Retail technology Archives - Lateshipment.com Blog

4 Emerging and Promising Ecommerce Logistics Trends for 2024

Ian — Sat, 13 Jan 2024 13:36:12 +0000

Based on Statista’s prediction, global retail e-commerce sales are expected to grow 9.5% from 2023, a slight decrease from last year’s increase (10%). A line that we’ve all been hearing since the end of the pandemic and the dawn of the new age of e-commerce shopping is expected to return this year as well — while the growth rate is slow, e-commerce is still growing.

There are two ways to look at this.

Customers are still open to shop online amidst the re-opening of brick-and-mortar stores
E-commerce merchants are going to adopt new initiatives to spur more customers to spend time with their business

While the growth of e-commerce means so many things, it directly translates to higher parcel volumes. As consumers increasingly turn to online shopping, there exists a surge that places significant pressure on shipping carriers and the supply chain’s infrastructure.

Research predicts global parcel volume to grow from 8.5% through 2027. This necessitates continuous adaptations within the e-commerce and logistics spaces to handle the increasing demand and ensure timely and efficient order deliveries.

That said, 6,913 billion dollars being spent on an industry worldwide in a single year is a huge deal. The question is “How much % of it are you spending on growing your business”?

Knowing what other businesses are cooking, what industry leaders are predicting, and what is going to happen in the e-commerce logistics landscape can help you put your best foot forward and enjoy the fruits of success.

E-Commerce Logistics (B2C and B2B Parcel Shipping) Trends For 2024

Enter 2024, a year poised to be a turning point in the e-commerce logistics saga.

Businesses and consumers alike are consistently raising the bar. Sustainability, efficiency, and hyper-personalization are the new buzzwords. There is a consistent demand for revolution in how goods journey from virtual carts to living rooms.

So, what’s new, what’s hot, and what matters most? Here’s a straightforward article that covers the key trends you need to know to optimize your shipping strategy and deliver a seamless experience for your customers this exciting year.

Here’s something that you can expect inside:

The newer role and impact of AI in logistics
The need for sustainability in packaging and shipping
The increasing demand for faster and efficient deliveries
The evolution of customer expectations and hyper-personalization
The changes in trade regulations and customs procedures

1. Integration of advanced technologies in the form of AI and machine learning

According to a recent report by McKinsey, 55% of business professionals confirmed that their organizations have already integrated AI technology into their operations. Also, with the e-commerce logistics industry expected to witness substantial growth in the adoption of AI in the upcoming years, businesses that haven’t tapped into using this technology will probably get left behind in the race toward redefining the game.

One of the primary roles of AI in e-commerce in 2024, is enabling predictive analytics and real-time data, helping businesses make data-driven decisions in areas like demand forecasting, route optimization, and inventory management. For example, with predictive analytics, retailers can better plan for seasonal fluctuations and avoid overstocking or stockouts. Also, with automated processes, there is a reduced workload on manual processes like paperwork, leading to lower errors, and delays and increased efficiency and cost-effective operations.

Ultimately, with access to AI technology, stakeholders who are dependent on the supply chain can make informed decisions quickly, adapt to changes, and respond to disruptions effectively, thereby making it a critical asset in today’s e-commerce environment.

What you can do to keep up: Make use of Inventory Management tools such as Zoho Inventory, Salesforce, etc, to forecast demand fluctuations, avoid stockouts, and ensure smoother deliveries.

2. A greater focus on sustainability

Amidst timely deliveries and growing technology, a trend that has witnessed a spike for the last couple of years is sustainability in logistics practices. This comes from the place of today’s shoppers’ growing awareness of environmental concerns and a desire for more eco-friendly practices and businesses catering to their needs.

Here are a few boxes that businesses are looking to tick in 2024 in the context of sustainability:

Reduced packaging waste: E-commerce businesses are increasingly adopting practices that minimize packaging waste. This includes using packaging materials that are recyclable, or easily biodegradable. Also, businesses are optimizing packaging sizes to reduce the amount of excess material used.
Green logistics: Major shipping carriers like DHL, FedEx, and UPS have always committed to reducing their massive carbon footprint from frequent order deliveries that they take up on a day-to-day basis. This involves taking up initiatives in the form of carbon–neutral shipping, EVs and other alternative fuels, efficient routing leading to lower fuel consumption, etc.

What you can do to keep up: Use eco-friendly materials for your packaging needs, prioritize shipping partners that use electric vehicles and other carbon-neutral delivery options, sustainable warehousing, etc, will all come together to minimize the environmental impact of e-commerce logistics. Don’t forget to promote yourself as an eco-conscious e-commerce brand and ensure that consumers favor you.

3. A shift towards customer-centric experiences

In today’s highly competitive e-commerce landscape, the CX that businesses provide acts as the competitive differentiator. This leads to brands increasingly adopting a customer-centric approach to cater to the evolving needs and expectations of online shoppers. This approach encompasses various strategies and initiatives aimed at enhancing the overall shopping experience and building customer loyalty.

2024, much like previous years, taking a customer-centric approach involves providing personalized product recommendations, having a user-friendly Interface to minimize friction in the buying journey, offering proactive responsive customer service channels, faster shipping and delivery options, flexible returns and exchanges, omnichannel experiences, etc.

Also, with the abundance of data available and customers willing to share their data for a more personalized experience, businesses are increasingly tailoring their logistics operations to individual customer preferences. This means not only personalized product recommendations but also customized delivery options including delivery preferences like time slots and delivery locations.

4. Increased focus on strengthening Cybersecurity

As we progress further into the digital age, the e-commerce industry has become a prime target for cyberattacks. The increasing digitalization of supply chains has made them vulnerable to various threats, ranging from data breaches to ransomware attacks. In 2024, cybersecurity will take center stage as companies strive to fortify their defenses and safeguard the integrity and trust of their operations.

This includes secure backups, network segmentation, employee training to recognize and prevent phishing attacks, and improved user identity verification methods.

Naturally, businesses can expect stricter regulations and cybersecurity measures to safeguard customer information and ensure the integrity of delivery systems. Additionally, the physical security of packages will be paramount, with advanced tracking and anti-theft solutions becoming commonplace.

What you can do: Cybersecurity tools like IBM and Kaseya to safeguard customer information and ensure the integrity of delivery systems. Additionally, physical security of packages is paramount, so make use of a post-purchase automation solution like LateShipment.com with real-time tracking to stay in the know of parcels at all times and communicate the same with your customers.

Over to You

2024 promises to be a turning point in e-commerce logistics. By embracing these trends, businesses can gain a competitive edge, build customer loyalty, and contribute to a more sustainable future of deliveries. Whether you’re a tech-savvy start-up or a seasoned retailer, buckle up and get ready for the thrilling ride ahead!

The post 4 Emerging and Promising Ecommerce Logistics Trends for 2024 appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

How To Handle Returns And Exchanges During The Holidays

Sashank Ravindranath — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 06:52:27 +0000

With increased holiday sales comes an inevitable surge in returns and exchanges that could be a challenge post the shopping fiesta of BFCM and Christmas.

January is the peak month for package returns, with e-commerce businesses seeing 51% of the returns in a given year. However, the number of returns is generally high through December, January, and early February.

Fair warning: The problem is never returns but the challenges businesses face when they’re unequipped to deal with the sudden influx of returns be it due to falling prey to misconceptions or not having proper strategies to handle them effectively.

Businesses assume the post-purchase phase of a customer journey to end with shipping and delivery
Businesses assume returns are a cost-center that discourages customers from shopping with you again
Businesses often operate with limited resources, making it challenging to dedicate the time and effort required for effective returns strategies.

While this may seem daunting, a well-defined return policy and efficient processes can turn a potential headache into a positive customer experience and build customer loyalty.

Here’s a little something from our end to help e-commerce businesses like yours navigate the holiday returns rush effectively.

8 Tips To Handle Returns And Exchanges Like A Pro During The Holidays

1.Review your return policy and extend your return window

More often than not, holiday purchases are gifts for loved ones — hence, these packages might not get opened until after the holidays. Thus, during the holidays, you can consider offering a longer window (60-90 days) than your standard policy to accommodate holiday returns.

2. Clearly Communicate Your Policy

Make your return policy readily available throughout your website, especially on the product pages, order confirmations, and checkout areas. Make sure things are clear, concise, and easy to understand. For starters, you can include details about eligible items, timeframes, restocking fees, and instructions for initiating returns and exchanges in your policy.

3. Streamline the Return Process

Make the return process as simple and convenient as possible. Offer options for easy return initiation, printable return labels, multiple return locations, etc. Such actions help customers avoid long wait times and reduce frustrations.

4. Reduce Return-related Inquiries

Enable your customer service team to proactively handle return This helps in keeping customer interactions to a minimum during the order return phase. Similar to order deliveries, you can also send notifications about the return status to keep customers engaged. Ultimately, a good returns experience plays a decisive factor when it comes to their repeat shopping decision and thereby cements you as their preferred brand.

5. Enable Flexible Return Options

The holiday season can be unpredictable. Be prepared to adapt your return policies and processes as needed to address unforeseen circumstances or spikes in return volume. Ensure you have sufficient resources and personnel to handle increased inquiries and return requests. Additionally, you can allocate dedicated space for returned items and establish a system for inspecting and restocking them efficiently. This helps minimize delays and ensures your inventory remains accurate.

6. Track and Analyze Returns

Returns give you quality insights into your products and your customers’ shipping decisions. Leverage this goldmine by tracking your return data throughout the holiday season. Analyze common reasons for returns, identify problematic products, and assess the effectiveness of your return policies and procedures. Data can also give you insights into your returns process and help you refine your strategies and improve the return experience for future seasons.

7. Promote Exchanges over Refunds

70% of the returns are size and fit-related. Instead of shelling out dollars by refunding each return that comes in, you can provide the option to exchange the product or get store credits. You can also consider offering incentives such as discounts on exchange items, free shipping on exchanges, or store credit bonuses to encourage customers to pick exchanges and store credit. This strategy can help in retaining customers and minimizing revenue loss from returns.

8. Invest in Returns Automation

Leverage technology to streamline your return management process:

Utilize return portals that allow customers to initiate and track returns online
Automate return processing tasks, such as generating return labels, sending email notifications, and managing refunds.
Extend automation to manage inventory levels and restocking procedures.

Automating returns-related tasks saves time and resources by reducing workload and allows you to focus on other important tasks efficiently.

LateShipment.com’s Returns Experience Management is one such powerful, self-service returns platform built to boost the returns-related metrics that matter most to your business.

Here’s how it can come in handy.

How Returns Experience Management Can Help

Returns Experience Management comes with a user-friendly self-service returns portal where customers can easily initiate returns, choose a preferred method, track the status of the return, etc. This simplifies the whole returns process and improves repeat purchases.

You can also keep customers informed about the status of their returns at every step via email and SMS notifications with returns tracking information and updates to enhance the returns experience.

Returns Experience Management also comes with the provision to offer incentives and encourage customers to opt for exchanges and store credits instead of a full refund.

Additionally, with self-service and smart automations, you can drastically reduce the time spent per return request and inbound conversation volume. Also, with proactive status updates, live package tracking, and a host of support team-friendly features, you can free up your support agents to address more pressing issues.

The post How To Handle Returns And Exchanges During The Holidays appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

Introducing LateShipment.com’s E-commerce Shipping Insurance — Smart, Simplified, and Automated

Sashank Ravindranath — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 10:54:01 +0000

E-commerce Shipping: Everything That Is In Control And That Isn't

As an e-commerce merchant, you put in a lot of effort to meticulously curate the stage of the customer journey that is under your control to motivate them to click that “BUY” button, make a successful sale, and bring in profits.

However, at this critical juncture, the reins of control slip from your grasp.

This part of the customer journey that follows: from dispatch to delivery or, in some cases, returns — known as “the post-purchase phase”, is filled with uncertainties and challenges.

To make things worse, these challenges have the potential to hurt your business and undo all your efforts till that point.

Inevitable Post-purchase Issues and Their Impact on Your Business

The post-purchase phase is highly error-prone. Once shipped, your customers’ packages inevitably encounter unforeseen issues such as getting lost and damaged while in transit.

32% of customers say that they have not received at least one package they ordered in the past six months because their packages were lost in the mail.
7% to 11% of customers’ online orders arrive broken or damaged
$500K is the estimated loss for e-commerce businesses just from lost and damaged packages in a year

Over time, businesses that consistently face lost and damaged package issues have a competitive disadvantage and face a negative impact when it comes to growth.

So, what is it that you can do to ensure that your bottom line stays protected, each time lost or damaged package incidents happen?

This is where shipping insurance steps in to save the day.

