sign up directly with their social media accounts.</sup>

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4. Offer secured payment:

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After all the stories that happened lately with websites losing their customers' private information (yes, I'm talking about you Target), people are increasingly worried about their payment and personal data privacy.

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Showing your visitors that your site and their information is secure can help you build trust and this will be a big push for them to shop on your website. The easiest way is:

• Have a valid SSL Certificate. If it’s out of date, your customers will be warned by their browser that the connection is not secure.
• Show security and trust badges for online payment.
  

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According to the Baymard Institute, here are the most trusted SSL and trust seals:

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Don’t forget to provide different payment methods depending on your customers. You can also use online payment services such as Paypal or Google Pay

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5. Provide clear communication and 24/7 customer support:

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Your customers will inevitably have questions during their journey on your website, thus providing clear and easily accessible information about your processes is crucial. 

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A great way to do so is by designing a well-organized FAQ and help centers. You’ll need to make sure it is visible and easy to access for your customers in case they have a question regarding your products or your processes. Knowing that unclear information about return and shipping processes are one of the top reasons for cart abandonment, you’ll need to clearly highlight and showcase your return policy and shipping details (time, cost, methods, etc).

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In order to offer 24/7 support, you can integrate a live chat, as 53% of customers prefer to use online chat before calling a company for support. It is an effective way for hesitant customers who are about to checkout. It also provides a better solution to email, which is too slow, and phone calls, which get in the way of the checkout process. Botmind, for example, is a hybrid chatbot solution that can automate 40% of your chat support.

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^{If you want to know more about customer service, don't hesitate to check our last article on the best helpdesks and customer support tools.}

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6. Optimise navigation and shopping cart experience:

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In order to reduce your checkout drops and cart abandonment rate, you’ll also have to optimise your shopping cart experience (logical, right?). 

Make sure to provide easy access to your shopping cart, also allow smooth navigation between cart and store because the easier you make it for your customers, the more likely they’re to checkout. 

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So first, make sure that the shopping cart is always visible on every page of your website. The easier you make it for your customers, the more likely they’re to go all the way through checkout. Try to eliminate all friction by integrating your shopping cart as a pop-up page that would show without having to go back and forth (the only back you want, is the one in “come back”).

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Then, offer customers the chance to buy immediately or continue shopping so that whenever your customer lands on a product page, he can purchase the product directly or add the product to the cart and continue shopping. Also, allow the users to update the quantity of items during the checkout process without having to delete the whole selection.

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Finally, use persistent shopping carts so that your visitors can find the selection from their previous abandoned cart. This will help them gain time and pick up from where they left off next time. 

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7. Reach out to your customers:

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Some abandonment can not be prevented but some can be converted with a little push. You can use retargeting through Facebook’s Pixel by adding a tag on your website and use it to track visitors who don’t make it till the finish line and attract them back to your website.

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You can also opt for recovery emails to remind them about the abandoned items. This should be done a few hours after the visitors leaves your site and a good way to make it effective can be to share a coupon code or offer other incentives such as gifts and free shipping.

In case you have all the data on your customer, such as a phone number, you can reach out to them directly by a call. This will show that you care about them and thus build trust. It will help you understand the reasons why they abandoned their cart and how can you help them. This personal outreach can be a real opportunity to build a long-lasting relationship.

There are many ways to reduce your cart abandonment rate and checkout drops. Some of the strategies we mentioned above might take more effort than others but they’re all worth trying. Make sure to test all of them to see which one works best for your e-commerce. This will already give you a good base to optimise your conversation rates and thus boost your sales.

In today’s busy and competitive ecosystem, it became harder and harder to gain visibility among the millions of brands that are putting enormous marketing efforts to attract the attention of customers. However, it is still possible to stand out from the crowd and one way to do so is content marketing.

As we’ve seen in our previous article, content marketing is the must-have marketing approach nowadays. It costs 62% less than traditional marketing but still generates 3 times the amount of leads. It is more enjoyable and it generates more traffic and leads. 

It also significantly increases conversion rates. Actually, an e-commerce that implements content marketing sees its conversion rates increase 6 times more than those who don’t. 

Yes, I know what you’re telling yourself, now that you see and know all the benefits of content marketing, you definitely have to invest in it but you don’t know which type of content to focus on. Don’t worry we got you covered.

In this article, we’ll talk about the different types of content you can use to skyrocket your e-commerce revenues and build a strong community of followers around your brand but before we go further, let’s talk about some important notions.

One of the most important things to remember is that no marketing (whether it is content or other forms of marketing) is effective if you don’t define and understand your target customers. 

So first make sure to clearly understand who your customers are in order to effectively speak their language and provide the content they seek and they’re attracted to. Remember if you don’t know your customers, how will you know that your content actually educates them and solves their problems?

When it comes to e-commerce customers, they usually look for entertaining or educative content. Their decision-making process can be very short and is often based on emotional factors. They tend to prefer content that is short, fun, visual, and shareable. 

Understanding your customers’ interests and behaviors gives you the opportunity to tailor your message and to focus your efforts on specific types of content that will deliver real results. So to help you out, we’ve put together this list of 6 content types.

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1. Blog articles

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That’s the first thing that pops to almost everyone when hearing content marketing and while it is the most popular form of content when it comes to B2B companies, it is often neglected by e-commerce stores and B2C companies. 

