How To Use Notifications To Boost Your Ecommerce Conversions

Today, the buzzes, beeps, pushes, rings, ting, flags, and pings blasting from our phones elicit a similar response. We all run to check our phones in response to these notifications.

According to a recent survey, an average person spent about five to six hours on their phone daily. In addition, people check their phone, on average, 47 times a day, often in response to these alerts.

With so many products being offered in the market, brands are trying to keep the customers engaged. However, when a client signs up on a website, they may use the product for a while, and later on, they might forget the brand. It happens because the customer never really experienced the "AH-HA" moment-the moment where they keep seeing your product and it imprints in their mind.

Unified notifications bridge that gap. These alerts help keep your company on top of the users mind and nudge the customers closer to that "AH-HA" moment.

Here are the several ways in which brands are using notifications

• Web alerts: These are communication messages sent to a user through the desktop web or mobile web. These are mainly used to increase website engagement and boost conversions

• SMS: A text message is sent to a user to engage and make them aware of the brand. It is hugely popular because of its enviable open and interaction rates

• Push notifications: They are triggered by an existing/downloaded mobile application on your device. Brands use these to increase customer engagement, re-engagement, retention, and promotions

• Email: These real-time messages give users meaningful information and loop customers back into the product. They mainly focus on retention and increasing the lifetime value of your customers

For these unified notifications to work, you have to plan the entire journey from crafting the messages to sending them. So, let's take a look at the strategy that can make your notifications impactful.

1. Understand user behaviour

Understanding user behaviour is the most important strategy to boost ecommerce conversion. It is really important to know what your users are after, where your users are coming from, and the potential challenges in their way before you design a solution. When you send them notifications that are reactive to their behavior or provide value to them, it will increase engagement. The process will help in building a core relationship with your users.

The next thing is to segment the users. All your subscribers visit your website for different reasons. If you put all your subscribers under the same bucket of your marketing campaign and send the same email, you won't be getting the desired performance.

You can segment users based on website design, customer action, customer status, activity on the site, etc. Then, based on your segmented users, you can filter notifications to send them accordingly.

How StoreHippo can help:

StoreHippo's ecommerce platform enables you to integrate websites, mobile apps, email marketing tools etc into your online store. You can select from any of these tools that are already battle-tested. These readymade and customizable templates can be edited with drag and drop features. With the help of different tools, you can enable location-based notifications, used preferences based, etc. In addition, StoreHippo helps you integrate various business solutions to send customized messages and alerts based on your user's browsing patterns.

2. Personalize your notifications

Generic mass marketing techniques are fizzling out. In this age of information, personalization is the key to win customers.

Let's see an Email personalization statistic here:

• 7.4% is the average open rate of mail when only the subject line is personalized

• 18.8% is the average open rate of mail when the message only is personalized

• 6 times higher transaction rates are seen when personalized emails are delivered

The ability to segment subscribers and individualize campaign messaging ensures that you target the right users at the right time with optimal creativity.

You also need to personalize notifications depending on a user lifecycle. That means identifying when users most probably need appropriate messages to complete the desired action.

How StoreHippo can help:

StoreHippo offers you inbuilt tools for customizing your messages. The ecommerce platform default notification templates can be tweaked as per your goals. You can use these messages to suggest products or promotional deals to upsell and cross-sell through your online store. You can use customized emails or text messages for various scenarios like marketing, deals, promotions, abandoned carts, order feedback, etc.

3. Creative content

Content is the king online! It plays a very important role in increasing click rates and conversion.

For instance, if you are sending a push notification. The title should be short and clear. The content title should either be funny, inquisitive or show urgency so that users become compelled to open it.

Keep your users engaged with the website or app by sending relevant and innovative content to view. For example, you can send messages regarding your brand blog articles, video updates, and trending articles. The user will stay engaged if the notifications sent are relevant and interesting.

How StoreHippo can help:

StoreHippo allows you to edit the content of the messages and modify them as per your brand requirement. You can manually create personalized notifications for your users. For example, you can create innovative content depending on the holiday season sales, announcing new products, reminding customers about the abandoned cart, drop-in price, order confirmation, delivery status, etc. The creative push notifications also nudge your customers to take immediate action.

4. Time it right

Timing is very crucial to the success of notifications. You don't want an upcoming movie reminder from your movie app after your movie has finished!

A good message sent at the wrong time will result in bad performance as compared to the average notification sent at the right time. If you want to know the right time to send an email, analyze how your previous messages had fared, and find the time and day when the performance was better. The process will give you a rough estimate of the user's active timeline.

Sometimes, you may have users who are geographically spaced. The solution to any user location problem is to geo-target your users. You can send them notifications according to their local time zone.

Finally, you should remember that if someone is opting to receive any message from you, treat it as a privilege. So don't spam their phones with SMS continuously every day with trivial messages.  

How StoreHippo can help:

With StoreHippo, you can easily set up third-party email tools to send messages to your customers automatically. StoreHippo offers inbuilt reminders for abandoned carts and order confirmation to customers. 

5. Perform A/B testing

You never know which notifications are going to convert visitors into users. To get a clear picture, you can do AB testing of messages before sending them to all. With the help of AB testing, you can test multiple factors and compare the results. This process will give you a complete understanding of what type of messages are favored more by your subscribers. Then, based on the success of each notification, you can design others.

How StoreHippo can help:

StoreHippo's ecommerce platform enables you to integrate any mail, mobile app, or website marketing tool that possess powerful APIs. You can easily send, receive and track these messages effortlessly. With the help of the searchable logs, you can always find what is happening to your notifications. StoreHippo's tags make it easy to A/B test and report on your data, and all via our webhooks. The ecommerce platform also offers performance and analytics tools to keep track of performance.

Conclusion

Thanks to the increase in online users and their dependency on mobile phones, unified notifications have become the most powerful marketing channel for ecommerce. Whether sent as mail or text, they keep your customers updated about the latest events, news, and special offers in your store.

StoreHippo, the best ecommerce platform in India, allows you to easily integrate web and mobile push notifications to engage your customers better. You can mix and match any marketing strategies to drive traffic to your site, increase conversion and engagement, and improve sales. Plan your marketing strategy with StoreHippo to get the best results.

Start your free 14-day online trial and add value to your ecommerce communication channels.