What is Shipping Insurance And Why Is It Important For Your Business?

Shipping insurance is a safety net that is designed to protect e-commerce shipments, particularly against loss and damage.

If an insured parcel gets lost or damaged while being shipped or the contents in the package go missing, then you are entitled to a financial compensation of the package value or the insured value from the insurance service provider.

There are multiple reasons why shipping insurance is necessary for your e-commerce business:

Peace of mind from the assurance of financial security and thereby having reduced concerns about potential delivery incidents.
Protection, especially against high-value goods such as jewelry and electronic items going missing and packages getting lost or damaged during transit.

In short, with parcels insured, you will no longer have to worry about losing money due to delivery issues.

Instead, you can both confidently approach customers who’ve faced delivery issues with your repeat purchase efforts, as well as direct the expenses towards growing your business and stay ahead of the competition.

If you’re unaccustomed to shipping insurance — we’ll get right to how you can get started with choosing the right service provider for your needs.

On the other hand, if you’re someone who’s been insuring your packages via old-school techniques, here’s why it may not be the best option for you in the current state of e-commerce and package deliveries.

Why Old-School Shipping Insurance Techniques Might Not Make The Cut in Today’s Post-Purchase Landscape

Generic shipping insurance options can provide a certain level of protection. But in the current state, where lost, damaged, and missing package incidents are repetitive in occurrence, they may not always be sufficient for your business for several reasons:

Limited Coverage: Generic shipping insurance options often come with limitations on what they cover. They may not fully cover the value of high-ticket items or certain types of products, leaving you exposed to dealing with potential financial losses.
Complex Claims Process: Filing a claim for lost or damaged goods through generic options can be complex and time-consuming. Customers may need to file manual claims, provide extensive documentation, follow up regularly, navigate through a bureaucratic system, and wait for an extended period to receive their compensation. This can be too much of a hassle.
Lack of Customization: Generic insurance options typically offer just one type of solution for all needs, thereby preventing you from tailoring rules and coverage options based on specific preferences.

This brings us to address the need for specialized shipping insurance solutions that are well-integrated into your post-purchase efforts and offer diverse benefits that make things easier for you.

For specialized solutions that are designed to help you stay ahead of shipping losses and damages, meet LateShipment.com’s E-commerce Shipping Insurance.

Introducing LateShipment.com's E-commerce Shipping Insurance — Smart, Simplified, and Automated

Generic shipping insurance has always been rigid and unreachable for the average e-commerce merchant and we at LateShipment.com wanted to change that status quo and make things accessible and convenient.

With claims backed by “A” rated U.S. insurance company Shipsurance, we are bringing shipping insurance into our existing post-purchase suite to offer comprehensive insurance coverage that brings substantial savings compared to carrier-provided insurance and expedited claim payments.

Here are the specific ways LateShipment.com’s Shipping Insurance stands apart while being beneficial to you.

LateShipment.com: the (Revolutionary) New Way of Insuring Your Parcels

What’s Covered?

Comprehensive shipment protection – With every incident of lost, damaged, or missing items being claimed for coverage of up to $2000 per package across the globe, involving a majority of shipping carriers, LateShipment.com offers highly comprehensive shipment protection that you can ship out on every order with peace of mind.

Read coverage terms and conditions to learn more.

What’s new?

Forget the hassle of opting to insure with every order – Seamlessly include insurance into your order fulfillment workflow, with automation that begins as soon as the label is generated.
Your insurance, your rules – Tailor your rules just to insure the shipments that align with your unique insurance needs.
Ensure you are never over or under-insured – Flexible coverage options to help you avoid overpaying for insurance. Opt for a full shipment value cover or set your preferred rate and include shipping costs if needed.
Add insurance on-demand – Small business or occasional shippers? We’ve got your back. Effortlessly add insurance on your own just when you need it, in one click.
Centralized claims management – With all things insurance happening inside a unified portal, you have access to a centralized view of submitting claims, tracking statuses, and everything else.
Quick claims from the Help desk – Enable your support agents to address lost/damaged tickets instantly with a claim portal right inside the helpdesk.

What’s better?

Following and managing claims being a hectic task is a thing of the past. With our automated claims management in place, manage Insurance claims effortlessly.

Effortless claims handling – As our claim management is an automated process, it only takes 2-steps from your end to select the shipment and upload your proofs. Automation will handle the rest.
Lightning-fast claims approval – The best part, your claims are resolved in a very short time of less than 5 days, so you can gladly skip the waiting period.

Discontent due to package losses and damages is a thing of the past.

With comprehensive risk coverage, intelligent automation and claims easier than ever, LateShipment.com’s Shipping Insurance is the smarter way to protect your bottom line.

The post Introducing LateShipment.com’s E-commerce Shipping Insurance — Smart, Simplified, and Automated appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

Streamlining Your Checkout Page for success this Holiday Season

Raksna Anand — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 17:59:24 +0000

Did you know that 7 in 10 customers abandon their cart?(statista). The number one reason for cart abandonment is the additional charges levied during checkout. Streamlining your checkout processes and making sure that your checkout page provides as much information as it can,is a key factor to turning a potential customer into an actual customer. Especially with the holiday rush coming in, you need to optimize every single page.

Why Optimizing a Checkout Page is Important this Holiday Season?

The holiday season is when the cart abandonment rate is really high compared to the normal days. We have already established the fact that additional charges levied during payment is the number reason for this to happen.

Reasons to streamline your checkout page

Reduce cart abandonment rate
Increase transactions speed
Provide personalization
Offer convenience
Minimizing errors

The holiday season is when you receive a lot of traffic. Imagine converting all abandoned cart with a streamlined checkout page and we’ll show you how.

Streamlining Your Checkout Page for success

1. Provide Multiple Payment Options

Add multiple payment options during the checkout. For example, Visa, MasterCard, AMX, PayPal are some of the popular payment options that merchants offer. But Buy now, Pay Later (BNPL) payment model is now becoming increasingly popular among the Gen Z and the Millennials. During the holidays is when customers tend to spend a lot even over their budget. But brands should understand this and facilitate customers into buying products using the Buy Now Pay Later platform.

2. Display Accurate Shipping info

Presenting the shipping information again would allow customers to once again go through all the information that they’ve entered to avoid any mistakes. Mentioning the estimated delivery date also sets the delivery expectations right. This also can lead to higher conversion rates since the customer knows that their package would arrive within the timeline that they want. Specifying the shipping cost or free shipping would also be very helpful to customers into deciding if they should buy from you. Offering shipping optionally also gives the customer the freedom to choose when they want their product to be delivered. Usually a customer who wants the order to arrive early, would probably pay more for shipping. Specifying those details would be convenient for decision making.

3. Add Gifting Options

Enable gifting options for your customers, this is a very big boon in disguise. This allows you to offer gifting options to save time for customers, but at the same time it offers you a unique opportunity to enforce your branding elements into the wrapping papers as well, once again opening a channel for communication with the customers.

4. Add a ‘Personalized Notes’ option

Personalization is key, but personalization can also be established on checkout pages by allowing the customers to add personalized moods for their loved ones. This provides a positive customer experience for the customer.

5. Collect necessary information for retargeting

Make sure that you get all the key data that you need during checkout, like the email addresses, first name, last name, and the shipping address, the billing address, and contact information. Save the information and allow the customers to autofill the next time, making the checkout experience even more convenients . This saves time for your customers. This information that you get, make sure that you can use it for promotional purposes. Of course, it’s not right to use a customer’s information without their permission, but with their permission, you can use their contact information to send them targeted personalized emails and SMSs.

6. Add Gift card option in your checkout page

Adding a gift card option leans more towards profiting the brand rather than the customer. It’s about selling gift cards and setting the stage for customer retention. Speaking from the customer’s side, gift cards are an easy way to purchase a certain value of credits from your store to give them to allowed ones. This is a free word-of-mouth promotion for your brand as well.

7. Display Shopping cart summary with discounts

Cart abandonment rates are really high, especially during the checkout phase, when customers see additional charges when they make the way to pay for the order. It’s imperative that you show the summary of your shopping cart along with the items that they’ve ordered with all the shipping charges and the taxes and any other extra charge that you’re going to levy on your customers. This sets the customer expectations right and avoids unnecessary cart abandonment. It also reduces the number of returns if you specify precisely the items that the customer has added in the cart.

Anatomy of a Checkout Page

A checkout page should contain the following

Cart summary
Addiptnap chagers levered
Gift card options
Gift wrapping options
Refund and return policy link
Total amount saved on coupons and discounts
Shipping details – Estimated delivery date, shipping charges
Multiple payment options
Personalized recommendations
Trust badges from various card providers
Customer support information
Shipping optionality

Final Word

Make sure that you streamline the checkout process and make it really convenient for your customers. Provide as many options that you can in that single page. Ensure that it is optimized to mobiles since most payments are made through mobiles. that they are compatible with wallet payment methods also. But remember that the customer journey does not end with the sale button. That’s when the post-purchase customer journey starts. Optimize your post-purchase customer journey for maximum impact on retention.

The post Streamlining Your Checkout Page for success this Holiday Season appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

Key Ecommerce Personalization areas to focus on

Raksna Anand — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 04:21:50 +0000

Personalization has become a norm rather than just being something that e-commerce brands do to just sway customers. Ecommerce Personalization has become just more than that in this bustling world.

66% of consumers want businesses to understand their specific requirements and expectations. (Salesforce).

77% of consumers have chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that provides a personalized experience (Forrester).

Why is Ecommerce personalization important?

Better user experience: More and more relevance your customer finds in your brand and in your products through personalization, stronger the relationship you can cement with your customers.

Increase AOV: The holiday season is one period in which customers keep their wallet open and they would want to spend on their gifts. Even though inflation is a major factor this year and that it’s been influencing people spending their money on products, people are still ready to spend a lot on holidays this year what more ways do you need to increase your average order value rather than personalizing?

Competitive advantage: Personalization could be a key differentiator in setting you apart from the crowd. Through Enhanced Customer Satisfaction and Customer Engagement with your website, lets you collect a lot of data from what the pattern of the customer. This gives you uninterrupted access to data that you can use on customers to re-target them.

Upselling and cross-selling opportunity: Personalization is a great way to upsell and cross-sell products from your website to a customer who is just browsing through your website.

Given the importance of personalization, just personalizing doesn’t cut it anymore. Hyper-personalization is the way. And let’s take a look at how you can create a seamless but exceptional e-commerce personalization by hyper-personalization.

Key Ecommerce Personalization areas to focus on:

Search personalization

Site search is 1.8x more effective at producing conversions. Why not personalize your site search property?

You can start by doing the following things. (Most of these techniques work better if you have a good customer segmentation game).

Boost popular brands and items.
Tailor results by gender-based categories.
Highlight high-value items.
Customize results by user preferences.
Display popular gift ideas or gift guides

Recommended products personalization

Personalization is hard, especially during the holiday season. The customer might have a big list of gifts that has to be shopped on your website. Say for example, if a customer is browsing a hoodie to be gifted during the holiday season and that they found the hoodie after various personal recommendations. But what if the customer has moved to another product which is in their long list of gifts and is searching for a different product now? In this case, the e-commerce brand must use various indicators to change the personalized product recommendations in this case. This in turn makes it very convenient for customers to browse through your website and this will help with your conversion rate.

A Branded tracking page could be a game-changer. On an average, a person visits a tracking page six to eight times in order to track their package. If your brand offers a branded tracking page, this improves brand recall and produces an opportunity to upsell and cross-sell your products. With personalization in the picture of upselling and cross-selling products based on previous customer history, it creates a separate revenue channel.

Quick tip: Try prioritizing products in the recommendations that have offers or products that are on sale to increase the conversion rate.

Ways to present personalized recommendations: Best sellers, trending, bundles offered with the product being viewed, what’s new, recently viewed.

Nearly 70% of customers revisit a website several times before they make their purchase decision. (Forbes) In this case, if you offer a tab that says recently viewed, this influences the customer to recall the product and this in turn will help in conversion.

Personalized marketing

Social media is one of the top channels through which people search for holiday gift ideas. Now with the advent of Meta Custom Audience and E-mail marketing custom audiences, you can create different customer segments and target them through personalized ads. This remains a great advantage for brands to target different audiences with different products, different messages and different creatives too.

Retargeting through personalization: 97% of people who visit your website do not buy anything from you the first time. Retargeting is a good way to bring in those customers who left after one session. Retargeting can also be personalized by leveraging data and analyzing what the customer viewed. This can be done through social media, emails and SMS marketing. when you retarget a customer, it is not only essential that you personalize the recommendations for them, but it is also important to personalize the coupons in order to get them back to your website. You should know what trigger works for a particular segment of customers. If a customer knows that the particular product they viewed is on a limited offer deal or is now offered with a coupon they can redeem it and buy the product. These customers will be more interested in coming back to your website and converting.