Blog posts are a great way to answer your consumers’ questions and provide insights when talking about complex topics, in addition to that, it helps you showcase your expertise and position yourself as a leader in your industry since you’ll be covering topics and addressing questions that are related to your niche. 

Blogging gives you an invaluable opportunity to rank higher in search engines and thus drive significant traffic to your website. Depending on what type of brand. If you are a popsocket brand, your customer might look for the word "popsocket", but if you are a shoes’ brand, your target customer might not look for "shoes"but rather to an exact brand name like Nike. 

It also helps to build backlinks (get cited) from other websites and blogs and thus increase your domain’s authority.

You can use blogging in many ways, for example, you can write product-focused articles, checklist or even storytelling about your brand and your customers. You can also repurpose it into small types of content such as infographics or videos.

Beardbrand is the perfect example of e-commerce that used blogging to grow their business. Eric Bandholz, the founder of Beardbrand, quit his job as a financial advisor at a bank because of the pressure to conform. Soon after he left, he started his blog dedicated to beards, beard styling, and beard products. Soon he saw the demand rising and his educative posts getting more and more visits, he then decided to launch his e-commerce.

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Over the years, Beardbrand kept investing in content and made it a core aspect of their marketing strategy. Content is so important for the company that, it’s the first thing you’ll see when you enter their website’s homepage. 

Today, the brand generates 500k visits per month and 65,10% of their traffic comes from search. 97,68% of the traffic generated comes from organic search and the brand actually ranks for 2746 keywords (HUUUGE!)

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This means that Beardbrand generates around 320k visits per month only through organic search. Their most famous article, How to Grow a Thick Beard Fast: The Only Guide You’ll Need almost reached 200k visits.

So if you’re still thinking that blog articles aren’t made for B2C and e-commerce brands, you might want to reconsider it. 

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2. Video

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It’s impossible to talk about content types without mentioning video. Video has become a powerful content marketing medium. After all, it provides a big amount of information in a small amount of time compared to blogs and texts. That’s why nowadays it plays a big role in the success of brands’ marketing efforts. 

In 2019, video accounts for 80% of all internet traffic (HUGE!) and videos on Facebook are watched for about 100 million hours each day. So if you’re an e-commerce and you want to invest in content marketing, video is definitely something you should prioritize. 

There are different ways to use videos. You can add it to your product page to help your customers get a better idea of what they’re buying since 96% of today’s consumers find videos helpful when purchasing online. 

Video is also a great way to create an emotional bond with your customers by using storytelling about your brand, your products, and your customers. 

Another interesting stat, actually, “how-to” videos are growing by 70% year by year and this is an invaluable opportunity to attract new people with tutorials and step by step instructions on how to use or assemble your products.

To illustrate that, we’ll continue with our previous example of Beardbrand (yes, you got it right, I am trying to fix my beardless problems). The brand use video as one of its main marketing focus. They publish 1 video every 2 or 3 days on their Youtube channel. 

The great thing about them is that they map their content for each stage of their customers’ journey, from the top to the bottom of the funnel.

This helps them drive 83,18% of their social traffic from Youtube which represents almost 60k visitors per month coming only from Youtube.

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They also embed their videos in their blog posts which makes their content more interactive and leads them to rank higher in search engines. 

Knowing that people are 95% more likely to remember a call to action after watching a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text format, it is a necessity to implement video on your content marketing strategy.

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3. Infographics

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By combining the eye catching side of visuals with the informative nature of texts, infographics became one of the most effective and valuable type of content marketing. It is easily accessible and simple to read.

Infographics summarize valuable information and present those in a clear and visual way. This helps to easily assimilate huge amounts of information with small efforts and in a short time. All of this makes infographics the most sharable type of content on social media.

Infographics have many benefits such as easily catching your targeted audience’s attention. It gives you the opportunity to make your content go viral and since they’re easily embeddable, you can get many backlinks to your website. 

You can also use infographics to repurpose other types of content such as blogs, studies, and videos to produce shorter content that is more likely to get shared.

The perfect example to illustrate the usage of infographics is what Guinness are doing. They are marketing their beers (drink with moderation guys!) through different infographics that tell the story of the company and at the same time, describes perfectly their product. 

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4. Images

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As we’ve mentioned above, visual content is becoming more and more important especially when it comes to e-commerce. An image is worth a thousand words and I'm in a good position to tell you what it is to write a thousand words!

So whether it is on your website, your blog, your product pages, or on social media, including images is mandatory to attract the attention of your customers. So for that, you’ll need to use images that support your messages, embrace your brand identity, and connect with your audience.

Including images in your content has many benefits. It helps you break up text and make it easier to scan. It also lets your customers have a better understanding of what you’re selling. Content that includes images is more shareable and gets 87% more engagement.

With the rise of social media platforms focusing on visuals such as Snapchat, Pinterest, and Instagram, it became crucial for e-commerce brands to focus their content marketing efforts on these platforms. Actually, it’s estimated that 60% of Instagram users have discovered a new product via this platform.

So if you want to grow your brand awareness and to constantly stay in touch with your audience, investing in these visual social media platforms is a must.

