How to create an effective e-commerce customer engagement strategy

Getting your feet wetter in the e-commerce landscape? Get ready to propel sales growth with a strong customer engagement strategy!

These days, managing an e-commerce business is a heavily demanding task. Selecting the best e-commerce platform to host your products and services while adopting modern payment methods is only a starting point. A recent report reveals that the Southeast Asian e-commerce market will increase by 0.7 billion users from 2024 to 2029. By 2029, e-commerce users hit a new peak of 2.18 billion.

Given the immense potential for e-commerce market expansion, with a saturated market of similar products and price offerings, how will you compete with other online retailers? The key to overcoming this challenge is adopting a customer engagement strategy and fostering personalized interactions with them.

In this blog post,  we will walk you through the proven ways of customer engagement strategies and how QashierPOS can help lock in repeated sales and loyal customers for your e-commerce business.

What is a customer engagement strategy?

A customer engagement strategy is a roadmap bridging emotional connections and positive interactions with your customers across all touchpoints. It aims to build long-term relationships, nurture customer preferences, and tailor brand-related experiences to meet and exceed expectations. This approach will elevate your e-commerce business beyond one-time sales, ensuring consistent sales growth with new and existing customers.

How to increase e-commerce customer engagement 

These days, customers expect your brand to anticipate their needs and seek continuous support at every stage of their buying journey. A highly engaged customer contributes more revenue than the average. What can you do to captivate shoppers and cultivate an enduring consumer-brand connection?

1. Provide consistent omnichannel customer engagements

Customers often begin interacting with a brand on one channel and continue conversations with others. In Asia, the survey below indicates that some consumers browse products on websites and then purchase them in retail stores. Conversely, consumers from other countries prefer to find and buy items directly online.

The omnichannel customer experience (CX) involves unifying all customer interactions across various touchpoints – website, social media, mobile apps, SMS/ messaging apps, emails, physical stores, kiosks, live chat, video calls and voice assistance. From the customer’s perspective, typically Gen Z and Millenials, 9 out of 10 desire an omnichannel experience with e-commerce, from browsing to booking or buying. 

Why has omnichannel e-commerce become a top priority as a customer engagement strategy? Foremost, your brand can deliver consistent messages to all visitors or customers receiving the same messages on every platform. Active customer support should be available on all channels, including your website, Facebook Messenger, TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, Line, and email. If possible, avoid redirecting customers between channels. 

On top of that, understanding the customer journey allows your business to personalize their buying experience. Personalization is essential for omnichannel customers, who typically have a 30 percent higher lifetime value than those who purchase through only one channel.

Regardless of how many touchpoints are involved, your customers perceive their buying experience with your brand as one cohesive experience. This perception highlights the importance of implementing a solid customer engagement strategy.

2. Dynamic onsite customer engagement – live chat & chatbot

Your physical retail store is likely renowned for its superb customer service, with staff greeting and assisting customers with everything they need in the store. The same goes with an e-commerce live chat – a plugin integrated directly into the website to allow visitors to chat with sellers in real time. 

E-commerce retailers without live chat support on their websites may risk losing business to competitors who offer this service. Live chat, which boasts a satisfaction rate of 73 percent for providing immediate support, is one of the most effective tools for managing unhappy online shoppers. 

95 percent of customers value high-quality support more than speed. When customers can resolve their issues in real time, their trust and reliance on the brand increase, ultimately leading to significantly improved conversion rates. 63 percent of them are most likely to become repeat customers.

However, manpower has limitations. Consider integrating live chat with a chatbot to provide instant responses to customer queries.  This method can automate up to 80 percent of routine inquiries, allowing your customer support team to focus on more complex issues.

Although chatbots may not match human intelligence, they can efficiently handle high volumes of support requests and generate leads. Chatbots can reduce operational costs, cross-promote new products, and, most importantly, retain customers through strong engagement with 24/7 availability. See the image below for chatbot conversion rates.

3. Seamless checkout process

How often do your customers click the buy button, and you find them abandoning their cart at the last moment? The checkout process is the grand finale for your e-commerce store after customers finalize product choices, select add-ons, confirm shipping options, and provide payment.

A recent statistic indicates almost 70 percent of potential sales loss due to online shopping cart abandonment. How can you optimize the shopper’s journey from awareness to the finish line?

• Simplify checkout pages by minimizing header and footer distractions.
• Streamline navigation during checkout to prevent customers from feeling lost and abandoning their carts.
• Offer free shipping if possible, which can reduce checkout abandonment significantly.
• Include live chat or a chatbot to provide immediate assistance and address customer queries.
• Offer a wide range of payments, including credit/debit cards, buy now pay later (BNPL), QR code payments, mobile payments, digital wallets, bank transfers, and cash on delivery (COD) if available.

4. Feature all customer reviews – positive & negative

Do you connect your business Google review to e-commerce websites? Or do you have a section featuring all the previous and current reviews? Customer reviews are a big YES to engage with your shoppers constantly and hold value in the e-commerce space.

Think of ways to incentivize shoppers when they leave reviews or create content. If your business has a budget to cater special deals, coupons or discounts to the reviewers, encourage them to share your products or customer service.

However, if customers send in negative feedback, take this advantage to learn what makes them unhappy. You apologize and show empathy while paying attention to their dissatisfaction and resolve it immediately. That is proven that returning customers will spend 3x or 67 percent more on average than one-time buyers. When unhappy customers are willing to shop with you again, reach out to them to reconsider another review later. 

Simplify e-commerce sales with Qashier

Qashier simplifies your business sales by integrating it into one system. Shopify and WooCommerce users can integrate Qashier e-commerce plugin into their existing platforms, streamlining both physical and online store inventories into a single, unified system. Whenever you make a sale in your physical store, your inventory automatically updates and syncs across Qashier Cloud and your e-commerce platform. It’s that easy! Get started with Qashier’s omnichannel e-commerce integration today!

More about Qashier

Qashier offers multiple digital solutions, including QR code table ordering, table management (F&B), employee management, customer relationship management (loyalty programs), inventory management, data analytics, and track payments, in an all-in-one device.

Qashier promises a seamless setup within 10 minutes, without the need for technical expertise. It boasts a user-friendly interface that is simple for anyone to learn and use. If you require assistance, you’ll find 7 days-a-week responsive technical support from your local team.

Try the Qashier app for free on your own Android device! Speak to us to see if Qashier’s Smart POS can meet your business needs. Schedule a meeting with us here, or contact us at +63 917 QASHIER (7274437) (Whatsapp and Viber) or email at [email protected].