Quick tip: Include social proof in product pages to decrease the bounce rates.

Final word

The more personalized your website, the more impact it will have on the conversion rate. One size fits all personalization technique doesn’t work out anymore. Many brands really go out there and put so much effort into converting their customers and giving them a very good experience and you cannot compromise on personalizing the customer experience. Personalization is the future.

We live in a relationship economy rather than a transactional economy. Customers expect a brand to establish a relationship with them and personalization is one good way to appeal to the customers, not only increasing sales but leaving a remarkable image on the consumer’s mind.

The post Key Ecommerce Personalization areas to focus on appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

How to increase conversion rates on the ecommerce store using site search?

Raksna Anand — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 13:33:11 +0000

Did you know that, Nearly 84% of e-commerce brands don’t actively optimize or measure their on-site search. (adsearch.com)

Site search is a very important feature of an e-commerce store. It helps customers find the products that they are looking for efficiently and quickly. Site search should be a feature that suits all the customers who visit the website. It leads to higher conversion rates and helps extend the longevity of the time spent on the website by an average customer.

Site search can be used to determine a number of business analytics.

Businesses can know what their customers are frequently searching for: The customers might search for products that are provided by this e-commerce store. When they find it, they are directed to that specific product page. When customers search for products that aren’t sold by the e-com store, businesses might take that chance to identify the gap in their product range and realize what customers want to see the brand sell.
Content and product optimisation: When businesses gain insights on what customers are frequently searching for, they can know which product is popular among the consumers, and optimize those product pages. Matching your customers’ search terms with the language you use is crucial for your search engine optimisation strategy.
Providing Personalized experience: Personalization is a very important aspect in e-commerce businesses right now. When shoppers search for a particular product on the search bar, personalized recommendations can be displayed, based on their previous shopping journey with the brand

Some Stats on Site Search

How to increase conversion rates on the ecommerce store using site search?

1. Make sure your search bar is visible, Duh!

We know, we know. It sounds redundant to even say it out loud! But imagine, if the site visitors have to search for the search bar, it doesn’t really make any sense. :/ Enusre that its prominent and noticeable.

Best practices for a search bar design:

Place it in a very predictable place.
Include the search icon and the word search in the search bar.
Add a camera icon on the search bar to make it easier for the customers to browse a product through the image they already have.
Choose an appropriate size.
Enable the auto correct and auto complete features.
Place your search bar on each page.
Include all the most recent searches made by the user.
Clarify what users can search for

2. Allow to search with images

As we all know, social commerce has been a very big influence on making a purchase or decision in the last few years. Influencers, people tend to adapt to the influencer lifestyle and they want to buy things that celebrities use. So they take inspiration from social media and they want to search such images on the e-commerce brand that they want to purchase from. This is where the search with images option comes in handy. If you can include such an option if possible, then it would result in a very high conversion rate. This can benefit you in the following ways:

Enhanced customer experience
Visual inspiration
Higher conversion rates
Competitive advantage
Improved product discovery

3. Allow typo corrections in your site search

Typo occurs when a customer searches for a particular term but misspells it. Let’s agree that many of us tend to type a word quickly and end up making a typo. But an e-commerce business cannot display no results for such typos. They should actually employ a number of techniques and make a typo correction. The number of techniques include a dictionary lookup, n-gram analysis, similarity keys, rule-based, probabilistic, neural-based, edit distance, etc.

Why do you need this typo correction in your site search? It is for the following reasons:

To enhance users’ search experience,
To reduce the number of bounces from the website
To save time

4. Customize your 404 page

You can expect customers to search for products that aren’t actually present in the website. In those times, the website will typically display a 404 page where it says that the particular product is not found. But don’t let that 404 page be the deadline for your website. Because the next solution people think of is to jump to your competitor’s website and look for products they want. In such a case, you can customize your 404 page to suggest a few relevant products to the search term in order to reduce the bounce rate.

5. Optimize for mobile search

There’s no doubt that mobile usage has been increasing over the years and it would be a healthy option to optimize for your mobile as well.

The less number of typing and less number of browsing leads to more number of navigation to product pages and ultimately to more number of conversions . Make sure that the filtering options conforms to the size of your mobile device.

6. Cater to customers who know what they want

Spearfish users are the users who come to a website knowing what they want, exactly what they want. These users, when they come into a website, according to a Forrester research, 43% of them search for a search bar and enter their query, and most of them come with the intention of shopping in the website. Help those your Spearfish customers, include a predictive search and autocomplete to make them search for their products easily.

7. Display product image in search

Displaying product images when a site search is done is a very helpful feature. It enhances the visual experience. It promotes cross-selling as well because the user will be exposed to a number of variety of options available on the e-commerce site. It would be better for the product identification since the image itself is displayed and it would aid in better decision making.

8. Use filters and sorting in site search

Don’t overwhelm the users with your site search result displays.

Adding the filtering and sorting feature to your search option is just one step closer to conversion. When people directly filter out options based on what they need, it’s just easy for them to navigate themselves to that particular product page.

Some best practices for these filtering and sort options are as follows.

Do not display a very big list of filtering and sorting options. Just hide them and make these options drop-down menu accessible.
Make sure that the filtering and sorting options that are selected are displayed on top of the page.
According to your users’ needs, prioritize which option you display first in the filtering and sorting options.

Final Word

As stated above, most brands do not concentrate on their site search optimization. Imagine that you type something on Google and you’re unable to find it. It’s the same case when it comes to your e-commerce business. A good site search bar is the fine line between a happy customer and a frustrated customer. Don’t let your customers leave your site with a bad experience.

Besides, site search optimization further helps you understand your target audience better. It would be a waste of time and energy and money if all the customers brought into your website through immense marketing efforts just convert less!

The post How to increase conversion rates on the ecommerce store using site search? appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

Relationship marketing and its benefits with examples

Raksna Anand — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 12:36:56 +0000

We now live in a relationship economy rather than a transactional economy. What is relationship marketing? Relationship marketing is the kind of marketing in which you work to retain customers and maintain long-term relationships with them.

It is a well-known fact that returning customers spend a lot more than your new customers. This is because the returning customers have already experienced the true essence of your brand through your pre-purchase and post-purchase journey. They know what values your brand holds. This trust that you install in those customers, makes them spend a lot when returning.

And you should have known by now that acquiring new customers is a lot more challenging than retaining the existing ones. And moreover, these existing ones drive revenue, so why not build a strong relationship with them?

Steps in relationship building

Omnichannel messaging

With the rise of the digital presence, there are so many channels in which customers prefer to browse. Even TikTok has this new feature through which you can purchase products through the platform itself. It is always necessary to analyze which channels your customers are predominantly on and leverage those channels to efficiently reach your customers and provide tailored messaging or tailored ads according to their preferences. Even some brands do omni-channel customer support through these platforms. Have an integrated customer support system and target all channels.

Post-purchase Customer service

Brands often think that the customer journey ends with the buy button, but the post-purchase customer journey is a very important journey that cannot be compromised and sets the entire stage for retention. Customers could have a number of questions about the order, Make them self-serviceable so that the customer’s general questions are answered right then and there. Beyond that, if the customer has any questions, arm your customer service team with the necessary information required to fulfill the customer’s needs. Set the tone right for your customer service so that the customers aren’t disappointed with the answers they receive, even if things go wrong. Don’t forget to set up FAQ pages!

Collecting their feedback

Customer feedback can be a powerful way of knowing what the customer wants. Give your customer a voice and listen to them. If things go wrong and if an experience was particularly bad for your customer, you can always reach out to them and make them feel valued or listen to them by knowing what went wrong. And often offering them coupon codes or discounts or special codes would at least help them feel better about the brand. And providing a voice to the customer can go a long way.

Customer retention activities

Customer retention activities could be a number of activities with which you can stay in constant touch with your customers and build a relationship with them. Brands can leverage personalization to achieve this. Messaging or emailing during the customer’s birthday and giving them special offers, letting them know if there’s a special discount going on, if there’s an annual sale going on, exclusive access to loyal customers who’ve already purchased from you. At this moment, you can cross-sell and up-sell. There’s a lot of things with which you can do this. Brands often can create an exclusive customer club in which they can gather all the customers and host exclusive events for them, which could mean something to them, which could add value to them. Making the customer feel special is one of the customer retention activities that you can do to build a relationship.

Loyalty programs

Many customers go back to a brand because of their excellent loyalty programs. For example, take Starbucks. You often get a free drink when you get consecutive 4-5 drinks from the vendor. This is an excellent opportunity to make your customers come back to you and providing exclusive access to your high-value customers could increase your loyalty.

Benefits of relationship marketing

Increased customer lifetime value
Increased loyalty
Raise in brand awareness
Reduced marketing costs
Word of mouth marketing
Cross-selling and up-selling opportunities
Long term growth

Examples of relationship marketing

Made in - relationship building through educational content in branded tracking pages

Made in is a cookware brand in the US. This brand realized that they had a gap in the post-purchase experience. The brand started posting educational content in their branded tracking pages. Educational content like how to wash their pots and pand, quick recipes from renowned chefs, and easy how-to videos. This helped them drive a lot of engagement in the branded tracking pages and they recorded a lot of click-through rates also. This traffic was tracked back to their website.

In just one month, Made In saw 16.2% of customers who visited the tracking page click through to the Made In website, driving highly qualified traffic back to its store. They also saw 8.1% of customers click through on product care-specific marketing assets as customers continued to indulge in content that elevated their experience. (Forbes)

Peloton and it’s excellent relationship building activities

Peloton is an equipment and media-based company. The whole concept of Peloton is to sell their exercise equipment to the customers and build a relationship with them by engaging with them through media.

As soon as a customer purchases a product from Peloton, Peloton usually sends out an email to the customer urging them to join their Facebook group or other social media groups. Customers can keep score of what they achieve through these Facebook boards. They can even compete with other players through these Facebook leaderboards which encourages customers to participate more in the activity. When a customer participates in live workouts with an instructor and when this customer achieves a specific milestone like the 100th ride or 50th ride, this customer is often given a shoutout from the instructor and Peloton sends a free t-shirt to the customer acknowledging them for their achievement. This creates an emotional connection between the customer and the brand, humanizing the brand and creating a very positive image about the brand. This is how Peloton builds its relationship with its customers.

Final word

Gone are the days when customers went back to brands just because they have a lot of variety and very low prices. Still, variety and price remain a factor which is considered by most customers, but customers expect brands to build a long-lasting relationship with them. Customers expect brands to send them personalized messaging and many brands out there have set the bar high for other brands in creating a relationship with the customers. It is vital that you, as a brand, stay ahead of the curve by building a relationship with your audience. Remember that returning customers are the revenue builders for your brand, so don’t go cold on your customers. Relationship marketing is the way!

The post Relationship marketing and its benefits with examples appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

Use Cases for a Returns Experience Management Solution

Sashank Ravindranath — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 06:55:00 +0000

In today’s e-commerce landscape, returns have become a huge deal.

Recent research shows that the e-commerce return rate, which was 16% in 2022, now falls around somewhere between 20-30%.

Just like choosing what they want to buy, customers have been showing increasing involvement in sending it back (be it for any reason).

This has made how returns are handled at e-commerce stores a huge differentiator when it comes to customers choosing brands. 92% of shoppers say they will buy again if the return process is easy.

But you don’t have to stress your mind too much about this — the criterion is very simple.

When customers buy something online and it doesn’t work out, sending it back shouldn’t be a headache.

Easier said than done, navigating through returns might be difficult for e-commerce merchants but there’s a catch to it. Meet customers’ high expectations and you can treat yourself with loyal customers for life.

This is where a Returns Experience Management solution comes into play. We’ll cover how it redefines returns as a growth driver for your business. But first, we’ll cover some basics to help you understand better.

What is Returns Experience Management?

E-commerce returns from a business’ PoV aren’t just collecting the shipped-out product back and taking further steps to rectify the issue. It’s filled with multiple KPIs such as return rate and return spend that must be tracked and optimized regularly in order to measure true success when it comes to order returns.

Returns Experience Management (REM) is the strategies and practices that e-commerce businesses implement to effectively handle and optimize customer experience when dealing with product returns.

REM encompasses various elements of the returns process such as Returns policy, status tracking, analytics, and much more aimed at making the returns process as smooth as possible for customers while also ensuring that the business can manage returns efficiently.

However, not all e-commerce businesses see returns the same way their customers expect them to. But we can’t blame them for it. There are a lot of misconceptions about returns that make e-commerce merchants repel them.