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Daniel Wellington, for example, is one of the first e-commerce brands that invested in Instagram and this helped them grow from a small e-commerce store to a multimillion-dollar company. Their core marketing focus is on Instagram, where the brand has almost 5 million followers, 6k posts on their page, and more than 2.200.000 posts with the hashtag #DanielWellington. 

The strategy they used is what we know today as influencers marketing. They were one of the first brands to spot the opportunity and take full advantage of it. 

Their content doesn’t only focus on the product and its features but focuses more on storytelling. 

They, for example, publish content that aligns with the lifestyle of their audience. 

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They also showcase customers’ stories and thus encourage their customers to share their experiences and post pictures with their products. (I mean who doesn’t want to feature in a channel with 6 million followers)

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So if you’re an e-commerce, especially the ones in the fashion industry, focusing on these visual-focused platforms is crucial to driving growth and brand awareness.

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5. User-Generated Content

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UCG (User-Generated Content) is one of the most important types of content nowadays, mainly since customers trust other customers more than brands. So if you’re an e-commerce brand, focusing your content marketing efforts on UCG is crucial to build trust and reinforce your relationship with your customers.

The good thing with UCG is that your audience does pretty much all the work for you since they’re the one creating the content, whether it is reviews or pictures or videos.

This will help you save time and money while sometimes even boosting your SEO. It helps you build brand awareness and support your lead generation strategy.

At the same time, it helps you get audience insights and feedback. It is more reliable for customers as the content is generated by other customers (which they trust more than you). All of this leads to gaining more traffic and increasing conversion rates. 

There are many ways of using UCG. It can be product ratings and reviews shared directly on your website or through other websites and blogs. This will increase the backlinks your website receives and thus increase your domain authority and rank higher in search engines.

UCG also goes together with social media. You can, for example, create a special hashtag for your campaigns and lead your customers to share content with the hashtag. You can also launch contests and challenges on the various platforms. 

To illustrate that, we’ll take a look back at our previous example: Daniel Wellington. The brand uses UCG perfectly to boost their content marketing strategy. 

Daniel Wellington executed UCG so efficiently that the hashtag # DanielWellington was used in more than 2.200.000 posts.

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6. Interactive content

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Interactive content is used to engage your audience through participation. So rather than just reading or watching, your audience actually interacts with you in different ways. To put it simply: it’s a conversation, where you don’t have to actively participate. 

Interactive content can take many forms: surveys, polls, calculators, quizzes, or assessments. 

With its different and unique nature, interactive content helps you distinguish yourself from your competitors. It attracts people and encourages them to spend more time on your website. It drives a lot of engagement and sharing on social media. 

Depending on your e-commerce activity, you can provide different types of interactive content. The most important is to keep it unique and valuable for your audience.

The best example to illustrate it, is … is … (drum roll) is Beardbrand (yes, once again). 

If you’ve visited their website earlier, you have surely noticed the quiz they have on their homepage since it’s the first thing you see on their website.

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The great thing about it is not only that it's interactive but it's also an amazing lead generation tool (I’ve taken the test, you know, beardless problems… and it was actually really fun and engaging). 

The quiz was powered by Typeform and it was such a huge success that even Typeform interviewed Eric Bandholz to breakdown his strategy.

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At the end of the quiz, the brand asks you for your email in exchange for the results and this proved to be so successful that the brand collected more than 150k emails only from the tool and the quiz’s results got shared thousands of times on different social media platforms.

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And that’s just one within many benefits. After analyzing the data they collected, Eric and his team noticed that the majority of their customers mention travelling as one of their top hobbies, and this led the brand to design travel-friendly products in terms of size. 

So if you’re considering which type of content you should focus on, interactive content is definitely something you should consider. 

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Before ending this article, I’ll share with you some tips and things to remember before choosing your content types:

• Make sure the content types you choose are relevant to your brand and to your audience. 
  

• Don’t stick to just one type of content and try many approaches.
  Content marketing isn’t an exact science, so test, test, and test. (keep the good and throw the bad)
  

• Producing great content isn’t enough, so make sure to spend as much time to distribute it through various channels.
  

• Repurpose your content and make sure to repackage it and share it more often on different channels. 
  

• Include storytelling in your content to create an emotional bond with your customers and to strengthen the relationship with them.

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Finally, e-commerce content marketing is an invaluable opportunity to raise awareness around your brand and to drive more engagement. Choosing the best types for your e-commerce is crucial for your strategy’s success. 

PS: Don’t forget, content works best when it’s relevant and targeted to a specific audience.

As we’ve seen it in our previous article about customer service, providing great customer support is crucial to driving success for your e-commerce. It helps you boost your customers’ loyalty, get positive reviews, enhance brand reputation and ensure sustainable growth. 

In order to provide great customer service, you’ll need to implement different strategies and use the latest tools. One of these indispensable tools is having a helpdesk. 

A helpdesk is a centralized information and support management system. It is an assistance center that offers a one-stop point of contact which provides the opportunity for companies to handle and resolve customer problems, questions, and queries by automating the complaint resolution processes through a ticket management system that automates the management of customer interaction among all the channels. 

Using a helpdesk can help you increase customer satisfaction as they will have their queries resolved quickly and their questions answered through the channels that they like the most. It also helps to boost your customer support team productivity since the repetitive tasks can be automated and the customers’ information is centralized and easy to access which makes the customers’ experience smoother.

