Author Archives: Natalia Gaal

What is live stream eCommerce or Live Shopping

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Live stream ecommerce is the next big opportunity for ecommerce companies to drive more revenue. Live stream ecommerce is a way to transform online shopping into an entertaining event. Typically, a live stream ecommerce event has a specific (e.g., “new fashion”) and takes place live. It is appealing to customers because it lets them see the products in detail. In some cases, ecommerce brands are working with influencers to make their events more entertaining.

What Companies Are Using Live Stream Ecommerce?

Live stream ecommerce is an emerging way to engage customers that several companies are already using effectively.

  • Facebook. In May 2021, Facebook announced “Live Shopping Fridays,” a series of events featuring Clinique, Abercrombie & Fitch, ZOX, and Sephora products. Each event focused on a different theme: Glow Up, New Fashion Finds, and Self Care Spotlight. The live ecommerce event was each scheduled for 90 minutes.
  • Walmart. In December 2020, the retail giant partnered with TikTok creators to promote shopping. While Walmart did not disclose how many sales it earned, it grew its TikTok audience by 25%, according to TechCrunch.

So far, fashion and beauty brands have been the leaders in live stream ecommerce. It is only a matter of time before other ecommerce companies find a way to leverage this opportunity to grow.

Why Live Stream Ecommerce Matters

Offering a live stream ecommerce experience to customers is crucial because it creates an experience. Historically, ecommerce companies have struggled to create memorable events. Sure, ecommerce companies create annual sales events like Amazon Prime Day. However, discount-driven promotions have their limitations. You might not want to train your customers to expect a discount if you offer premium quality products.

By offering a live stream ecommerce event to customers, you can compete against in-person shopping more effectively. When a shopper goes to a store in person, they can touch and feel products. They can see the quality of the materials, colors, and more. In the ecommerce world, it is more challenging to encourage customers to look at products so deeply.

Offering a live stream ecommerce event is a way to make shopping at your ecommerce more exciting.

Tips for planning your first live stream ecommerce event

1. Choose a focus for the event

To make a live stream ecommerce event appealing to customers, it has to be specific. Here are a few ideas you can use to start your brainstorming process.

  • Emphasize new products. Novelty is a tried and tested way to appeal to customers. Ask yourself: what new products or styles can we highlight?
  • Seasonal trends. Look for seasonal opportunities to inform your event. A lingerie ecommerce company might schedule an event in early February to align with Valentine’s Day. An ecommerce brand aimed at school-age children might offer a “back to school” event in late August.
  • Limited edition theme. Your company might have “limited editions” or premium versions of products. Consider promoting these events in your live stream event.

2. Look for influencers to invite

A live stream ecommerce event typically features an influencer. There are a few options to choose an influencer for the event. If your company founder has a large personal following on social media, you might be able to feature them in the event. In other cases, inviting an outside influencer to your campaign is a smart idea.

There are several platforms you can use to find influencers relevant to your campaign. Use the following tools to search for influencers.

  •  Followerwonk. Looking for Twitter influencers? Followerwonk can speed up the process of searching for Twitter users with a significant following.
  •  Klear. This tool makes it easy to search for influencers by audience size, skills, location, audience gender, and other factors.
  • TikTok Creator Marketplace. Operated by TikTok, the marketplace makes it easier to search for content creators with a significant audience on TikTok.

Once you find a relevant influencer, negotiate the details of the event. For example, you might offer a fee to the influencer and a percentage of sales linked to the event.

3. Promote the event

Promoting the live stream ecommerce event is essential. Start by promoting the event to your audience of past customers and followers on social media. If you are working with an influencer, ask them to drive attendance to the event. As a rule of thumb, give yourself at least two weeks to promote the event.

4. Offer something unique to live stream event attendees

Your customers are busy and might not immediately see the appeal of a live stream ecommerce event. Make your event exciting by offering something unique that they cannot get anywhere else. You might decide to offer a discount code valid for 24 hours to those who attend the event. Alternately, you might offer customized products (e.g., get your name printed on the product) to people who attend the event.