This unfortunately results in a situation where customers’ returns experience suffers tremendously leading to irreparable problems and lost opportunities.

Here are some insights into the current state of e-commerce returns and how businesses, particularly different teams of a store are affected by them.

The Current State Of Returns In E-Commerce - An Insight

As customers, e-commerce returns are all about sending back an order that we collect. What follows next falls under totally different aspects like refunds and replacements. It is the experience that matters during the moments of the returns process.

But things aren’t the same for e-commerce businesses. In order to provide THAT experience, there is a chain of activities where a lot of teams come together and perform exhaustive tasks that could impact the success of the business in the long run.

One wrong move and that will be the last the business hears from the customer again. This is where REM comes in to boost return-related metrics that matter most to your business.

To get a better context into what REM can do for your business, let’s take a look at how returns work in the back end of an environment that doesn’t have a REM in place.

1. Dealing with frequent returns inquiries is a tedious process

Customers need to contact the support team to return or exchange products and again to learn about the status of their returns and refunds – making the process time-consuming and unmanageable
If not for frequent customer interaction, there is often a lack of clarity in shipping instructions further adds to the confusion in returning products

2. An influx of inquiries from anxious customers bombarding support teams

Little to no visibility into the status of the return and lack of quick accessibility to real-time information make prompt support and resolution a hassle.
Repetitive inquiries from concerned customers about the status of their returns and refunds lead to delayed response
Customers are unable to easily look up the status of their return at their own discretion, leading to anxiety and frustration

3. Unmanaged returns are a cost center for e-commerce businesses

Customers opt for refunds due to the complicated exchange process, leading to losing a sale.
Customers often do not purchase again after receiving refunds to their original payment method, resulting in a lost sale and extra shipping costs

4. Manually processing returns makes it difficult to handle operations

Difficult to validate and record return information shared by customers via email communications. Customers also do not comply with the return policy and return items that are ineligible for returns
Manually generating shipping labels from the shipping carrier’s website, emailing or physically mailing them to customers each time a return is initiated as time-consuming and labor-intensive
Hassle to effectively track returns by warehouse operators and the operations team, etc

5. There is a clear lack of insight into the returns process

Lack of visibility into factors leading to returns such as operations and inefficiencies
Lack of opportunity to maintain accurate return inventory records such as timesheets or data to monitor and optimize time spent on return operations
Lack of visibility into customer’s return experience

Not to worry! The good news is that Returns Experience Management (REM) has a host of use cases for a variety of organizational roles that can help you resolve the issues we’ve discussed.

Use Cases For A Returns Experience Management Solution

1. Offer shoppers a simple and seamless return experience

Operations & Marketing teams have forever struggled to deal with customers, who feel the returns process is difficult, time-consuming, and frustrating.

With no REM in place, customers have the need to contact the support team whenever there’s a need to return or exchange products. More often than not, this frustrates customers who are already irate over having to return something that they’ve longed enough to buy (all the more pressure for merchants during times like the holiday season when gifts hold higher emotional value).

The solution is really simple: your customers are not looking forward to doing returns, so why make the process even more frustrating for them?

With a REM in place, you make returns and exchanges self-service to shoppers, via a dedicated returns portal that enables easy initiation and automated label generation, thereby eliminating the need for customers to the support team each time.

2. Reduce inquiries from anxious customers about the status of their returns and refunds.

Customer support teams are bombarded with an influx of inquiries from concerned customers about the status of their returns and refunds.

Just like the order delivery process, customers expect the business to stay in the know of their return’s status at all times and become increasingly anxious when they’re left in the dark regarding it.

In normal cases, this affects the returns experience of the customers by making them constantly go to the shipping carrier’s website to check the return status. In extreme cases, this can lead to anxious customers bombarding your support team with a return status inquiry that can consume all of their time.

Here’s the solution. REM helps businesses send automated return status updates to customers with the ability to track their returns in real time. By mitigating customers’ anxiety via regular and timely engagement, businesses can reduce return-related customer inquiries by up to 80%.

3. Retain sales and revenue with returns

In a typical environment, returns typically result in refunds, hence losing sales and profits.

According to a recent report, 70% of all returns are size and fit related. That’s almost three-fourths of your returns that don’t have to mean a refund.

However, with a lack of REM in place, Returns typically result in refunds, where the business has to refund the customer for the the purchase price of the product, as well as the cost of shipping the product back to the business. In addition, the business may have to pay a restocking fee, which is a fee that is charged to customers who return products.

Instead of refunding every return, REM provides businesses the chance to get smart with returns via flexible return methods.

By offering seamless exchange and store credit options, businesses can:

Keep customers shopping with the business despite an order return in place
Provide a great returns experience and ensure that customers are more likely to spend more money with the business
Reduce return-associated costs such as refunds and other processing costs and retain revenue from over 30% of your returns

To ensure that this process yields more successful results, businesses can also incentivize customers to opt for exchange or store credit with prepaid labels, free shipping, and bonus credit.

4. Automate and streamline the return process to reduce operational time

Return processes that heavily rely on assistance from support teams make returns unmanageable and time-consuming.

It’s not just initiation, customers’ doubts about returns begin the moment they have a return requirement and repeatedly check the returns page to understand more about the company’s policies with returns.

One of the main reasons for this happening is because the returns get handled differ brand to brand and when things are unclear, customers do have a hard time understanding if their product does qualify for a return. This often leads to the need for human intervention at every step which creates a bottleneck by straining resources and frustrating customers who expect quick and efficient resolutions.

This is where REM comes in to help businesses transform their return experience by automating the return process via presetting and customizing return rules and policies, auto-generating return labels, etc, and ultimately reducing return processing time by up to 90%.

5. Gain visibility into the when, the where, and the how the return progresses

Warehouse operators and the operations team are unable to effectively track returns in real time, making it a hassle to maintain accurate return inventory records and streamline the overall returns process.

Most businesses view returns as something complicated because they lack sufficient insights into what’s going wrong in the first place, thereby having no room to make necessary improvements and streamline the overall returns process.

Returns Experience Management, built to boost return-related metrics that matter most to businesses, comes with the ability to break down returns in order to gain visibility into the exact status, condition, and location of every return, i.e. anything related to the product being returned.

By breaking down returns into simple, actionable metrics, businesses can easily keep track, make better business decisions to turn these metrics work in your favor, and ultimately spell the success of your e-commerce business’ returns strategies.

6. Optimize return operations and drive strategic process improvements with actionable insights into returns

There is a lack of true visibility into their return operations and inefficiencies to make necessary improvements.

Under normal circumstances, handling multiple returns can really be overwhelming, particularly during times like peak shopping seasons.

Rather than going in blindly, it is better for businesses to get complete visibility into how your returns are performing via actionable insights, particularly through analyzing return trends, such as the types of products frequently returned, reasons for returns, etc, and identifying root causes to drive improvements to your returns process and experience.

For instance, if a specific product category consistently experiences high returns, the business can scrutinize its quality, sizing information, or imagery to address underlying issues. Armed with this data, companies can refine product descriptions, and enhance quality control.

Embracing these insights enables e-commerce businesses to gain absolute visibility & control to measure and optimize the entire return operations.

Lateshipment.Com’s Returns Experience Management To Redefine Returns As A Growth Driver For E-commerce Business

LateShipment.com’s Returns Experience Management (REM) platform helps e-commerce businesses take delight beyond the buy button with seamless, flexible returns in the form of:

Provisions to set up flexible return methods and automated, prepaid labels
A customizable, on-demand return portal with zero interaction with support agents to make the return experience fast and easy for customers
Proactive updates on return requests, via automated email and SMS status notifications, keep customers in the loop effortlessly
A live tracking page to provide transparency around return status and eliminate customer anxiety about the whereabouts of their package
Offer seamless exchange and store credit options to ensure revenue retention
Support user and warehouse operator dashboards are purpose-built to drive quick return request resolution
Proactive, automated status updates ensure your customers have complete transparency on return status at all times, thereby reducing ticket volume
Returns trend analysis and insights such as return satisfaction scores to keep track and make constant improvements to provide the best return experience there is

And boost returns-related metrics that matter most to your business via increasing conversion rate, repeat purchases, revenue retained, etc, and reduce time spent per return.

By using REM, e-commerce businesses can improve the returns process and increase customer satisfaction, leading to improved customer loyalty, increased sales, and ultimately a better bottom line.

If you are an e-commerce merchant looking to integrate Returns Experience Management into your existing business process, our experts are here to talk to you about the best ways REM can work for your business.

The post Use Cases for a Returns Experience Management Solution appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

Tips for a Great eCommerce Returns Process

Sashank Ravindranath — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 04:57:12 +0000

What a journey has it been for e-commerce returns — From terrifying businesses with the presumption of being customer repulsive and a cost-center to becoming one of the most sought after services from a business.

However, even today, most businesses consider the order experience to end with delivery and see returns as just something trivial instead of a feature that they definitely should embrace.

But is just providing returns enough? Well, not so much in 2023 at least.

Today’s customers have increased expectations when it comes to returns experiences from brands.

Meeting, or rather exceeding these expectations, can lead to a smooth and hassle-free returns process that increases their satisfaction levels and helps you turn a potentially negative experience into an opportunity to win loyal customers.

Thus, without further ado, here are some tips to help you optimize your returns process to create happier customers and enjoy success.

Tips for Improving Your E-Commerce Returns Process

1. Simplify handling returns requests

The first step to make your returns a breeze starts with the first action that takes place when there’s a need to make a return arises from the customer’s end — initiation.

Returns initiation is nothing but the customer having a product that they’d like to return at hand and notifying you of it.

Under legacy methods, this usually involves the customer contacting the support team with a query, which becomes a ticket that needs to be followed up and acted upon.

However, this may not be the best ploy as support interactions may take time and a long initiation process can frustrate customers who may drop off without initiating AND doing business with you.

Up to 40% of customers will stop doing business with a company if the process for initiating returns is complicated.

Worry not! There’s a better way to do this.

Have a clear returns policy

Tailor your returns policy in a way that it meets your objectives as well as is clear enough for your customers to understand.

When customers know what to do and what to expect there is less friction in the initiation process, thus leading to:

Happy customers due to increased satisfaction and reduces frustration levels
Reduced workload on customer service reps
Increased savings on shipping and processing costs, thanks to lower number of returns

Make the returns initiation process as simple and straightforward as possible

Ensure that doing returns with you, comes with a host of benefits such as:

Multiple channels to request returns, such as a dedicated returns portal on your website, or even a chatbot – to display your commitment to providing customers with a great returns process
Flexible return methods such as exchanges and store credits – to make the process more convenient and encourage repeat purchases
Automated and prepaid return labels – to retain control over return-related costs

All of this can make the returns initiation process quicker and easier, and ultimately reduce the chances of your customers giving up on doing returns by enhancing their satisfaction.

2. Deliver a great returns experience

A seamless returns initiation process to begin helps you improve customer satisfaction among other things.

Riding high on that wave, your next action is to provide a great returns experience that boosts loyalty.

92% of shoppers say they will buy again if the returns process is easy.

This means your chance to redefine returns as a growth driver and not customer repulsive is here and well-defined.

Proactively Process Returns

Once returns are received, process them promptly and efficiently to ensure that your customers don’t get any second thoughts regarding continuing business with you.

Aim to issue refunds or exchanges as quickly as possible, demonstrating your commitment to resolving any issues proactively.

You can also employ automation to manage inventory, track the status of returned items, and ensure that items are returned to the correct location and that they are available for sale again.

Provide seamless returns status tracking

Providing customers with real-time updates on the status of their returns builds trust and transparency.

Send proactive updates on returns requests, via automated email and SMS status notifications and provide a live tracking page, to allow customers to stay in the whereabouts of their package. This works in reducing support inquiries and enhancing customer experience, thereby leading to increased customer confidence.

Being proactive with returns also helps in reducing the time taken on handling returns and frees up your support agents and warehouse operators time.

3. Reduce the number of returns

Almost all returns are valid but not all of them have to be refunded or initiated as returns. This is because almost 70% of all returns are size and fit related.

These returns, if not cut down, can prove to be a costly problem for e-commerce businesses, and lead to lost revenue and increased shipping costs.

Lucky for you, there are a number of things that e-commerce businesses can do to reduce unwanted returns.

Implement return reason analysis

Analyze the reasons for returns to identify patterns and potential areas for improvement.

If the data suggests that there are recurring issues with product quality, size discrepancies, or incorrect descriptions, etc, you can take efforts to address the problem at its root cause and implement corrective actions to reduce future returns.

Understanding return reasons can also guide product development and improve product descriptions, leading to a better shopping experience for your customers.

