5 Ways eCommerce Brands Can Break Through the Noise

It’s no surprise that eCommerce sales will continue to rise. It’s estimated that this year eCommerce sales will be over $6 trillion dollars. 

But as the eCommerce industry continues to grow, with millions of eCommerce stores across the globe created daily, the competitive landscape is fierce, the advertising costs continue to rise, and customer expectations are higher than ever.

So how can eCommerce stores solve their problems and come up with solutions to break through the noise?

Let’s find out.

What problems are eCommerce businesses facing?

Creating an online store, it’s as simple as it can be nowadays with eCommerce platforms like Shopify or Magento. You’ll be up in no time, ready to sell your products or services.

Unfortunately, selling doesn’t always happen as soon as expected.

"eCommerce brands have faced a lot more competition in the past two years - which means as an agency. We need tools that will help them set themselves apart from the competition. Videowise does a great job of this, as store visitors don’t often see real customers on video using products - especially on product pages. Customers have less patience with brands than they used, so it’s critical to give them what they want and need when they want it,” says Adam Pearce, Co-founder and CEO of Blend.

Even if you have a well-established brand, it doesn’t mean you’re not facing some of the problems that the supersaturated eCommerce industry has, such as:

• Poor site performance

• High digital advertising costs

• Harder to attain customers

• Not targeting the right audience

• Inconsistent shopping experiences.

But where there is a problem, there is a solution, right?

What does your business need to be successful, and how can you set it apart?

1. 1. Improve site speed

One of the most frustrating situations for a customer is when the site doesn’t load as fast as it should, and it immediately breaks the whole shopping experience, ultimately making the customer leave the site.

A slow site speed leaves you with no sales, poor search engine rankings, low site traffic, and a negative customer experience.

There are certain things you can do to improve the site speed, such as optimizing images and videos, using CDNs, minifying CSS and Java Scripts, and all sorts of other similar actions. 

If you’re like me, and don’t speak dev language, don’t worry. 

For videos, we got you covered with Videowise. The video components don’t affect page speed load time, so that everything will run smoothly.

As for all the others, you can hire developers to help you with everything you need to make your site load faster.

Agencies like Blend Commerce are helpful to speak with on-site speed, as not only can they help you analyze the impact of site speed now, but they also can help you plan the future versions of your store, meaning that if you have new planned functionality, the team can guide as to how this could impact your site speed.

1. 2. Increase shoppers’ retention

With millions of eCommerce sites, customers have plenty of options, but how do you make them buy from you and come back for more?

You have got to start with a well-put-together customer journey, and there are multiple things you can do here.

Improve UI/UX

First, you must know who your audience is, what their pain points are, and what their needs are. When we recently caught up with Adam Pearce, CEO of Blend, he said:

“You need to think of UX and UI as two parts. UX is ‘how easy can you make it for a visitor to buy,’ and UI is ‘how can you make an easy experience beautiful.’ Unfortunately, many brands focus on UI only, which leads to poor performance.”

Some simple actions you can take are by asking the following questions:

• Can I reduce the number of clicks it takes to get to the cart?

• Which page do customers tend to leave the site from - what could be the reasons here?

• If I have options/variants for products, which options are never selected? Can we remove them?

Having the structure and visuals in order will make your store easy to navigate and contribute to more conversions.

Use interactive and shoppable videos

Once you have your UI and UX in order, you can use the power of videos to capture attention and increase time on site.

You can enhance shopper retention by utilizing interactive video software to create engaging quiz videos., and help you gather first-party data about your audience’s preferences.

You can use interactive quiz videos to ask for customer feedback as part of the customer journey. This will help you improve their experience.

Videos can also help you start a customer education program. It’s a long-term investment in your customer base. Offering customers information about your products and services, such as Ava Estell, or going beyond with news from your specific industry, is a proven strategy for customer success.

Your knowledge base will create retention and build trustworthy relationships with your customers.

1. 3. Omnichannel distribution

Omnichannel offers a seamless customer journey. The focus of omnichannel distribution is on the customer, and the intentions are to provide them with a personalized message no matter the channel the customer's reaching out from.

For example, suppose the customer sees a shoppable video and decides to buy a product. In that case, the emails he receives for confirmation and the product's package should have the same visual style as the website and the video.

The package could have a QR code leading to more offers, benefits, or an entrance to the product's community - all with the same unified experience.

The QR code could instantly take you to a swipeable video playlist designed in Videowise, where your customers could see how-to videos, product videos, new video offers, or, why not, a video quiz about how you feel about the product.

When customers see brand consistency and further interaction, it builds trust, and trust increases the chances of customer lifetime value.

1. 4. Use UGC videos

UGC videos are created by customers directly, and they are about a customer's personal experience with a brand.

One of the reasons you should use UGC videos is that they offer your potential customers a more authentic experience, builds credibility, and increases purchasing intent. 

Customers today are more eager to trust a reputable creator making a video recommendation than watching an online ad. This gives them a realistic depiction of the product or service they’re about to buy.

But where can you find UGC content?

First, you can partner with content creators and influencers to create UGC videos for you, but be ready to pay high prices.

If you’re looking for an easier way to leverage UGC videos, you can use Videowise, which helps you find and aggregate all the existing UGC content on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok about your brand in one place.

Once you have all your UGC videos together, you can choose which one highlights your brand better and make a shoppable testimonial video.

UGC content will act as proof that the product or service you offer is worth buying, increasing your brand identity and credibility.

1. 5. Analyze and iterate

Here is the essential part differentiating a successful business from businesses that don’t rely on data and continue to figure things out on the go.

Gathering and analyzing data helps you make data-driven decisions and leads to efficient business operations and growth. 

Analyzing data is important in any business process, and video marketing makes no exceptions.

Data on video sales, watch time, video orders, and more can tell you everything you need to know about how your customer interacts with your videos and how fast they convert.

With a well-developed video analytics tool, you have insights into optimizing the customer experience and conversion rate that could help you transform viewers into shoppers.

Wrapping up

Differentiating your business nowadays can be challenging, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have a successful outcome as long as you are willing to invest time and resources.

Create an excellent customer shopping experience by engaging with your customers and building customer trust to rise above competitors and break through the noise.

Use digital platforms like Videowise to improve your video marketing strategies to reach new customers and build retention and trust.

Blend Commerce is a CRO and CVO Agency for DTC eCommerce brands. Curious about what CVO is and how Videowise is part of it? Read more here.