Ask your influencer for ideas to make the event appealing as well. They already know what types of content works with their audience. For instance, they might commit to releasing a unique new video to people who attend the live stream event.

5. Use live chat in the event

There are two ways live chat makes a live stream ecommerce event more exciting.

  • Encourage Community. Offering live chat makes it easy for customers to interact with each other and ask questions. Your guest influencer can answer questions during the event and change their approach. For example, guests might ask to see the product from different angles or see a product in a close-up. Responding to these requests during the event makes it more engaging.
  • Boost Sales By Answering Questions. As customers watch the event, they are probably going to have plenty of questions. For example, customers might ask about clothing sizes and shipping times. Make it easy for customers to ask these questions in a live chat. Every customer question you answer increases the chances of a sale.

6. Choose your live stream ecommerce platform

There are two ways to run a live stream ecommerce platform: run it on your website or use a third-party platform. Each approach has its pros and cons.

  • Using Your Website. You can use your website as a live stream ecommerce platform. For example, stream video from your website using YouTube or other tools and enhance the experience with Arena Live Chat. This approach is an excellent choice because potential customers are less likely to get distracted during the event. The disadvantage is that it takes some time to set up. In addition, you should also double-check that your website can handle a significant increase in web traffic during the event.
  • Using A Third Party Website. The other option is to use a third-party website like Shoply, Facebook or TikTok. This option is a good choice if your website is not ready to handle a large amount of traffic. Shoply leverages Arena’s API to offer a great ecommerce customer experience. The downsides in choosing social network platforms are significant – live stream event attendees might get distracted by other updates on the platform and drift away from your event.

Get Ready For Your First Live Stream Ecommerce Event

Planning a successful live stream ecommerce event takes some time and effort to organize. Fortunately, adding live chat to your website is fast and straightforward. Sign up for a free trial of Arena Live Chat. Once you have a live chat in place, you will be on your way to planning your first live ecommerce event.

Live Chat: a great way to broaden online media reach

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Does your online media brand need a larger audience? A large and growing audience is the foundation of every successful online media brand. Yet, many brands neglect the power of a live chat platform to grow their reach. That’s a mistake because your audience doesn’t want to consume information passively.

Where Will The Conversation Happen?

Whether you cover a major political event, a breaking business story, or a sports game, your audience is talking about that event. People are going to share their thoughts on social media, text, email, and beyond. As an online media brand, you can approach conversations in two ways.

The traditional or “broadcast only” approach to the audience is the most common choice. With this line of thinking, your audiences have no way to interact with each other on your website. That means conversations almost always happen somewhere else, like Twitter or Facebook. That means people are spending less time on your platform.

The inclusive approach to conversation is the better way because it builds your reach with a live chat platform. Imagine covering a significant event like the annual CES event – a must-attend event for the electronics industry. By giving your audience a live chat experience, they are more likely to stay on your website. There is also a good chance they will invite their friends and family to join the conversation.

Live Chat Strategies To Increase Your Reach

Use these strategies to make the most of your live chat sessions. Pick and choose among the different strategies for the best results until you find the right approach for a chat news live stream that appeals to your audience.

Reach Building Strategy 1: Become a community hub

Think about the community hubs in your city. For example, parents and families regularly gather in parks for their children’s sports games. Everybody knows when and where the game will happen, week after week. Church services have a similar community dynamic – everybody attending a service knows when to show up on Sunday morning.

To apply the community hub strategy to your brand’s live chat news , use the following steps.

  • Pick a consistent day and time. If people always know when to attend your live chat session, they can add it to their calendar and look forward to it.
  • Focus on one segment of your audience. When you first get started, don’t try to appeal to everybody in your audience. For example, you might run a sports-focused live chat on Mondays and a stock market-focused live chat on Wednesdays.