Leverage returns data for business insights

Returns data can offer valuable insights into your business in the form of specific products or categories, seasonality trends, and the impact of marketing campaigns on returns.

This data-driven approach allows you to make informed decisions and fine-tune your inventory, marketing and customer service strategies.

Final word

Improving your returns process is not only crucial for customer satisfaction but also an opportunity to gain a competitive edge in the e-commerce industry.

By offering a clear and user-friendly returns policy, simplifying returns initiation, and efficiently processing returns, you can create a positive post-purchase experience for your customers.

Leverage returns data to make informed business decisions and continuously improve your operations.

Remember, a seamless returns process can turn dissatisfied customers into loyal advocates for your brand. Invest in enhancing your returns process, and watch your e-commerce business thrive.

The post Tips for a Great eCommerce Returns Process appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

How Businesses Can Use Emerging Technology To Extract Value From Social Media

Sashank Ravindranath — Tue, 30 May 2023 08:45:50 +0000

While the COVID-19 pandemic did slow the economy down amidst a lot of problems, it also led to an e-commerce surge and accelerated digital transformation by 5 years. What was considered futuristic is now being experienced in the present and businesses who haven’t implemented them are considered outdated. This is because, with growing advancements, comes increasing competition that keeps brands on their toes to constantly adapt to this ever-changing playing field.

Even if your products are the best in the market with minimal competition, there are things that are needed from your end to make your products reach your target audience. And one such channel that can be the best choice for you in the current scenario is your social media game. But if you’re wondering “There are a lot of options like email and SMS marketing, why particularly focus on social media?” Here are some stats that should convince you.

Now that it’s clear why social media is important, let’s move on to how businesses can use social media not just for the sake of it but for its utmost potential. This is where the impact of digital transformation comes into play. With technological advancements happening throughout the e-commerce space, there are also several up-and-coming innovations in social media that businesses can take up to stay competitive. Here are some of them that are currently in the trend.

5 Ways Businesses Can Use Emerging Technology To Extract Value From Social Media

Businesses can leverage emerging technologies to extract value from social media in several ways:

1. Social Listening and Sentiment Analysis

In general terms, social listening is an extension of brand monitoring (where you can keep track of every social mention of your brand), along with each and every necessary social media conversation that includes products that you sell and competing brands.

Primarily insights from social listening are used to identify trends, customer pain points, and sentiment analysis on similar topics, all of which can be used to make data-driven decisions for improvement.

Sentiment analysis is a subset of social listening. While social listening monitors related mentions, sentiment analysis gives insights into the emotions surrounding those mentions and helps you pick the right context for your customers’ conversations.

For example, by understanding customer sentiments, trends, and feedback, you can work on identifying customer needs, improving products and services, and enhancing the overall customer experience.

If you’re wondering where to start, there are several social listening tools such as Hootsuite that you can make use of to do the research on your behalf.

2. Social Media Advertising

Social media ads are a really straightforward but great way for businesses to reach their target audience with relevant messages. With proper research and techniques, ads can be your most efficient option to generate leads, drive sales, and increase brand awareness.

But advertising isn’t just posting about your brand on social media, it has several depths to it that make it relevant. To help you understand things better, let’s look at the two trending forms of social media advertising for now.

Influencer Marketing: The lockdown phase was a blessing in disguise for a lot of individuals who began their careers as ‘content creators’, spending time on social media doing what they enjoy the most. With a fanbase growing for them, they grew into influencers relevant to particular industries. By collaborating with influencers, businesses can reach a wider audience, increase brand awareness, and drive customer engagement.

Personalized Marketing: With insights such as customer preferences, behavior, and interests, you can send out personalized messaging that caters to specific customers. With recent technological advancements and increased customer expectations, you have no option but to embrace personalization in your social media marketing tactics. Advertising campaigns that are tailored to the right customers help you create individualized experiences and spur more sales.

3. Social Commerce

Not just for advertising purposes, recent integrations have enabled social commerce, where shoppers can not just view but browse and shop directly from social media platforms.

Social commerce retail earnings are predicted to reach nearly $80 billion by 2025 in the U.S.

With shoppers spending a lot of time on social media for their personal stuff or for looking at brands, social commerce can be seen as the best option for businesses to enable seamless shopping experiences (where shoppers can directly purchase from social media sites without having to visit your website).

Not just direct selling, social commerce also enables:

Social sharing – Leverage user-generated content to drive conversions and sales
Customer engagement – Easy support interactions and insights into brand content performance, etc.

4. Chatbots

Social media has come a long way from just content sharing to AI-powered chatbots to engage with their customers across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp.

The purpose of these chatbots covers three essential parts of your business’ needs — customer service, customer engagement, and social media marketing. But using conventional techniques is just the bare minimum. With the help of automation, you can extend the capabilities of chatbots by a huge margin.

Let’s start with the most persistent problem of an e-commerce business, post-purchase issues, and customer queries around their order status. With over 40% of support tickets created around the post-purchase, it is understandable that customers are worried about their orders going haywire during the shipping and delivery phase.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Instead of waiting for your customers to take the first step, you can take a proactive approach to engage with them regarding their order details from time to time. This simple action just stands to provide multiple benefits for your business by improving customer relationships and brand loyalty while reducing costs and the time taken.

5. Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)

Thanks to technological development over the past few years, VR and AR, classic science-fiction tools can be experienced today, in our lifetime. With fierce competition from multiple directors, e-commerce brands too couldn’t stay far from such technology and have started to use VR and AR primarily in advertising to create immersive experiences that can help businesses connect with customers in new ways.

Virtual product try-on tools and augmented previews can be extremely beneficial for the apparel and accessories industry to convince customers who are sitting on the fence over the doubt of the product working out for them to go for the buy,
Brands can partner with social media applications like Instagram to create filters that users can use for fun in their content. This can really boost your efforts to spread the word about your brand and increase engagement rates.

Overall, integrating VR and AR into social media platforms helps in engaging users, driving conversions, and providing unique and interactive shopping experiences.

Final Word

With growing technology, social media will continue to evolve. To keep up with the ever-changing conditions, you will need to adapt your strategies in order to consistently stay ahead of the curve.

In conclusion, by using techniques such as social listening, sentiment analysis, social media advertising, social commerce, VR and AR, etc, you can extract valuable insights, enhance customer engagement, optimize marketing efforts, reach new markets, and drive business growth in the digital landscape.

The post How Businesses Can Use Emerging Technology To Extract Value From Social Media appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

3 Ways To Boost Post-Purchase Customer Experience And Loyalty With Yotpo And Lateshipment.com

Sashank Ravindranath — Sat, 06 May 2023 11:09:20 +0000

Are you up for a simple exercise that will predict how successful your business will be? If yes, answer the following question. What measures do you consciously take to improve your customer’s purchase journey once they’ve hit the buy button?

Before we get to the context of things, remember that the post-purchase phase takes up 50% of the overall customer experience. But most eCommerce brands, who take a top effort to convert prospects into customers, unwillingly neglect to do the same for what comes after. This creates a situation where you have unsatisfied customers who are prone to leave your brand, leading to multiple unnecessary costs in the form of churn rates and acquisition costs.

So, if you’re an eCommerce retailer who is looking for ways to optimize your post-purchase phase, here are some insights on how you can provide integrated experiences that come in handy in improving customer satisfaction after the ‘buy’ button. But first, here’s a look into what great post-purchase experiences can do for your brand, particularly from a customer standpoint.

The Impact of Great Post-Purchase Experiences on Customer Loyalty

1) Strengthened customer relationships – The post-purchase phase is the last thing your customers are going to remember about your brand. Thus, it is important to make things memorable in a positive sense and build stronger customer relationships. This also leads to additional revenue for your business as loyal customers are worth up to 10 times the value of their first purchase.

2) Reduced customer service inquiries – Increased anxiety levels of shoppers in the post-purchase phase, lead to higher “Where Is My Order” (WISMO) calls and shipping-related support ticket volume. On the other hand, by keeping customers informed about their orders regularly, you can witness a reduction in support inquiries tickets, and ultimately the costs associated with it.

3) Increased repeat purchase rates – Positive delivery experiences are a sure-shot way of ensuring your customers are satisfied and will keep shopping with you. Rather than leaving it idle, you can leverage this opportunity to send out targeted cross-sell campaigns and double your chances of driving repeat purchases.

How To Optimize Post-Purchase Customer Experiences With Yotpo And Lateshipment.com

Now that you know the benefits of post-purchase CX, here are 3 ways to optimize them and use them to improve loyalty with the Yotpo – LateShipment.com integration.

1) Proactively communicate order delivery status to improve customer convenience

Over 40% of the support inquiries received are order delivery and returns status related. This shows that customers are highly anxious as they are awaiting their orders, so it’s non-optional to keep your customers in the loop of their orders via proactive communication. This allows you to mitigate your customers’ anticipation and ensures that they have a great post-purchase experience.

Yotpo helps eCommerce businesses trigger shipping updates via SMS notifications. With order-tracking information from LateShipment.com, you can set up a total of 13 custom events like Shipped, In-transit with delays, Failed deliveries, Delivered, Return initiated, etc. The best part about these bumps is the fact that the triggers are completely customizable and can be modified end-to-end. Live tracking links can also be sent with these shipping updates to endlessly engage customers.

Also, with custom-built floating pop-ups via the Yotpo SMS bump on LateShipment.com’s branded tracking page, you can capture SMS subscribers for marketing purposes such as notifying them about membership programs, etc, and gain valuable engagement opportunities.

2) Incentivize customers for order delivery mishaps and improve customer retention

Over 10% of e-commerce shipments, irrespective of the shipping carrier or partner you use, face issues such as delivery delays, lost order, damaged parcels and more. The worst part is that your customers are unforgiving of these issues and won’t shop with you again even after just one incident. In such cases, an effective compensation for their patience in the form of loyalty points, in addition to an empathetic response and acknowledgment of the incident, can come in handy.

Via LateShipment.com’s integration with Yotpo Loyalty, eCommerce businesses can reward customers with completely customizable loyalty points, when their orders are facing delivery issues. With data from LateShipment.com retrieved in real-time, you can take up the opportunity to drive a quick solution and mitigate customer frustration as early as possible.

3) Understand customer satisfaction levels with delivery experience feedback and product reviews

70% of consumers are likely to purchase exclusively from brands that understand them and their needs. A great way to understand how your customers feel about your brand is to simply ask them for feedback. Using these insights, you can take action to make regular improvements and promote brand credibility.

Yotpo Reviews help eCommerce businesses collect reviews with smart prompts. With real-time tracking information from LateShipment.com, you can now get both faster and more accurate feedback. The Yotpo review widget can also be added to your branded tracking pages. This will display the star ratings of the products ordered by customers each time they track their package.

Thus, it is clear that integrated experiences are the way to go when it comes to making your post-purchase customer-centric. The Yotpo X LateShipment.com helps you go the extra mile in delivering an integrated experience for your customers while also helping you keep track of your performance to make informed decisions.

TL;DR - How the Yotpo - LateShipment.com integration works for your business

Trigger flows for shipment events (13 events throughout the order delivery and returns stages along with existing transactional SMS) to help you make proactive communication your selling point.
Set up post-purchase triggers for loyalty points to reward customers and gain engagement where you can.
Add the Yotpo Star Rating to the LateShipment.com tracking page builder to display reviews on your Branded Tracking Page.

The Yotpo – LateShipment.com integration stands to help you collect reviews, provide shipping updates, promote your products, and manage everything seamlessly. To get started with things right away, you need to set up the integration, which is designed to be easy to connect and use.

If you haven’t already, sign up for LateShipment.com and Yotpo Reviews
Connect your LateShipment.com to Yotpo Reviews from the Yotpo Marketplace
Pick the Shopify store connected to your Yotpo account and log in to your LateShipment.com account to complete the authentication.
Once you have configured the integration settings, click “Enable” to start the integration.

That’s all from us! It is now your time to make use of LateShipment.com’s integration with Yotpo to initiate customer reviews, send proactive SMS notifications, offer loyalty points, and do so much more to improve key metrics such as Customer Retention Rate (CRR) and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) in the post-purchase phase.

The post 3 Ways To Boost Post-Purchase Customer Experience And Loyalty With Yotpo And Lateshipment.com appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

5 Ways to Ensure Great Post-purchase Customer Support

Sashank Ravindranath — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 11:29:07 +0000

Exceptional customer support is not an option but a necessity.

Especially if you’re part of an e-commerce business, there can be no second thoughts when it comes to a great customer support service, as it plays a huge role in positive customer experiences (CX), which then further leads to repeat purchases.