To choose the right helpdesk for your e-commerce, you’ll need to take into consideration different factors. To help you out, we selected for you, the one, we feel are the most important:

1. Implementation and integrations:

Before choosing, make sure to check if the helpdesk is easy to implement in your actual setup, so:

• Take a look at the configuration and customization process and see if it's quick enough. 
• Double check the structure to how tickets, emails, team members and dashboards are organized. Related tasks should be performed quickly and thus getting a solution that provides the best user experience is crucial. 
• You’ll also need to see if it integrates with other software and solutions you use, while also making sure the integration of other add-ons and functionalities is quick and easy. 
  

2. Scalability: 

One software out there might be the best one for you at the moment but there’s one thing that you need to keep in your mind if you plan on still growing your e-commerce business: scalability. The solution may fit your budget and requirements for now but it has to be able to satisfy your customer service needs and deliver the main functionalities as your operations will scale. Switching plans is both expensive and tiring as you’ll need to train your team on your new solution, so making sure you choose a helpdesk that scale with your e-commerce as it grows is essential when you make your choice. 

3. Cost:

It is obvious that you will want to select the helpdesk with the best performance at the lowest price, however, make sure to know exactly what features do you want and what’s the size of your operations and team to anticipate all the possible costs before making your decision. Many solutions offer add-ons and integration and the addition of everything can be really expensive, some others have good starting packages but get more and more expensive as your company grows. Some of them offer a free trial which can be a good way to test different solutions and see which one matches best.

4. Reporting and analytics:

Once you implement your customer support processes and start working to solve your customer queries, you’ll need to monitor the performance and efficiency, Choosing a solution that helps you track your team’s and individual performance is essential to improve your processes and team’s results. Being able to track different indicators such as the number of tickets assigned, customer satisfaction, tickets type, etc. can help you note which are the problems that your customers are usually facing (hopefully not too much) and you can design the solution needed to prevent these problems from happening. Easy and detailed reporting can really help you boost your whole customer service department so don’t forget to focus on it before making your choice.

5. Channels:

Helpdesks provide customer support on multiple channels including emails, calls, chatbots, forms, etc. Subscriptions usually escalate from a tier to the upper one in the number of functionalities, channels, and price. So make sure the channels that you’re using or intend to use are available with the plan that you choose. If your customer service department focuses on multi-channel support, you may want to choose a solution that offers a big range of channels. 

6. The number of agents (or team members):

Many helpdesks base their billing sometimes on the number of agents per month, so determining it before you actually make your choice is an important step in the process. Having an exact number of agents will help you make the exact cost projection and thus will help you during the decision process. Defining your needs and your goals when it comes to your customer service and understanding these factors will give you a bigger perspective during your decision. It will help you save time and clearly erase any doubt (and if you still have some, don’t hesitate to email us). 

For the upcoming paragraphs, we’ll go through 6 of the best helpdesks right now, we’ll explore their pricing and some of their key pros and cons. We’ll also review some tools that might help you boost your customer support team: 

7. Freshdesk: 

Sprout: 

Free plan for an unlimited number of agents and includes different features such as email ticketing, knowledge base, etc. Good offer for a young entrepreneur or to test the solution before.

Blossom: 

$15/agent/month billed yearly. 

• It includes all the features included in the free plan.
• Offers other features such as automation, marketplace apps, chat and calls managing, etc. 
• It is a perfect offer for small teams.
  

Garden: 

$29/agent/month (billed yearly). 

• It also includes all the features in the previous plan 
• New features like performance reports, time tracking, and sessions replay. 
• It is ideal for a growing e-commerce with increasing operations and customers.
  

Estate: 

$49/agent/month (billed yearly). 

• Same thing as usual as it includes the same features as in the previous plans 
• Has an addition of features like the automation of tickets’ assignment or powerful reports with deeper insights and data. 
• Suits perfectly a large e-commerce website with thousands of customers. 
  

Forest: 

$109/agent/month (billed yearly).

• Offers the same features as the previous plan 
• Includes new features like skill-based ticket assignment, where tickets are assigned to the agents that are most proficient in handling specific issues.
• Has Co-browsing, where your agents can share their screen with customers to help them solve their issues. 
• It is perfect for big enterprises and companies that have a huge number of customers

As you may have seen it, Freshdesk is a really flexible solution that offers a variety of plans to accommodate any type of business. When it comes to the helpdesk itself, it has a wealth of integrations, it is intuitive and its most interesting feature is the gamification one, where support becomes more exciting as your turn it into a game, while agents are completing tasks, they earn points, win rewards and thus make support more enjoyable. The interface is really easy to use and you’ll have the opportunity to create accounts or emails from any page.

Freshdesk is perfect for small teams since its first offer is 15$ and still offers all the necessary and quality of features. It is also a great fit for growing teams as it has a large number of offers with all the features that any kind of team needs. 

8. Zendesk Support:

Essential: 

$5/agent/month. 

• It is the starter plan and the most basic one. 
• It offers email and social channels support, interaction history and a mobile software development kit.
  

Team: 

$19/agent/month. 

• It has all the features from the previous plan.
• The addition of performance dashboards, different apps and integrations, and custom business rules. 
  

Professional: 

$49/agent/month. 

• It includes multilingual content, customer satisfaction survey, and advanced analytics.
• It also includes the features of the team plan. 
• It is the most interesting of the first ones, maybe not the best in terms of price but still worth the try. 
  