Offering a small, focused live chat experience makes it easier for your audience to feel connected with others who share their interests.

Reach Building Strategy 2: Invite influencers as guests

Collaboration with others is one of the best ways to grow your audience. Specifically, consider inviting relevant influencers to your live chat. Encourage each influencer to promote the event to their audience. Over time, you will have the opportunity to grow your reach.

To make the most of the influencer-themed chat news live stream event, keep the following tips in mind.

  • Brand Relevance. Inviting a fashion influencer to a business-themed news website probably would not make sense. Avoid the temptation to invite any influencer you come across with a large audience. Instead, use tools like Klear or Upfluence to identify relevant influencers. In particular, look for similarities in audience demographics. If your online media site audience is mainly women over the age of 30, seek out an influencer relevant to that audience.
  • Influencer Audience Size. Only a tiny fraction of an influencer’s audience will join your live chat session. As a rule of time, use the 1% rule. Assume that 1% of the influencer’s followers will join your event. That means 1,000 live chat participants if the influencer has an audience of 100,000.
  • Make The Influencer Feel Special Before, During, and After The Event. Making the influencer feel special doesn’t have to be complicated. For example, you could assign them an assistant during the live chat session and dedicated tech support. After the event, give them a report on how the event went covering how many people attended the event. You might also want to send a gift to the influencer to thank them for their participation.

If the influencer asks to be paid for participating in the live chat, consider the request. Before agreeing, ask them about previous collaborations they have participated in.

Reach Building Strategy 3: Offer a family-friendly environment

The Internet is not always a friendly place for families and children. As a publisher, this sorry state of affairs is an opportunity for thoughtful publishers. Your website can become a destination for parents concerned about appropriate Internet use by offering well-moderated live chat news sessions.

A significant number of families are already applying restrictions of some kind on how their children use social media, mobile devices, and other services. A March 2020 survey of 3640 people found that 72% of US parents use parental controls on screen time. The same survey found that 49% of parents look at call records and texts on their child’s smartphone. Publishers who create moderated live chat sessions can build their reach by appealing to these audiences.

With Arena Live Chat, you have operations to keep live chat sessions family-friendly. Profanity moderation is built in. In addition, it is easy for moderators to remove participants who do not follow guidelines quietly.

Reach Building Strategy 4: Exclusive chat experiences for subscribers

In some cases, your goal may not be maximizing pageviews or raw audience numbers. For instance, you might focus on promoting exclusive programs for subscribers. For example, the New York Times offers offline access to content for paying subscribers, among other benefits.

Consider setting up exclusive live chat news experiences for your paying subscribers. For example, you might offer pre-game interviews with VIP athletes right before a major game. To make the live chat experience more enticing, consider limiting attendance to a small group of 50-100 so each participant can be heard.

Start Expanding Your Online Media Reach Today

Getting started with Arena Live Chat is easy. You can install it on your website in less than 10 minutes. You can get started for free and start building your reach with a free trial. That’s enough time to hold a few events and grow your audience.

How publishers increase revenue with Live Chat news

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The news business model needs to evolve to take advantage of the digital opportunity. This shift is vital for two business reasons: market share and revenue predictability. That’s why more publishers are using live chat news to stay connected with their audience.

The Top 4 Revenue Challenges Facing The News Business

Increased competition from non-traditional news sources and social media is just one of the news business’s problems. Many publishers are struggling to earn online revenue.

  • Minimal Digital Advertising Revenue. Local TV stations in the US only earned about 7% of their total advertising revenue from digital in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.
  • Election Year Dependence. Many local TV stations tend to earn significantly more revenue in election years than non-election years. That means broadcasters struggle to maintain staffing levels and quality as they ride the revenue rollercoaster.
  • Slowing Retransmission Fee Growth. Over the past decade, local TV stations earned billions from retransmission fees (i.e., fees paid by cable and satellite companies to carry local channels). While this revenue source may continue to grow this decade, it is likely to grow at a much slower pace.
  • The Rise of Streaming Services. Two streaming services – Netflix and Disney+ – have developed significant audiences in the US and other countries. Every hour customers spend on a streaming service means less attention and revenue for other publishers.

