Imagine spending countless resources to attract customers to your online store, only to see them leave without making a purchase or never returning after their first buy. 

Today customers have several options to buy from. It’s difficult to stand out from the competition and keep your customers engaged. 

Without effective ecommerce customer engagement strategies, you risk losing valuable customers to competitors who are better at fostering relationships and building loyalty.

Effective customer engagement is your key to keeping customers hooked to your ecommerce brand. By prioritizing personalized interactions, seamless multi-channel experiences, and real-time support, you can transform casual shoppers into loyal customers. 

In this blog, we proven ecommerce customer engagement strategies so your customers keep coming back for more.

Let’s dive in.

What is Ecommerce Customer Engagement?

Ecommerce customer engagement is the act of enhancing customers’ relationships with brands through various strategies such as gamification, influencer marketing, virtual experiences and online communities. 

Once your customers are engaged, they trust your brand more, buy more and share positive reviews about your brand. By engaging customers across various touchpoints, you instill a positive brand image in customers’ minds so they prefer you over your competitors. 

Importance of Customer Engagement in Ecommerce 

With thousands of options for every customer, ecommerce customer engagement is your key to stand out. Here’s why you need to focus of customer engagement in ecommerce:

1. Increased customer loyalty: Personalized ecommerce customer engagement fosters loyalty. Engaged customers are more likely to return for repeat purchases and become brand advocates.

2. Enhanced customer experience: Effective customer engagement ensures a seamless shopping experience across all touchpoints. This includes personalized recommendations, efficient customer service, and a user-friendly interface, all contributing to higher customer satisfaction and retention.

3. Higher conversion rates: Personalized marketing and real-time support, can lead to higher conversion rates. By addressing customer needs and preferences businesses can drive more sales and reduce cart abandonment.

4. Valuable customer insights: Engaging with customers provides valuable insights into their behaviors, preferences, and feedback. You can use this data to create customer segments, optimize marketing strategies, improve products, and tailor services to meet customer demands better. 

5. Competitive advantage: A well-executed customer engagement plan sets a brand apart from its competitors. By maintaining active engagement, you can build a strong brand reputation and attract more customers through word-of-mouth and positive reviews. 

Top E Commerce customer engagement strategies 

1.Use customer data to deliver personalized experiences

80% of customers are willing to share data in exchange for deals and offers. Their only demand is personalized experiences. Customers expect your brand to understand their preferences and deliver tailored customer experiences that resonate with their individual needs.

By collecting and analyzing customer data like browsing history, purchase history, social media interactions, and even customer feedback, you can gain valuable insights into their behaviors, preferences, and purchasing patterns. 

Use this data to create detailed customer profiles that help you deliver relevant content, offers, and recommendations to increase. Or, you can let Plivo CX do it for you. 

Plivo CX syncs real-time contacts from your Shopify store, and provides 360 degree visibility into their storefront activities, engagement and purchases. Use this information to create customer segments with as many rules as you like. 

You can capture events from your storefront like a customer leaving a product in their cart and trigger specific responses such as abandoned cart messages. This way, you can send 100% personalized messages to increase ecommerce engagement. 

2.Create an easy-to-use user interface

User interface is crucial to make customers stay on your ecommerce website. The importance of UI reflects in various statistics such as this:

“As page load time goes from 1 second to 10 second, the possibility of a mobile website visitor bouncing increases 123%.”

A well-designed website increases user experience and encourages users to explore further. When customers are able find everything without any friction, they’re more likely to return to your website. 

Here are some tips to enhance UI:

• Clear Menus: Use clear, descriptive labels for menu items to ensure the most important pages are easy to find.
• Breadcrumbs: Implement breadcrumb navigation to help users understand their current location on the site and easily backtrack if needed.
• Fast Loading Times: Optimize images and use efficient coding practices to ensure your site loads quickly on all devices especially mobiles.
• Consistent Design: Maintain consistency in fonts, colors, and button styles throughout your site to create a cohesive look.
• Whitespace: Use whitespace effectively to avoid clutter and make your content more readable. 
• Auto-fill Options: Enable auto-fill features in forms so users can quickly fill them up. 
• Engaging Features: Create a dynamic user experience with interactive elements such as sliders, hover effects, and animations to engage users.

3.Share interactive content 

Interactive content is designed to engage users actively. It encourages them to participate rather than passively consume information. Interactive content like games, quizzes, polls, surveys, interactive infographics, contests and giveaways work well to increase ecommerce customer engagement. 

Here’s a short guide sharing the best interactive content ideas for various ecommerce marketing channels to increase ecommerce engagement:

4.Gamify user experience 

Gamification is becoming popular as a marketing tool for enhancing purchases and customer satisfaction. It motivates consumers through the reward points they get for making more product purchases.

Gamification can cause emotional reactions in consumers, such as a sense of addiction, perceived usefulness, enjoyment, and curiosity. It motivates them to constantly browse on e-commerce sites, keeping them engaged and informed about the current market trends.

A study from Journal of Information Systems Engineering and Business Intelligence mentions that the usage of points, badges, and leaderboard impacts people to be more attentive when surfing the web.

Gamification increases ecommerce engagement as customers remain on those sites that use gamification for a longer period of time than on non-gamified sites. Here’s a table on the impact of various gamification elements on the consumers.