Enterprise: 

$99/agent/month. 

• It has many add-ons compared to the previous plan, such as multiple ticket forms, skills-based routing, multi-brand supports, etc. 
  

Elite: 

$199/agent/month. 

• It is Zendesk’s most expensive plan.
• It has all the features of the enterprise one.
• It offers unlimited light agents, elite support, advanced encryption and security, etc. 
  

Zendesk Support is really easy to use and has a solid ticket management system. It takes a real marketing-oriented approach and integrates the larger Zendesk suite. Even if all the plans include a free trial for you to test the product, it still remains a really expensive solution for small and medium enterprises, especially that all the best features are only available at the high pricing tiers. The price can also escalate pretty quickly due to all the different integrations that are separated from the plan.

Despite all this, it still is the best choice for e-commerce that wants to integrate marketing into customer support.

9. Zohodesk: 

Free plan: 

• Up to three agents.
• Includes 15 features like an email inbox and web form, a customizable help center, a knowledge base, etc… 
• It is a really good option for small e-commerce with just a hundred of customers.
  

Professional: 

$12/user/month. 

• It includes multiple new features such as multi-channel support, automation, customer satisfaction ratings, advanced reports, and dashboards. 
• It is the most popular plan of the three (according to themselves).
• It’s cheap and well suited for small teams.
  

Enterprise: 

$25/user/month. 

• It is the most expensive plan of Zohodesk.
• It offers multi-brand help center, scheduled reports, live chat channel and many other features… 
• It has at the same time a very good value proposition as it includes all the features to properly run a customer support team and a really cheap price compared to the competition. 
  

When it comes to the interface, it is really easy to use, it offers an efficient ticketing system and an easy to use knowledge base. It has various reports like first response time or resolution time by teams. It also integrates with the Zoho suite that offers plenty of other apps and solutions.

Even if it lacks on-premises functionalities and language support, Zohodesk is a good fit for small businesses (we all are poor) who seek a complete solution at a really cheap price. 

10. Kayako:

Inbox plan: 

$15/agent/month. 

• It includes a shared email, chat, and social inbox. 
• It has more than 600 integrations with Zapier, basic help center, insights, etc. 
• It is a good fit for really small teams and not a large number of customers.
  

Growth: 

$30/agent/month. 

• Has all the features from the previous plan.
• Grants access to a number of interesting add-ons such as automation, customer views and reporting, multi-brand, etc. 
• It also gives free access to 5 collaborators who write internal notes but can’t reply to customers. 
  

Scale: 

$60/agent/month. 

• It offers new features like advanced workflow customization, internal help center, and Salesforce integration. 
• It also allows access to 10 free collaborators. 
  

Kayako is a functional help desk that offers a lot of different communication channels. Its chat called Kayako Messenger integrates directly with your website. It certainly lacks a few features as the voice chat which requires other solutions from outside vendors. It also doesn’t provide a proper customer feedback option. We found Kayako to be a good helpdesk for a good price. It’s best suited for businesses with an average budget and who seeks a powerful chat support. 

11. Happyfox:

Mighty: 

$29/agent/month. 

• It comes with many features such as agent collision, ticket templates, self-knowledge base, scheduled reports, etc. 
• It has all the basics that a small business needs. 
  

Fantastic: 

$49/agent/month. 

• It includes all the features from the mighty plan.
• It has many added features such as customer satisfaction surveys, custom dashboards, notifications for SLA breaches, etc.
  

Enterprise: 

$69/agent/month. 

• Includes all the features provided in the fantastic plan
• New features like tasks and asset management.
• Provides reports on custom fields
• It offers a long list of integrations 
  

Enterprise plus: 

$89/agent/month. 

• It is the most expensive plan from Happyfox. 
• It has all the features from previous plans
• It offers the possibility to access the services of a dedicated customer success manager. 
• It can support up to 15 different brands within a single helpdesk and offers a storage space of more than 1000GB. 
  

Happyfox is a complete helpdesk with tons of integrations. All of the plans come with SSL security, an unlimited number of tickets, multilingual support and knowledge base. Though, it requires a minimum of 3 agents for every plan. It offers an easy ticketing system as emails can be automatically converted into tickets. It has a lot of helpful automation features. It lets you track the most popular article in the knowledge base which is helpful to better understand your customers.

Taking into consideration all these factors, Happyfox sits as one of the best helpdesks for any type of business as it is really flexible and affordable.

11. Gorgias:

Basic: 

$50/month with 2 months off (when billed annually). 

• It gives access to an unlimited number of agents.
• It lets you handle 500 tickets per month and offers 7 integrations. 
• You’ll have to pay $12 for each additional 100 tickets.
  

Pro: 

$166/month with 2 months off (when billed annually).

• It also gives access to an unlimited number of agents with 2000 tickets per month included.
• It has 15 integrations and it costs $10 for every 100 additional tickets. 
  

Advanced: 

$416/month with 2 months off (when billed annually). 

• It still gives access to unlimited agents.
• It covers the handling of 6000 tickets per month and has 30 integrations. 
• You’ll have to pay $8,3 for each additional 100 tickets. 
  

Enterprise custom: 

• This plan gives the opportunity to have a dedicated automation specialist with unlimited integrations and agents. 
• The ticket volume is custom and you can have a volume discount on them.
  