Other news publishers in print, radio, and other media are facing challenges with declining revenue. For example, newspaper circulation in the US has been falling steadily since 1990. Fortunately, some newspapers like the New York Times and Wall St Journal have recovered some ground with digital offerings.

Why Offering Live Chat Boosts Revenue For Publishers  

Publishing quality news content online is no longer enough to attract audiences and earn revenue. That’s not the only challenge. There is an increasing challenge with misinformation and fake news more than ever before. For example, 11% of Americans strongly believe that 9/11 was an “inside job” in 2019. By thoughtfully engaging audiences, publishers can achieve two important goals at the same time.

Offering live chat news gives your audience additional reasons to stay on your website and keep coming back. By increasing audience engagement, you can boost your advertising revenue. Best of all, this added revenue requires minimal investments in technology and employee effort.

In addition to growing revenue, publishers can use live chat news events to engage their audiences in thoughtful conversations. A well-considered live chat news event can be done correctly and inspire your audience to think more deeply and become more engaged citizens.

Traditionally, publishers have focused their effort on creating and presenting the news. To engage today’s digital audience, we need to invite the public into the conversation. You can use a live chat news approach to keep audiences engaged.

Getting Started With A Chat News Live Stream

Adding a live chat to news coverage is simple. Follow these guides to install the Arena live chat platform on your website.

Once you have Arena Live Chat installed, you can test your new live chat news internally. For example, you could simulate coverage of an election for 15 minutes with colleagues. During the test, invite some people to participate as journalists while others play the role of the public. Experiencing both sides of a live chat platform is an excellent way to familiarize yourself with the features.

Three Tips To Make The Most of Live Chat News

Launching a live chat platform on your news website only takes a few minutes. Keeping your audience engaged takes more practice. To run successful live chat sessions, keep the following tips in mind.

  • Experiment with different times. Different segments of your audience will be available to participate at different times. For example, you might be able to connect with a business news audience during the morning of a major IPO (initial public offering) in the stock market. In that situation, inviting investing experts to add to the conversation can make your chat news live stream more interesting. If attendance and engagement numbers are low, try the other tips in this section to improve the quality of the session.
  • Enforce your standards. When you open your virtual doors for a chat news live stream, troublemakers might appear. For example, some people might start cursing in the live chat. To quickly handle those problems, use Arena’s Live Chat, which includes profanity moderation.
  • Prepare questions in advance. Even live events like elections and sports games have slow moments. In these moments, your chat news live stream might go quiet. If the chat stays quiet for too long, your audience might leave. Preparing 5-6 questions in advance of running the live chat session will solve this problem.

Is Live Chat News Right For You?

Live chat news is a proven way to make news coverage more engaging. However, it will not help every organization. Three situations make it more challenging to make live chat news work.

  • You lack an online audience. For live chat news to work, you need a reasonably large online audience. If your company focuses exclusively on non-digital formats like print, radio, and TV, live chat news might not suit you.
  • Technical Skills. Installing live chat news is relatively fast and straightforward. Many customers can install it in just five minutes. That said, it does take some time to learn all of the features. If your staff cannot learn additional digital skills, live chat news may not be a good fit.

Offering a live chat news stream is an excellent strategy for publishers with active websites and a desire to build your digital advertising revenue.

Start Your First Live Chat Event For Free

You can start a live chat event in less than an hour by signing up for the Arena Live Chat free trial. In a few weeks, you’ll have plenty of time to run a few live chat news events and discover if Arena is right for you.

Does your online media brand need a larger audience? A large and growing audience is the foundation of every successful online media brand. Yet, many brands neglect the power of a live chat platform to grow their reach. That’s a mistake because your audience doesn’t want to consume information passively.

Where Will The Conversation Happen?