Source: Journal of Information Systems Engineering and Business Intelligence

5.Engage across multiple channels 

Mckinsey’s research shows that more than 59% of customers use 3-5 channels throughout their journey. That’s why omnichannel customer engagement is crucial. It makes sure that your brand is responsive and accessible across multiple channels that your customers may use.

Popular channels to target customer engagement are SMS, email and Whatsapp. You set up separate marketing campaigns for each channel or use an ecommerce marketing automation tool that lets you run all campaigns from one platform. Plivo CX is one such tool.

Plivo CX is a robust marketing automation that’s laden with tools to kickstart SMS marketing, email marketing and Whatsapp marketing from a single platform. It provides end-to-end marketing automation from customer segmentation to personalization to analytics. 
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You can use Plivo CX to get real contacts from your ecommerce store. Then, use the audience feature to build customer segments with unlimited rules. The journey feature in Plivo captures uses events from your storefront to trigger personalized SMS, emails or Whatsapp messages so you always send the right message to the right customer at the right time. 

All you have to do is select a preferred channel, create personalized content and schedule it. You also get an AI copywriting assistant to help you write engaging content. 

You can head over to Plivo CX right now and kickstart your omnichannel customer engagement. 

6.Create seasonal or holiday content 

Seasonal and holiday content can significantly boost ecommerce customer engagement as it taps into the current mood and interests of your audience. During specific times of the year, such as holidays, people actively search related keywords. For instance, searches for terms like "Christmas gift ideas" or "Black Friday deals" spike dramatically during November and December, as shown by Google Trends data.

You can post seasonal content to capitalize on these trends. Plan ahead by creating a content calendar that includes all major holidays and seasonal events relevant to your audience. You can also launch special promotions, discounts, or giveaways tied to the holiday or season.
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For example, here’s how Macy’s campaigned for Father’s day on their website: 

Source: Macy’sTo promote seasonal content on social media, use popular holiday-related hashtags to increase the visibility of your posts. For example, #christmasshopping or #summervacation.

7.Leverage influencer marketing and influencer wishlists 

Businesses are making $5.20 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. Additionally, 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations for their purchase decisions. Influencer wishlists, in particular, provide a curated selection of products endorsed by trusted personalities, making them highly effective in attracting customer engagement.Follow these tips to get maximum ecommerce customer engagement from influencer marketing:

• Choose influencers whose followers align with your target audience.
• Prioritize influencers with high engagement rates over those with just a large follower count. 
• Clearly define what you want to achieve with your influencer campaign, whether it’s brand awareness, increased sales, or enhanced social media engagement.
• Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of your campaign, such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and social media impressions.
• Have influencers curate wish lists featuring their favorite products from your brand and offer exclusive discounts or promotions for items on the influencer’s wishlist to incentivize purchases.

8.Provide a virtual experience

As per Mckinsey, 50% of fashion and beauty industry consumers want virtual experiences such try-ons and events. Both virtual and augmented reality help customers better engage with the product. Customers spend time trying on an outfit or a lipstick just for fun which increases their dwell time on your ecommerce website, thus increasing customer engagement. Here’s how you can provide a virtual experience in your ecommerce store to increase customer engagement:

• AR-powered try-ons: Use AR technology to allow customers to virtually try on clothing, accessories, or makeup. 
• 3D product visualization: Provide 3D models of products that customers can view from all angles. This is particularly useful for furniture, home decor, and other large items.

• 360-degree showrooms: Create virtual showrooms where customers can explore your product range in a 360-degree environment. This can mimic the in-store experience online.

• Chatbots and virtual assistants: Implement AI chatbots to assist customers in real-time, providing personalized recommendations based on their preferences and browsing history.

• AR-enhanced content: Incorporate AR elements into your marketing content, such as interactive ads, brochures, or catalogs. For example, users can scan a code to see a product come to life on their device.

9.Build onlines communities

An online community fosters a sense of belonging among customers. You can use this direct line of communication to understand customer needs, preferences, and pain points. Also, an engaged community can become a powerful word-of-mouth marketing tool.
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That said, building and nurturing an online community requires a strategic approach and consistent effort.

• First, you must identify a platform where your target audience is most active. This could be a social media platform, a dedicated forum, or a community feature on your website. 

• Once the platform is selected, share valuable content that resonates with your audience such as informative articles, engaging videos, and interactive posts that encourage them to discuss and participate.

You can also host regular events such as webinars, live Q&A sessions, and contests to increase customer engagement. On top of this, you can recognize and reward loyal members through shout-outs, exclusive offers, or a tiered membership program to enhance their sense of belonging.
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Several ecommerce brands have successfully built strong customer communities that bring people together. One notable example is LEGO. The LEGO Ideas community allows fans to submit their own designs for potential new sets. The community gives participants a sense of ownership in the brand’s product development.

Increase Your Ecommerce Customer Engagement using Plivo CX

Your customers need personalized engagement across various touch points. That’s why you need a robust tool that can send messages via multiple channels and Plivo CX is the perfect choice.

Plivo CX helps you engage customers over SMS, email and Whatsapp. It supports your marketing campaigns from syncing contacts to segmentation, content creation and analytics. Plivo CX’s ‘journey’ feature triggers personalized messages based on customer actions so your customers always get the right messages at the right time. 

The best part? You don’t have to write these messages by yourself. Plivo CX comes with an AI copywriting assistant that helps you write engaging copies. 

It’s time to kickstart your ecommerce customer engagement with Plivo CX. Sign up for Plivo CX now!