The specificity with Gorgias is that it is designed especially for Shopify stores, so it perfectly integrates with it. It offers a complete multi-channel experience as it connects all of your support channels. Gorgias is easy to use, set up and offers easy solutions for interaction with customers. It lets you set up automatic answers, tags to sort tickets in your custom views. You can design email templates which is a true time saver. Since Gorgias is a new product, there are many small bugs and glitches, but as they have great customer support (would have been funny if it wasn’t the case, right?), these small problems are fixed quickly. The only matter can be in its price structure as it is based on tickets handling rather than the number of agents, which can make it hard to compare with other helpdesks. So before you choose make sure to know approximately (we hope you do know… exactly) the number of tickets that you’re handling at the moment.

Gorgias is a really interesting solution for Shopify shops as it has all the features and integrations needed for growing businesses.

Having reviewed the 6 helpdesks that we believe are the most interesting ones nowadays, you have a clearer idea of which one is better for your e-commerce and business needs. 
Adding to that we also wanted to quickly review some other solutions and tools that can help you boost and optimize your customer service processes and here are 2 of them:

12. Front:

Front is an email management software that helps you manage private and team emails as well as other communication channels such as chat widgets, social media, or SMS. It helps you manage email addresses such as contact@pleasedonttellusyourissues.io in an organized way. It also provides the opportunity to automate your workflow. It offers different insights on message volumes, response time, or team performance. It offers plenty of integrations such as Hubspot, Slack or Salesforce.

When it comes to pricing, it offers 4 different plans:

Starter: 

$9/user/month. 

• It includes individuals email inboxes, 3 team inboxes (only email), and 3 basic workflows.
  

Plus:

$19/user/month. 

• It offers everything in the starter 
• It includes 10 team inboxes with email, social and chat. 
• It provides unlimited basic rules and 3rd party integration.
  

Pro: 

$39/user/month. 

• Has all the features from the Plus plan.
• It also has 25 team inboxes with all types of channels. 
• It offers pro rules and integrations and also has deeper analytics reports.
  

Platform: 

$79/user/month. 

• It offers enhanced admin controls and security settings suitable for large organizations.
• It grands the possibility to manage multiple team workspaces in one account with unified billing. 
  

According to your needs and the size of your e-commerce, you can choose the plan that best suits you to boost your interactions with your customers and optimize your processes. The only matter is that all these add-ons can be pretty expensive at some point for SME. 

Anyway Front, remains an interesting tool that can help you take your interactions and communication to a whole new level.

13. Botmind:

Botmind is an hybrid chatbot solution that easily integrates with customer service tools to automatically answer the frequent questions of your customers. It automates to some extent your customer support live chat. It is primarily targeted for e-commerce owners in order to gain time and decrease costs. The solution can help you automate 40% of your chat support by answering questions like: where is my order? or I want to change my delivery address, how can I do it?

The solution basically uses all the data available to answer the possible questions and if the answer isn’t available would automatically forward it to one of your agents. Botmind has a large offer of integrations to different CMS, live chats, and helpdesks

Talking exclusively to Botmind’s co-founder, Jonathan Kam, he revealed to us that today, the tool answers up to 50 questions and is expected to reach a number of 90 questions in the near future and instead of covering just 45% of live chat automation, it will reach about 65%. Talking about his vision of the customer service industry nowadays, Jonathan summarized it really well:

“The only real boss is the customer”.

Botmind’s prices aren’t displayed on their website which doesn’t give us an idea on how much would its usage cost. It also has the main limitation that any AI-powered tools face, which is the inability to answer questions that need empathy. Despite these small disadvantages, it still remains a really interesting tool, especially for an e-commerce website where live chat is core to their customer service.

Now that we’ve covered what does good customer service mean, that we listed all the factors you need to take into consideration while choosing a helpdesk, that we reviewed the best helpdesks available and showed you some interesting tools that can help you boost your processes, you’re ready to design a kickass customer support strategy to enhance your customers experience and increase their satisfaction.

In recent years, with the development of the digital and constantly connected world, we’ve witnessed a huge change in our consumption habits.

E-commerce now has become a part of everyday life, customers are using their different devices (phones, tablets or computers) to buy products with increasing frequency. According to Statista, it is growing at such a pace that, the revenues generated from e-commerce sales are projected to reach almost 4.88 trillion dollars by 2021 which represents a growth of 365% compared to 2014.

This increase in sales in the e-commerce industry is followed by another phenomenon: the increase in the number of returns and despite all the efforts made to acquire new customers and to retain them, online retailers are still overlooking this part of the process.

According to Invesp, at least 30% of products ordered online are returned while in the last three years, 89% of consumers have returned an online purchase. As reported by Shopify, 42% of them have returned an online purchase during the last 6 months.