Whether you cover a major political event like an event, a breaking business story, or a sports game, your audience is talking about that event. People are going to share their thoughts on social media, text, email, and beyond. As an online media brand, you can approach conversations in two ways.

The traditional or “broadcast only” approach to the audience is the most common choice. With this line of thinking, your audiences have no way to interact with each other on your website. That means conversations almost always happen somewhere else, like Twitter or Facebook. That means people are spending less time on your platform.

The inclusive approach to conversation is the better way because it builds your reach with a live chat platform. Imagine covering a significant event like the annual CES event – a must-attend event for the electronics industry. By giving your audience a live chat experience, they are more likely to stay on your website. There is also a good chance they will invite their friends and family to join the conversation.

Live Chat Strategies To Increase Your Reach

Use these strategies to make the most of your live chat sessions. Pick and choose among the different strategies for the best results until you find the right approach for a chat news live stream that appeals to your audience.

Reach Building Strategy 1: Become a community hub

Think about the community hubs in your city. For example, parents and families regularly gather in parks for their children’s sports games. Everybody knows when and where the game will happen, week after week. Church services have a similar community dynamic – everybody attending a service knows when to show up on Sunday morning.

To apply the community hub strategy to your brand’s live chat news , use the following steps.

  • Pick a consistent day and time. If people always know when to attend your live chat session, they can add it to their calendar and look forward to it.
  • Focus on one segment of your audience. When you first get started, don’t try to appeal to everybody in your audience. For example, you might run a sports-focused live chat on Mondays and a stock market-focused live chat on Wednesdays.

Offering a small, focused live chat experience makes it easier for your audience to feel connected with others who share their interests.

Reach Building Strategy 2: Invite influencers as guests

Collaboration with others is one of the best ways to grow your audience. Specifically, consider inviting relevant influencers to your live chat. Encourage each influencer to promote the event to their audience. Over time, you will have the opportunity to grow your reach.

To make the most of the influencer-themed chat news live stream event, keep the following tips in mind.

  • Brand Relevance. Inviting a fashion influencer to a business-themed news website probably would not make sense. Avoid the temptation to invite any influencer you come across with a large audience. Instead, use tools like Klear or Upfluence to identify relevant influencers. In particular, look for similarities in audience demographics. If your online media site audience is mainly women over the age of 30, seek out an influencer relevant to that audience.
  • Influencer Audience Size. Only a tiny fraction of an influencer’s audience will join your live chat session. As a rule of time, use the 1% rule. Assume that 1% of the influencer’s followers will join your event. That means 1,000 live chat participants if the influencer has an audience of 100,000.
  • Make The Influencer Feel Special Before, During, and After The Event. Making the influencer feel special doesn’t have to be complicated. For example, you could assign them an assistant during the live chat session and dedicated tech support. After the event, give them a report on how the event went covering how many people attended the event. You might also want to send a gift to the influencer to thank them for their participation.

If the influencer asks to be paid for participating in the live chat, consider the request. Before agreeing, ask them about previous collaborations they have participated in.

Reach Building Strategy 3: Offer a family-friendly environment

The Internet is not always a friendly place for families and children. As a publisher, this sorry state of affairs is an opportunity for thoughtful publishers. Your website can become a destination for parents concerned about appropriate Internet use by offering well-moderated live chat news sessions.

A significant number of families are already applying restrictions of some kind on how their children use social media, mobile devices, and other services. A March 2020 survey of 3640 people found that 72% of US parents use parental controls on screen time. The same survey found that 49% of parents look at call records and texts on their child’s smartphone. Publishers who create moderated live chat sessions can build their reach by appealing to these audiences.

With Arena Live Chat, you have operations to keep live chat sessions family-friendly. Profanity moderation is built in. In addition, it is easy for moderators to remove participants who do not follow guidelines quietly.