However, high order volumes, increased customer support requests, etc, can be a burden in your commitment to provide a quality support service.

This can cause trouble to your business in more than one ways.

Increased volume of support tickets and associated costs due to anxious customers reaching out with order status requirements.
Customers frustrated with lack of support response for issues, taking their complaints to social media and tarnishing your brand’s reputation.

Thus, the verdict is clear.

Offering stellar customer support can bring in plenty of benefits for your e-commerce business.

To know the benefits, let us get to know how you can provide customers with a superior support experience, particularly in the post-purchase phase.

Why specifically addressing the post-purchase phase, you ask?

The post-purchase, comprising of order delivery and returns is an often left out part due to many businesses depending on the already strained shipping carriers to take care of them.. But the truth is that, carriers neither have the interest nor the commitment towards your customers’ post-purchase experiences.

Thus, it is time for you to take control of your post-purchase, let’s start with quality customer support techniques.

How to Provide Great Customer Support in the Post-purchase Phase

1. Automate chats to handle frequent and repeated customer queries

People expect fast replies from businesses. Many people are more willing to leave a bad review about a poor customer service experience than over a
suboptimal product.

Live chat, FAQ's, robots, social media can all help with this.
— Andrew Spence (@AndrewSpenceIM) March 23, 2021

One of the quickest ways to get started with a great support experience is to automate your response to frequently asked questions from customers in order to reduce wait time and overall ticket resolution time.

Set frequency levels for different questions asked by your customers and incorporate questions with high volume into a chatbot that can respond on your behalf.

Keep in mind that, nothing impresses customers more than the realization of talking with a human at the other end. Therefore, keep your chatbot sound as human as possible. Also, human-back your conversations, so that your support reps can take over where necessary.

And last but not the least, have a designated FAQ page with answers to all possible questions from customers so that they do not have to ask these questions in the first place.

All of this can help you reduce ‘thankless’ tickets and provide increased customer satisfaction.

2. Provide omnichannel customer support service

Your customers can reach you via any of their preferred channels such as social media, phone calls, website chats, etc. Therefore, you must be prepared to reach them at any of them and not miss out or provide a delayed response. Because not doing so can result in weaker relationships and customer churn.

The key lies in leveraging your help desk tool that lets you take an omnichannel approach while resolving customer queries.

Viewing all interactions with your customer across channels and touchpoints enables your support agents to initiate contextual communication and provide a consistent and seamless customer experience.

3. Make meaningful interactions with customers during the post-purchase phase

Customers are highly anxious while awaiting their orders and bombard you with WISMO calls, and stress about what is going on with their orders (particularly when they sense their orders are likely to be delayed).

A bleak post-purchase customer experience can be the result of poor engagement, thus, it is important to not only frequently engage with your customers without missing out on any touchpoint, but also to keep the engagement meaningful and contextual.

Apart from regular shipping transactional event notifications such as order shipped, in-transit, and delivered, you can also keep your users updated on uncommon occurrences such as delayed in-transit, failed delivery attempts, suspected loss, etc., and keep them in the loop of their orders.

You can communicate the updates via Email and SMS notifications and let them know that you are in a position to handle issues (if any) and are committed to providing them with a great support experience.

4. Identify and proactively resolve delivery issues

Customers are aware that delays and other delivery incidents (not just the ones that are a result of the supply chain crisis) are inevitable and occur due to no fault of yours. But at the least, they expect the business they shop with to be proactive and empathetic towards their situation.

You can keep up or even exceed their expectations by notifying them of such incidents before they occur and being empathetic enough to offer alternatives to ease the situation.

Create a list of FAQs on your customers’ frequent needs and common questions during the Holiday season such as WISMO and keep a track of all these issues regularly. Once you’ve identified these issues, you can then empower your support team to leverage this data and proactively step in to resolve them.

Proactive delivery issue resolution during the order delivery phase is usually offered via timely order updates.

5. Make order tracking and returns self-serve

A great order tracking and returns experience boosts loyalty.

And the most seamless experience you can provide your customers while they are tracking their orders getting delivered or being returned is to make it as easy and fast for them with zero interactions with your support agents.

Self-serve tracking paired with proactive updates keeps your customers in the loop effortlessly and eliminates blind spots about the whereabouts of their package.

Such seamless tracking experiences can also help in revenue retention via repeat purchases.

Bottom Line

Following all the above steps can help you empower your customer support team and further result in:

Demonstrating a strong commitment to the high standard of customer experience you offer
Showing empathy towards your customers’ issues and
Ultimately building a loyal customer base

Making use of a post-purchase and returns management solution such as LateShipment.com will strengthen the hands of your support team and help you do the same.

Once you’ve implemented these hacks into your support model, you can be confident that your support experience is optimized and you’ll be confident of your customers choosing your business repeatedly.

Try these out and let us know your experience in the comments below!

The post 5 Ways to Ensure Great Post-purchase Customer Support appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

5 Must Know Return KPIs for Every Modern E-commerce Businesss

Sashank Ravindranath — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 15:13:08 +0000

E-commerce returns have greatly evolved over the years.

Businesses initially saw returns as just a cost-center for their business and planned to save a few bucks by not offering returns to their customers.

Then e-commerce retailers began realizing that customers preferred to shop with businesses that offered returns and considered returns inevitable and a necessary evil that encouraged people to shop more.

Fast forward to today, we are seeing returns as a great opportunity to build strong relationships and increase repeat purchases.

A great returns experience helps you increase repeat purchase rates by 4x.

But how do you determine if your strategies are indeed successful and you are indeed providing a great returns experience?

That’s where specific valuable return metrics or return KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) come in to help you measure the success of your e-commerce business’s returns experience.

These metrics help you keep track of these metrics and have a data-driven approach

So, what are these metrics, and why are they important? Let’s take a look.

Side note: After much product development hours, we at LateShipment.com are launching our advanced Returns Analytics Dashboard. This will enable your teams to make better business decisions when it comes to product returns. You can read more about the product launch below.

Returns-related Metrics (Return KPIs) to Keep Track of

There are generally two kinds of metrics when it comes to e-commerce returns that tell you if your strategies have been successful. Metrics that show whether your returns are acting as a competitive advantage for your brand and if returns are indeed profitable for your business. Here’s a compiled breakdown of both for you.

1. Return Rate

The return rate is the rate of return as against the total products ordered. That is, if 25 out of 100 orders from your customers are returned, your return rate would stand at 25%.

Return rate as a metric blurs the lines between your products and returns efforts. For example, returns can happen due to issues with your product or if your returns policy is too lenient, so as to encourage frequent fraudulent returns in the form of wardrobing, etc.

Despite being a legacy method, you can constantly keep track of your return rates to introspect different components of returns and make important returns-related decisions such as product descriptions.

2. Return Spend

Return spend, also the ‘Cost per return’, tells you the cumulative value of the return shipping cost that businesses spend per return.

If you’re a business that bears the cost of return shipping, then your return spends tell you how much you spend on return-related logistics over time.

This can give you insights to cut costs and get smart with your returns. For example, if you feel your return shipping costs are burning a hole through your pockets, encourage customers to opt for alternative and efficient return methods such as exchanges or store credit options to ensure revenue retention.

3. Reason for return

This new metric is an extension of the return rate that is set to clear the lines between product-related returns and fraudulent ones.

Knowing the reason behind customers returning their items gives you better clarity on breaking down your return rate.

Customers who have mentioned reasons such as defective, damaged, or simply didn’t like the product would not likely return to shop with you again. Therefore, use this metric to make frequent quality checks with your product to reduce customer churn.

4. Frequently returned products

This is another new metric that comprehends the reason for return and ultimately the return rate.

Here’s a question on your mind: “I know why customers are returning their orders but what are they returning the most?”

Knowing the answer to this question helps you understand the collective issue behind a particular item category. If the percentage is higher than your worry threshold, you can take efforts to recall the particular item and do quality checks.

For example, if your Denim Jacket and Jean Pants are being returned higher than usual, maybe it’s time for you to reconsider where you source your denim raw materials from.

5. Preferred return methods

This metric defines the composition of refunds-exchanges and store credits in product returns over a course of time.

Identify the percentage of returns that end up being refunded, turned into an existing product, or simply have its value-added for a later purchase.

Keep in mind that refunds usually mean lost revenue and as an e-commerce business owner, you must promote exchanges and store credits to ensure healthy returns and revenue retention.

You can incentivize your customers to opt out of frequent refunds by providing them with better deals for the others.

How to Regularly Keep Track of Return KPIs

Now that you’re aware of why your business needs to be aware of these metrics, it is clear that you need to keep track of these metrics regularly.

To make things easier, you can make use of a solution that provides these metrics on a consistent and most importantly. a unified basis.

Meet LateShipment.com’s Returns Experience Management platform with the all-new Returns Analytics Dashboard, a.k.a the solution

LateShipment.com is a one-stop solution for everything post-purchase, whose Returns Experience Management platform is built to boost returns-related metrics that matter most to your business.

As an addition to the Returns Experience Management, comes the upgraded Returns Analytics Dashboard which breaks down returns into simple, actionable metrics to help your teams make better business decisions.

With the help of the Analytics Dashboard, keep track and see these returns-related metrics work in your favor and ultimately spell the success of your e-commerce business’ returns strategies.

To Learn more about the dashboard and Returns Experience Management – Click here to schedule a call with a product expert

Other ways the Returns Experience Management platform can help your business

Apart from specific returns-related metrics, Returns Experience Management also helps you make returns easy and profitable by increasing important CX metrics:

Conversion rate by extending a frictionless returns experience
Repeat purchases with easy returns and status tracking
Revenue retained with flexible return methods (seamless exchanges and store credit options).

Also, you can considerably reduce the time spent per return by making returns status tracking self-service.

Bottom Line

Remember, the returns experience you provide holds incredible power to boost your bottom line and create loyal customers for life. Therefore, it is time to redefine returns as a growth driver for your business.

To get all things done right before the significant returns season arrives in January, you can make use of a returns management solution such as LateShipment.com.

The post 5 Must Know Return KPIs for Every Modern E-commerce Businesss appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

How Automation Transforms the Post-Purchase Customer Experience

Sashank Ravindranath — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 10:09:20 +0000

In the always-on retail environment, the convenience of a seamless experience is the key to winning more customers. According to Linnworks research, over 80% of shoppers are looking for a frictionless, cross-device ecommerce experience.

The challenge for retailers is that they’re busier than ever merchandising products, processing payments, delivering orders and juggling a multitude of other daily tasks. To scale the business without sacrificing convenience, companies should consider automation services, such as LateShipment.com. The benefits of automation are clear for the business as a whole, and automation can also transform the customer experience even when the customer isn’t directly involved.

Shopping and checkout experiences can be managed directly by the customer, but that’s only half of the overall order experience. The post-purchase phase can present a series of complex tasks ⁠— including shipping, tracking, delivery, returns, reviews and more ⁠— and automation helps ensure these tasks are managed in an efficient manner. Automation helps create a positive post-purchase experience for the customer and can have a significant impact on engagement and revenue opportunities.

Managing Orders

Supply chain disruptions have affected businesses and consumers across the board, causing growing dissatisfaction among buyers and leaving sellers to find alternative vendors, products and solutions.

While automation won’t necessarily resolve these issues, it can help scale ordering processes to provide efficient fulfillment services and eliminate delayed or partially fulfilled orders. For example, automation can help logistics and fulfillment centers communicate with each other to locate alternative products and routes for orders. In other cases, automation can be used to prevent a customer from placing an order for out-of-stock products.

Automation can also help eliminate manual record-keeping, freeing up time for your employees to focus on other tasks and minimizing human error. As orders are placed, automated systems can begin fulfillment processes while monitoring inventory levels.

Fulfillment

Managing Inventory

In what we call the effortless economy, consumers have high expectations for convenience. They expect to order from their chosen channel by selecting the shipping or pickup option that works best for them. Of course, customers can’t place orders if there’s no product to sell. Running a successful ecommerce business requires companies to have inventory management automation tools that order the right stock in the right quantity and at the right time to ensure order fulfillment occurs without delay.

Not only is it important to understand the demand for each product, but you also need to know how long it takes to replenish that inventory. This knowledge helps prevent delays, out-of-stock notices and poor customer experiences. Automation systems can be established to place orders directly to suppliers as inventory is sold, eliminating slower manual processes.

Managing Listings

Supply chain disruptions can cause significant issues for consumers and retailers alike. By managing listings automatically, you can remove or update products identified as out of stock, avoiding disgruntled customers by clearly indicating that a product is not currently available. Some software even offers the ability to make recommendations for a similar product or allow the shopper to sign up for a notification when the product is back in stock.