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1. Main reasons of product returns

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There are many reasons behind these incredibly high rates and here are the 8 most important ones according to chargeback:

• Incorrect product or size ordered
  The main reason for this is that customers don’t have the chance to test the products before making their purchase which makes it hard for them to select the size that fits them best. Which makes it the main reason for returns, especially in the fashion industry.
• Product no longer needed
  Many customers change their mind in the time between the buying decision and the order delivery. That’s why it is crucial to have an efficient and fast shipping method.
• The product did not match the description on the website or in catalog
  Most of the times the product pages aren’t clear and accurate. Pictures sometimes don’t give a real view of the product and description aren’t that detailed.
• The product did not meet customer’s expectations
  This is due, most of the times, to the fact that e-commerce are overselling their products and customers just don’t see the product’s value you’re claiming.
• The company shipped wrong product or size
  We’re human and we all make mistakes but it is important to coach and teach your employees to reduce these mistakes.
• Purchased during the holiday season
  Many gifts are offered during the holiday season to relatives and friends and sometimes we just don’t know what they like and we get it wrong (well, I always get it wrong) which increases the returns rates.
• Wardrobing (when a buyer purchases an item and uses it for a one-time purpose with the intent of returning it after the fact)
• Deliberate fraud
  ‍Here, we talk about criminal fraud, most of the times, it is due to peolpe paying with stolen credit cards or counterfeit money.

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2. Types of product returns

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Along with these reasons, we also notice the emergence of some “out of the ordinary” types of return customers:

• The "wardrober" type: The kind of customer who buys an article to use it once and then return it after. We all have that one friend who buys classy and expensive clothes, to wear them during parties and return them the day after.
• The fitting roomer:
  The kind of customer who buys the same products but with different sizes and colors, tries them and returns the ones that did not fit or the ones he didn’t like.
  This kind of purchasing behavior is becoming so popular that some brands are trying to differentiate themselves by specifically encouraging customers to do so.
  To illustrate, Warby Parker, an e-commerce company that sells fashionable and affordable eyewear, started as a small e-commerce and is now valued to almost 2 billion dollars. The secret to their success is their Home Try On program where they target fitting roomer customers. The program consists of shipping to the customers 5 frames for free so that they can try them, select their favorite and ship back the rest. With this initiative, the e-commerce company turned one of today’s struggles into one of their differentiation points.
  

Returning a product means more cost (and sometimes more frustration) for either the customer or the e-commerce, that’s why it is important to understand the role returns play in the purchasing experience. According to Statista, returns delivery will cost 550 billion dollars by 2020 in the US only. This represents 15% of all revenues generated from e-commerce and it reveals to be a clear conversion and profit killer.

So in order to address this problem, (as we’ve mentioned in our last article: How to boost your sales in your e-commerce with growth hacking?) focusing on each stage of the customer journey to drive sales growth is more than crucial for e-commerce and returns now plays a big part of it.

Facing returns while not being prepared for it can be very expensive and since you cannot get rid of returns completely, creating a return strategy is then a priority if you want to sustain your operations as an e-commerce owner. Setting a clear policy to manage your reverse logistics can help you move from a cost to profit perspective. Providing a smooth return experience to your customers does not only help you decrease costs and gain in profit margins but also develop your sales. It is an opportunity to retain customers rather than lose them.

According to a research study conducted by Professor Amanda Bower, customers who receive free shipping on returns increased their purchases over the next two years from 58 to 357%, which comes to prove what Craig Adkins, VP of Services and Operations at Zappos, said: “Our best customers have the highest returns rates, but they are also the ones that spend the most money with us and are our most profitable customers.”

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3. Build an efficient returns process

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Defining an effective return strategy can also help you gain a competitive advantage, increase efficiency and optimize every step of your logistics chain. Along with that, you’ll also need to ensure that returns decrease, in order to do so, we prepared for you a list of things to check:

• Identify which products have the highest return rate:
  Analyzing your data related to returns can help you spot which specific products are causing problems to customers; it will help you point out any quality or communication problems related to the specific products that are returned. You’ll then be able to address these problems and so decrease the return rates and provide a better experience to your customers. Imagine that you are selling shoes and you have a very high return ratio on one specific pair, you might discover that those are mislabeled!
• Add a feedback form:
  Adding a feedback form that your customers can fill gives you the opportunity to collect the right information from the customers. You’ll be able to understand the reasons behind each return and also get a clear idea of your customers expectations.
• Add customer reviews:
  Encouraging customers to leave reviews in your product pages can be a good way to avoid returns and boost your sales. It increases your credibility and builds trust with your customers. It also provides more information to support your reviews to provide the right information for other customers to make the best purchasing decision.
• Optimize your product page:
  Make sure to use detailed descriptions and quality images for your products. Also, make sure to include additional information that is specific to each type of product: for example, if it is for clothes, don’t forget to add size guides. You can also add videos on how to set the product with different components if the product needs a specific set up. This will help you set the right expectations for your customers and thus not only decrease your return rates but also increase your conversion rates.
• Provide real-time customer service:
  ‍Another way to decrease return rates is to offer real-time customer service via chatbox, this allows your customers to interact with you before making their purchase. Helping and providing them with the needed information will help you ease their experience, boost your sales and significantly lower your return rates.
• Create an FAQ:
  Creating a FAQ where you answer common questions your customers ask is a great way to provide relevant information about your products and your return policy
  This will help your customers to easily navigate through your website and have all the needed information before making their purchase. It will also save time and effort for your customer's support team.

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4. Improve your returns process

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Now that you’ve got this list of actions to decrease your return rates, it doesn't mean that you won't have anymore returns, some can't be anticipated, your customers might have changed their mind between the moment they make the purchase and the moment they receive the product (even if you provide same day delivery, yes…). So let’s move on to the list of actions you’ll need to take in order to establish a good return policy:

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Define the cooling off period:

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The cooling off period is the interval of time between the reception of the product and the moment in which the customer has to return it. One of the most important factors to take into consideration before setting your cooling off period is the law.