Predicting Supply and Demand

Automation software can also analyze sales patterns to anticipate predictable demand or adjust for seasonal spikes in sales. When this software is deployed, issues with overselling can be reduced or eliminated when inventory is automatically replenished. As demand declines or a newer product gains popularity, stock levels will continue to be adjusted. The ultimate benefit of automation is that this oversight allows sales and stock levels to be maintained at optimal levels, ensuring that products are available for customers when they’re ready to order.

Facilitating Delivery

Real-time delivery tracking can bring immediate attention to unexpected issues, giving you time to take corrective action before it affects the customer. If there are delays in shipping orders or other unresolved issues, you can proactively communicate with the customer to offer a solution. Regardless of the outcome, most customers appreciate open communication and effort to resolve delivery issues.

Automation can also be used to group orders together and select the most appropriate fulfillment company. The ideal company can vary depending on the channel, where the order was placed, the location of the products and customer, and the type and/or value of the product.

Retailers can set rules for automation so that decisions are made on how orders are fulfilled. This removes the risk of human error and replaces expensive manual processes with seamless automation that gets products from storage facilities to customers quickly.

Tracking Orders

If you have placed an important order online, you recognize the value of shipping notifications during the delivery phase. Consumers expect to have an estimated delivery date before completing a purchase, and those tracking expectations extend to the final delivery. By automating notifications, you can send emails and text messages directly to your customers throughout the order-delivery life cycle, helping to ensure a seamless delivery experience and saving time for your support team to focus on more critical tasks.

Some businesses take order tracking a step further by providing customer orders with a unique, branded tracking experience. This approach can provide essential tracking information in an easy and accessible format. Companies that incorporate branded elements such as logos, design or colors can provide a more consistent experience for the customer. This also communicates to customers that your brand prioritizes order tracking and fulfillment.

Improving Returns

Return processes can be time-consuming and costly, and bad experiences can drive away customers, sometimes permanently. As ecommerce sales skyrocketed in recent years, many retailers opted to extend their return policies to offset issues caused by the pandemic. This led to longer wait times for processed returns and lower customer satisfaction.

Instead of adjusting policies and timelines, improve your return process with automation. This approach can save time and labor while improving the customer experience. Seamless returns experiences can help businesses throughout the multichannel ecommerce journey to create loyal customers and redefine returns as a growth driver.

Collecting Customer Feedback

Customer service can’t improve without understanding your customers’ experience. Take the guesswork out of providing better post-purchase experiences for your customers. Gathering feedback from customers is crucial for companies to recognize successful practices and areas for improvement. Businesses selling through their websites can use delivery feedback to influence shipping decisions that optimize the experience, while businesses selling on social media can use it to make better delivery choices.

LateShipment.com and Linnworks

Linnworks has partnered with LateShipment.com to provide a host of benefits to help businesses like yours win more customers with positive post-purchase experiences. From staying on top of delivery issues to custom shipping notifications, branded tracking pages and more, our partnership with LateShipment.com helps brands build credibility and stronger customer relationships.

Providing a World-Class Customer Experience

Providing a world-class customer experience is one of the most important aspects of any business. A positive and consistent experience builds customer loyalty and drives success. In fact, according to Zendesk, 75% of customers are willing to spend more on a brand that provides a good customer experience. By contrast, service failures, even when seemingly miniscule, can have a drastic impact on your bottom line.

Your customers have made their expectations clear. Meeting them where they are and offering a convenient experience is key to customer satisfaction, but it’s not the only piece of the puzzle. Once they place an order, it’s up to you to provide a seamless experience and offer highly valued features throughout the customer journey.

As sales increase and operations scale, all ecommerce businesses must keep up with the pace of change. Maintaining high customer satisfaction can sometimes seem nearly impossible. However, by implementing well-designed automation strategies and partnerships, as seen with Linnworks and LateShipment.com, retailers can reduce the burden of manual processes while prioritizing the customer experience. To learn more about Linnworks and automated inventory management, request a demo now.

This article is a guest contribution from Linnworks

The post How Automation Transforms the Post-Purchase Customer Experience appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

4 Tips to Provide Great Customer Service in E-commerce

Sashank Ravindranath — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 10:20:55 +0000

Creating a positive experience via great customer service impacts how your audience perceives your business. It not only impacts your existing customers but influences your prospective customers as well.

Many consumers do brand research and read online reviews before committing to a business. Negative comments from dissatisfied customers could drive potential customers to your competition.Therefore, an exceptional customer experience should be a top priority for e-commerce businesses.

Here are some practical tips to help optimize your customer service using the limited touchpoints available in a digital ecosystem.

1. Invest in the Right Tools

One of the biggest customer experience challenges e-commerce brands face is a lack of personal interaction with the customer. As a customer can’t come into a store to discuss an issue or try on an outfit, there’s an increased likelihood of customer dissatisfaction.

Investing in the right tools can help minimize negative interactions and reduce friction in the sales process. Here are some must-have tools to enhance communication with customers.

1.1 Automated Chatbots

Many consumers would answer negatively when asked about robotic process automation in the sales process. However, they can’t deny the convenience of chatbots when looking for simple information about an online offering.

Programming automated chatbots enhance the customer experience in several ways. The main benefit is that someone can quickly collect information from the website without having to scour through the navigation menu to find it. Furthermore, they can continue to go about their life while waiting for a response rather than waiting on hold.

Having automated chatbots for quick, repetitive inquiries also keeps customer service lines free, reducing response times and time spent on hold. As such, automated chatbots benefit those who use them and those who contact the business through other channels.

1.2 Omnichannel Access and Centralization

Accessibility is everything in e-commerce. As the customer can’t call a local store or stop in on their way home from work, having different channels through which to contact the business is a must. Some customers will feel more comfortable communicating through email, while others prefer speaking to someone on the phone.

Incorporating digital customer experience software allows omnichannel access and is essential for an improved customer experience, but that’s not all. Data centralization is also a key consideration when taking this approach. An agent or representative should be able to quickly pull up customer information, whether they’ve called, emailed, or used social media as their point of contact.

Having channels that speak to one another and share data can minimize time spent on hold and improve the time to resolution.

1.3 Voice Analysis Software

Voice analysis software is an AI-driven technology that helps customer service agents control a conversation. This tool analyzes tones in real-time to offer valuable insights and suggestions.

Voice analysis software reads both the agent and the customer and offers suggestions for improvement. An agent can use this real-time feedback to direct the conversation toward a resolution that leaves the customer satisfied. This tool also helps with employee engagement. If the voice analysis software picks up on a negative tone from employees, it can notify them that it might be time for a break after this call.

We no longer live in a society where the customer is always right. Taking care of employees and ensuring they have time for a reset after a difficult customer can protect their mental health and wellbeing, minimize turnover, and create a consistent customer-centric experience.

1.4 Cybersecurity

Investing in cybersecurity is often overlooked as an aspect of the customer experience. However, minimizing the risk of their personal or financial data getting hacked ultimately impacts their overall experience with a company. Ensure that your e-commerce business is secure and that every transaction has minimal risk.

2. Empower Your Customers

Empowering your customers to take control of their experience will help improve wait times, time to resolution, and overall satisfaction. Here are some key considerations for customer empowerment.

2.1 Value Their Time

Valuing your customers’ time is the top priority in providing an exceptional customer experience. If your customer has a problem with the product they’ve received or has a question about your product, you should provide what they need in as little time as possible. Tools like automation and centralization can help with this effort.

2.2 Provide Self-Service Tools

Providing self-service tools is another effective way to show customers that you value their time while taking the burden off customer service agents. For example, including a shipping tracking portal on your website will minimize customer service inquiries.

2.3 Ask for Feedback

Asking for feedback after a customer goes through the transaction process or receives their product will benefit both the business and the consumer. Your customer will feel valued and heard, and your business can use the feedback to refine processes and improve the customer journey.

3. Practice Proactive Customer Service

Customer service has historically been reactive rather than proactive. Now, e-commerce brands are shifting toward an actionable, proactive approach. Here are some initial steps to take to embrace this shift.

3.1 Create an Onboarding Flow

So your customer has purchased a product. Now what? Before you start asking for positive reviews, ensure the customer knows what they’re doing and how to get the best possible results from their purchase.

Creating an onboarding flow that seeks to educate a customer will minimize the learning curve and improve early adoption rates. With an omnichannel approach to customer service, you can incorporate extra training and support needs into your onboarding flow.

3.2 Get Ahead of Problems

Let customers know of potential challenges before they bring them to you. Transparency and authenticity go a long way to building customer trust. Consider using social media monitoring to see what people are saying online and use feedback constructively. When you receive negative feedback, own your mistakes and make them right.

4. Track Your Metrics

It should come as no surprise that data is king in the e-commerce world. Tracking your metrics will help you set tangible goals and create actionable steps for improvement throughout the customer journey.

Some key metrics to track include:

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
Average Resolution Time (ART)
Peak Times
First Contact Resolution
Customer Effort Score (CES)
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Churn Rates
Bounce rates

When in doubt, outline your customer journey and look for friction points. e-commerce businesses should also look into the cause of customer friction by evaluating website metrics through Google Analytics, such as page load times, potential bottlenecks, etc.

Final Thoughts

Improving the customer experience isn’t as simple as looking at data and adjusting your online store; it requires a cultural mindset shift. Audit and update your tools, invest in employee training and morale, and take a proactive approach to customer service for success.

This is a guest contribution by Ashley Lipman, Content Marketing Specialist at AltitudeBranding.

Ashley Lipman is an award-winning writer who discovered her passion for providing knowledge to readers worldwide on topics closest to her heart – all things digital. Since her first high school award in Creative Writing, she continues to deliver awesome content through various niches touching the digital sphere.

The post 4 Tips to Provide Great Customer Service in E-commerce appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

Ecommerce Returns Management Process: Best Practices

Sashank Ravindranath — Thu, 19 May 2022 10:35:43 +0000

Returns are an integral part of every ecommerce business. 20% of all ecommerce orders are returned. And this number increased up to three-fold during times like the holiday season.

However, they become a logistical nightmare and a cost center only when they get out of hand in the absence of a proper returns management system.

Therefore, you need to put in your best efforts to manage returns and make them a growth driver for your business. But first, let’s get to the basics.

What is Ecommerce Returns Management?

Returns management is the process of ensuring a smooth returns experience for your customers. This covers the end-to-end of returns — from the moment the customer initiates to fulfilling a replacement if they had requested an exchange.

Ecommerce returns management sits at the very center of reverse logistics, inventory management, and post-purchase customer experience.

Proper returns management helps you boost your bottom line and create loyal customers for life. To help understand it better, let’s take a deeper look at the customer touchpoints in ecommerce returns.

Returns management customer touchpoints

There are several touchpoints or points of interaction between the customer and the ecommerce business in the returns management process. But as we mentioned, it all starts from the moment the customer wants to initiate a return.

1. Customer requests a return on their order

Returns happen for a lot of reasons, some of which have no logical explanation and are simply based on the customer’s emotion.

But in this case, let’s take the example of the customer being unhappy with their order. The customer selects the item they wish to return along with the valid reason (as requested by you).

2. The return request is rejected or approved from your end

When return requests do not meet the conditions you’ve provided, the return request can be rejected and interaction with the customers for this particular order ends here.

On the other hand, if the reason for the return is valid it can be approved from your end and the process for initiating the return gets started.

3. When the order return is in transit

Order returns are in transit from the moment it is scheduled to be collected to the moment it reaches back to your store. These moments are usually leveraged by ecommerce brands to share return status updates.

4. When the product is returned to the store

Once the product makes its way back to your store, you can start collecting the customers’ feedback on their shopping experience with your brand. If the feedback is positive, you can also try convincing the customer to shop for a replacement (if they hadn’t chosen one already).

That’s all from the experience front. In terms of business operations, the product is then sent for inspection. If there’s no sign of damage, the product is re-stocked in the inventory and sold to another customer.

Now that we’ve got better context, here are some of the best practices related to returns management that you can implement for your ecommerce business.

Ecommerce Returns Management Process: Best Practices

1. Have a shopper-friendly returns policy

67% of shoppers check the returns policy before making a purchase

The first thing a shopper checks while wanting to return an item is your store’s return policy. Therefore, make it friendly enough to attract them and encourage repeat shopping.

The best ploy with a returns policy is:

Making it flexible enough in terms of conditions and deadlines
Having it mention your objectives and the customers’ needs clearly
Not encouraging fraudulent returns and wardrobing

This way, there is a win-win situation, and you can still manage to increase conversions without spending too much on acquisition and other unwanted return-related expenses.

Also, make sure your returns policy is easy to find for the customer and display it in areas of clear visibility such as the home page, product pages, checkout page, FAQ section, etc.

2.Promise a hassle-free returns experience

Your customers return their purchase because they were unhappy with something around it, such as fitting, color, damages, etc. They have been excited to get the product on their hands the second they hit ‘buy’. Therefore, mitigate their frustrations by making your returns process seamless.

You can take the hassle out of product returns by enabling your customers to initiate returns directly from the order tracking page instead of spending time searching for it. This helps in improving the return experience and in turn, delights your customers.

You can also extend the seamless returns experience by enabling the customers to print automated and prepaid return labels and get done with their order return quickly.

3. Make the returns process fast and easy for your customers

92% of shoppers say they will buy again if the returns process is easy.

Apart from prepaid return labels, you can also enable customers to initiate returns easily and fast with the help of a returns portal.

Your customers can pull up their orders, select the item they would like to return, provide a reason, select the return method, and voila! Get their returns initiated in less than a few minutes.

Such an experience would give your customers all the more reason to keep shopping with you.

4.Keep your customers in the loop of their returns

Just like order delivery, your customers would like to stay in the know of their return status as well.

Look forward to sending proactive updates on return requests, via automated email and SMS notifications and providing a tracking page that provides complete transparency around return status.

This can keep your customers in the loop effortlessly and eliminate their anxiety about the whereabouts of their returning package.

5. Get smart with your returns

70% of all returns are size and fitting related.

Imagine refunding all these returns and taking a hit on your profit margins amidst the already sky-rocketing shipping costs.

Now, this is where you can get smart with your returns and encourage customers to opt for alternative and efficient return methods such as exchanges or store credits options to ensure revenue retention for your ecommerce business.

You can incentivize your customers to choose these alternatives with prepaid labels, free shipping, bonus credit, etc, and increase revenue retained.

6. Automate your returns management process

25% of ecommerce sites don’t support non-product search queries, like returns or tracking.

This can lead your customers to bombard your support reps and turn out to be tedious for your support team as well as expensive for your business.

You can consider making your returns management process self-service by automating them to prevent such problems.

Automating your returns process can help you:

Free up your support agents to address more pressing issues
Drastically reduce time spent per return request and inbound conversation volume.

FAQs about Returns Management

1. How do ecommerce businesses manage returns?

Ecommerce businesses can manage returns on their own by optimizing their returns policy, setting up flexible return methods, enabling customers to print prepaid return shipping labels, providing proactive updates on return status requests, offering easy variant exchanges instead of refunds, etc or they can make use of a returns management solution like LateShipment.com, that does all the heavy lifting for them.

2. What is the return management process?

3. How can ecommerce businesses reduce return rates?

Apart from following a proper returns management process such as making the returns process seamless and promoting exchanges instead of returns, ecommerce businesses can also reduce returns by optimizing their product pages, engaging customers with product usage information, etc.

4. What percentage of ecommerce orders are returned?

The average ecommerce return rate hovers around 20-30%. Most of them are due to size and fitting issues, purchase of wrong quantity, unclear or lack of usage information, wardrobing, etc.

5. How does a returns experience management software work?

A returns experience management solution such as LateShipment.com helps you delight your customers with:

An easy-to-use return portal
Real-time return tracking and automated notifications
Providing options to predefine rules
Enabling multiple return methods and supporting prepaid labels, etc.

All of this can help you uncomplicate returns for you and your teams.

Bottom Line

Ecommerce businesses must start realizing the fact that returns on their own are not necessarily a bad thing. It is when they’re left unattended they become too much to handle.

On the other hand, the returns experience you provide holds incredible power to boost your bottom line and create loyal customers for life. Therefore, it is time to redefine returns as a growth driver for your business.

To get all things done right before the significant returns season arrives in January, you can make use of a returns management solution such as LateShipment.com.

The post Ecommerce Returns Management Process: Best Practices appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

5 Ways AI Can Transform the Retail Industry: Examples and Benefits

Sashank Ravindranath — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 11:54:25 +0000

The retail industry has been undergoing a digital transformation for years. It has improved in speed, efficiency, and accuracy, thanks, in large part, to improved data and predictive analytics technologies that allow firms to make data-driven business decisions. None of these insights would be possible without the internet of things (IoT) and, more importantly, artificial intelligence (AI).

Retailers now have access to high-level data and information, which they can utilize to improve operations and open up new business opportunities. In fact, AI in retail is expected to create $40 billion in additional income over the next three years. Many industries use the term artificial intelligence, yet many people don’t fully get what it means.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning refer to the technology that can collect, process, and analyze large volumes of data to predict, forecast, inform, and support retailers in making reliable, data-driven business decisions. These technologies can even work on their own, transforming raw data from IoT and other sources into actionable insights with the help of advanced analytics.

AI Applications in Retail

AI has a significant impact on the retail industry, accelerating and automating a handful of functionalities. Below, we’ll discuss a list of AI applications in retail to give you a headstart:

Provides valuable data to keep track of Inventory

In the retail industry, artificial intelligence is improving demand forecasts.

AI business intelligence systems foresee industry movements and make proactive changes to a company’s marketing, merchandising, and business strategies by mining insights from the marketplace, customer, and competition data. This has ramifications for supply chain planning, pricing, and promotional planning.

Creating interactive chat programs in the retail business is a fantastic way to employ AI technologies while improving customer service and engagement. These bots use AI and machine learning to engage with customers, answer common questions, and direct them to useful answers and outcomes. As a result, these bots collect crucial client data and then label the data that can be used to inform future business decisions.

Maintaining appropriate stocks is a major concern for retailers. By connecting more aspects of their business and using AI to help with inventory management, retailers may get a holistic view of their stores, customers, and merchandise.

Helps you understand customer behavior

The more you understand customer behavior and trends, the more you’ll be able to meet demand and provide the best products possible.

AI might help retailers improve demand forecasting, pricing, and product positioning. As a result, customers have access to the right products at the right time and in the right place.

Predictive analytics can help you order the right amount of inventory, ensuring that shops don’t have too much or too little on hand. AI may be able to track data from online channels, enabling better e-commerce activities.

New kinds of AI can help you understand customer intent and personalize the shopper’s journey accordingly at the retail edge. One instance is marking some areas in stores using heat mapping. Cameras and computer vision combine to indicate which items are picked up, returned, and where the customer goes after leaving the shelf.

Empowers you to offer stellar customer support

Whether it’s a little boutique or a worldwide behemoth, businesses strive to deliver quick, customized, and delightful shopping experiences.

Customers should be able to locate what they’re searching for easily, obtain assistance when needed, and check out swiftly. These operations are streamlined by AI to help generate more fulfilling client experiences.

Customers are being recognized by mobile and digital portals, which are personalizing the e-commerce experience to reflect their current environment, previous purchases, and buying activity.

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are continually evolving a user’s digital experience to develop hyper-relevant displays for each interaction. Customer engagement may be measured using digital signage with computer vision, and real-time advertising tailored to the audience can be served. AI gives additional opportunities to tailor experiences, from the retail edge to the cloud.

Manages fluctuating pricing

AI applications in retail outlets might aid in the pricing of items by showing the anticipated results of various pricing schemes.

Systems collect information on other items, promotional efforts, sales numbers, and other data in order to carry out this task.

Business owners can showcase the greatest deals to attract new clients and increase revenue. eBay and Kroger both use Artificial Intelligence to optimize their pricing and remain flexible in their capacity to modify rates and promotions based on the data they collect.

The price of a product is forecasted based on demand, seasonal trends, attributes, the release date of new versions of the same item, and other factors. Its most obvious application is in the travel business, but it might also be utilized in retail.

Consider an app or service that allows your consumers to see how the price of a product will change in advance. This is doable and simple to accomplish using Artificial Intelligence.

Improve shopping experience

During the buying process, Artificial Intelligence (AI) may also help in the detection and segmentation of your customers’ emotions. Walmart has already employed face recognition technology for this reason.

Each checkout line is equipped with cameras, and if a customer becomes agitated, a business employee will talk with him or her. Mood tracking will surely contribute to the formation of stronger client relationships. Business owners may utilize behavioral economics to build a customized strategy for each consumer using Artificial Intelligence technologies.

Wrapping up

AI’s role in the retail industry is increasing exponentially all the time.

Applications in retail are not only bound to a software end but several other fields such as Internet-of-things and robotics also play an important role in the development of such systems so this process includes most of the major engineering disciplines and because of such facts, any company that fails to focus on such developments might struggle to stay contemporary or compete internationally.

Such innovation not only increases the overall working skills but also eliminates the requirement for traditional or antiquated systems with intelligent automation, such as inventory management.

AI is simply changing the way stores function for the better. You can put your shop in a better position to make better decisions, increase sales, and eventually improve customer retention by implementing AI. So, there’s no better time than now to start incorporating AI into your daily operations.

As you consider how to include AI into your retail organization, keep in mind the several advantages listed above. You may be well on your way to attaining a whole new level of business growth in the months and years ahead with the correct AI technologies.

This article is a contribution by Melanie Johnson.

Melanie Johnson is an AI and computer vision enthusiast with a wealth of experience in technical writing. Passionate about innovation and AI-powered solutions. Loves sharing expert insights and educating individuals on tech.

The post 5 Ways AI Can Transform the Retail Industry: Examples and Benefits appeared first on Lateshipment.com Blog.

Retail technology Archives - Lateshipment.com Blog

4 Emerging and Promising Ecommerce Logistics Trends for 2024

E-Commerce Logistics (B2C and B2B Parcel Shipping) Trends For 2024

1. Integration of advanced technologies in the form of AI and machine learning

2. A greater focus on sustainability

3. A shift towards customer-centric experiences

4. Increased focus on strengthening Cybersecurity

Over to You

How To Handle Returns And Exchanges During The Holidays

8 Tips To Handle Returns And Exchanges Like A Pro During The Holidays

1.Review your return policy and extend your return window

2. Clearly Communicate Your Policy

3. Streamline the Return Process

4. Reduce Return-related Inquiries

5. Enable Flexible Return Options

6. Track and Analyze Returns

7. Promote Exchanges over Refunds

8. Invest in Returns Automation

How Returns Experience Management Can Help

Introducing LateShipment.com’s E-commerce Shipping Insurance — Smart, Simplified, and Automated

E-commerce Shipping: Everything That Is In Control And That Isn't

Inevitable Post-purchase Issues and Their Impact on Your Business

What is Shipping Insurance And Why Is It Important For Your Business?

Why Old-School Shipping Insurance Techniques Might Not Make The Cut in Today’s Post-Purchase Landscape

Introducing LateShipment.com's E-commerce Shipping Insurance — Smart, Simplified, and Automated

LateShipment.com: the (Revolutionary) New Way of Insuring Your Parcels

What’s Covered?

What’s new?

What’s better?

Streamlining Your Checkout Page for success this Holiday Season

Why Optimizing a Checkout Page is Important this Holiday Season?

Streamlining Your Checkout Page for success

1. Provide Multiple Payment Options

2. Display Accurate Shipping info

3. Add Gifting Options

4. Add a ‘Personalized Notes’ option

5. Collect necessary information for retargeting

6. Add Gift card option in your checkout page

7. Display Shopping cart summary with discounts ​

Anatomy of a Checkout Page

Final Word

Key Ecommerce Personalization areas to focus on

Why is Ecommerce personalization important?

Key Ecommerce Personalization areas to focus on:

Search personalization

Recommended products personalization

Personalized marketing

Final word

How to increase conversion rates on the ecommerce store using site search?

Some Stats on Site Search

How to increase conversion rates on the ecommerce store using site search?

1. Make sure your search bar is visible, Duh!

2. Allow to search with images

3. Allow typo corrections in your site search

4. Customize your 404 page

5. Optimize for mobile search

6. Cater to customers who know what they want

7. Display product image in search

8. Use filters and sorting in site search

Final Word

Relationship marketing and its benefits with examples

Steps in relationship building

Omnichannel messaging

Post-purchase Customer service

Collecting their feedback

Customer retention activities

Loyalty programs

Benefits of relationship marketing

Examples of relationship marketing

Made in - relationship building through educational content in branded tracking pages

Peloton and it’s excellent relationship building activities

Final word

Use Cases for a Returns Experience Management Solution

What is Returns Experience Management?

The Current State Of Returns In E-Commerce - An Insight

1. Dealing with frequent returns inquiries is a tedious process

2. An influx of inquiries from anxious customers bombarding support teams

3. Unmanaged returns are a cost center for e-commerce businesses

4. Manually processing returns makes it difficult to handle operations

5. There is a clear lack of insight into the returns process

7. Display Shopping cart summary with discounts