Each territory has its own laws regarding consumer rights, for example in Europe, 14 days is the minimum amount of time for a cooling off period and customers don’t need any valid reason to return a product. While in the United States, there’s no minimum required and so you can set it the way you want, your return policy will need to state it clearly or else the cooling off period is defined by the laws related to each state.

You can set your strategy however you want though, you can opt for the shortest period possible by law if you go for a cost-effective strategy, or you can set a longer interval if you want to use return as a differentiation point. Nike for instance, offers a "30 days free return dirt and all" policy, you basically can run a marathon with your new nike shoes and return those for free...

The laws related to the cooling off period apply in the country where the company is established, not the customer.

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Define the valid reasons for a return:

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Depending on the territory your e-commerce is established in, you can chose to define the valid reasons for a return. If your e-commerce is located in Australia, you can for example set which reasons are valid and which ones are not.

When it comes to e-commerce established in Europe, as we’ve mentioned earlier, customers don’t need a valid reason, but what you can do though is to define which reasons are valid for refunds and which ones are valid for exchanges.

This will help you avoid any confusion with your customers.

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Define who pays the return:

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As you may know, return costs are quite expensive and in order to avoid any confusion during the process, you’ll need to clearly define who pays the return fees.

If you want to go for a cost-effective strategy, you can let the customer pay the return fees. While this decision can a good one in the short term, opting for a differentiation strategy by supporting the return fees is much better in the long run.

According to Invest, 79% of consumers want free return shipping and 62% would buy again from a brand offering free returns/exchanges. So opting for a free return strategy can be expensive on one single order but this will help you drive more sales and offer a better experience to your customers (and improve their lifetime value)

If your e-commerce isn’t able to offer free returns, you can also choose to share the return costs with your customers

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Define the conditions of the return:

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In order to avoid any confusion, you’ll also need to define the specific conditions needed for the return to be valid. A good way to do it is by asking yourselves the following questions:

Do you need the price label to be still on the product or not?

Do you need the product to be in the same package/box?

Do you need the return label to be in the shipment?

For example, in order to avoid wardrobing, many fashion online retailers ask for the price label to be still on the clothes for the return to be valid. Again, we all know someone capable of doing an entire party with the label hid in the collar :)

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Include instructions for returning the products:

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One important aspect to include in your return policy is the instructions for your customer on how to return your products. This will help make each step of the process as easy as possible for them. According to Invesp, 92% of consumers will buy something again if returns are easy. So easing their return experience will not only help you gather positive reviews but also boost your sales.

Here’s a simple example of how your instructions could look like:
- Please, make a return inquiry on the website by specifying the product, the number of the order, etc.
- Please, use the same package we sent you.
- Fill out the return label that you found in the package and include it inside your shipment.
- etc.

You can specify which carrier can the customer use to send back the product. You can also specify the sending method for example through pick up or drop off, etc.
Your instructions need to be simple, clear with an easy to understand language.

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Explain how the refund works:

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Another thing that you’ll need to state in your return policy is how the refund is going to be made. You’ll need to give information about how many days will it take for the customer to receive their refund or their exchange. You need to state at which stage of the process you are going to refund them, is it when the return is accepted ? or will you refund them when the product is finally received in your warehouse?

You’ll also need to define which way you are going to refund your customers. You can choose to refund them on their credit card, offer an exchange or offer a gift card.

This step is important so that your customers have a clear idea regarding the refund or the exchange process.

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Set a clear return timeline:

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It is crucial that your customers understand and know how much time will all the process time. You’ll need to specify the number of days they have in order to make the return request, the number of days that it will take for them to get refunded or to get their product exchanged.

You can also consider extending this timeline during the holiday period.

Christmas, for instance, is one of the busiest periods of the year when it comes to returns. Since many of the purchases made during that time are gifts for relatives. Extending your returns timeline will help you keep the shoppers who made size errors happy.

Creating a return policy will help you set the right expectations for your customers, improve your customer service and boost your sales. Now that you know how to create a return policy from scratch, we prepared for you a list of tips to optimize it:

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Highlight your return policy:

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Based on Invesp insights, 67% of shoppers check the returns page before making a purchase, so make sure your return policy is easily and quickly accessible for your customers. You can add it to the header to be accessible from any page on your website. Also make sure to showcase it in your cart, products and checkout pages. This will help you ease your customers’ experience, build trust and use it as a differentiation factor to boost your sales.

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Automate your return processes:

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Answering your return inquiries manually can take a lot of time, cost and effort, so automation is a great option to improve your customer service. Customers should be able to create their and track their returns easily.

Automating your processes gives you the opportunity to be more time and cost effective. It also provides a better experience for your customers that will lead to a better retention and thus a growth in sales.

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Use returns as an opportunity:

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Having a clear and customer-friendly return policy can be a great opportunity to showcase your services. Providing a good customer service can turn potential leaving customers into loyal ones who will spend even more money on your products in the future.

Finally now that you know everything about returns, from the main problems to the best tips to do, let us know how implementing a good return policy helped you boost your customer satisfaction and grow your sales.