Reach Building Strategy 4: Exclusive chat experiences for subscribers

In some cases, your goal may not be maximizing pageviews or raw audience numbers. For instance, you might focus on promoting exclusive programs for subscribers. For example, the; New York Times offers offline access to content for paying subscribers, among other benefits.

Consider setting up exclusive live chat news experiences for your paying subscribers. For example, you might offer pre-game interviews with VIP athletes right before a major game. To make the live chat experience more enticing, consider limiting attendance to a small group of 50-100 so each participant can be heard.

Start Expanding Your Online Media Reach Today

Getting started with Arena Live Chat is easy. You can install it on your website in less than 10 minutes. You can get started for free and start building your reach with a free trial. That’s enough time to hold a few events and grow your audience.

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Customer Engagement Tips to Improve Sales

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Sometimes, all you need to grow your business is more sales conversions. If you are already getting enough traffic, converting them to sales may be enough to give your business the boost it needs to move ahead of the competitor. That is exactly what improved customer engagement can do for you. 

What Is Customer Engagement? 

Customer engagement can best be described as an ongoing interaction between a company and its customers. Practically, it refers to your company’s ability to keep up a conversation with your customer in the most efficient manner throughout the customer lifecycle. 

Customer engagement entails frequent and effective communication with the customers. It is achieved when the communication channels offered by the company is accepted by the customers. Its effectiveness will be measured by the results the continued conversation yields. 

Every business needs a customer engagement strategy to survive. In a competitive market, the ability of a business to connect with customers and keep the conversation going is critical to survival. With the right strategies and tools, customer engagement brings satisfaction to businesses and customers. 

Why Is Customer Engagement So Important? 

Customer engagement is critical to business growth. In the very beginning, it helps to transform traffics into leads. The right customer engagement tools, like Arena Live Chat, will help to convert most of the leads into sales.

Customer engagement also plays a critical role in customer experience, which is an indispensable ingredient in customer retention. If a business is able to convert more leads into sales and make the right first impression, it will certainly lead to repeat sales. With several repeat business, the company can build customer loyalty. 

In summary, customer engagement is considered very important for the following reasons: 

  • It will help drive your sales conversion and help you sell more
  • It will help you reduce churn
  • It will help increase customer satisfaction and retention
  • It can help boost customer loyalty
  • It will help you win back old customers.

How Can Customer Engagement Specifically Help Drive Sales Conversion? 

To convince website visitors to buy a product, pay for a service, o visit a physical office, you need to engage them and convince them and build trust. That is the essence of a customer engagement strategy. Here are specific ways customer engagement can specifically lead to an increase in sales for your business:

  • It Will Keep Customers Informed 

Most customers need more information about products and services before making a purchase. Being able to engage them and get them informed improves the chances of conversion. Well-informed customers are more likely to become return customers, also. 

  • It Creates Brand Awareness 

Brand awareness drives sales, and customer engagement enhances brand awareness. When you engage customers, you will make them recognize your brand. It doesn’t take much, afterward, to establish brand awareness, which is always instrumental in purchases and contract renewals. 

  • It Helps Identify What Customers Truly Want 

Sometimes sales pitches fail because marketers are not really aware of what customers want. True engagement allows you to assess the true needs of the customers and help them figure out the best solution. Through customer engagement, you will be able to create customer value, which drives sustainable sales conversion. 

  • It Opens Up the Possibility of Larger Orders 

It is a known fact that engaged customers tend to spend more – there are actually many marketing studies that have confirmed this. Through customer engagement, you will be able to establish trust. Of course, the more your customers love you, the more they will buy from you. 

  • It Transforms Customers to Brand Advocates 

Never underestimate the power of informed and happy clients. They will most likely become your brand advocates, helping to spread the message and fetch you many more customers. Thanks to social media, it is a lot easier for your engaged and happy customers to refer your business to more people. Word of mouth and other channels still works. 

What Role Can Live Chat Play In Customer Engagement? 

Live Chat is an effective marketing tool that can play a significant role in customer engagement. Arena Live Chat, for instance, is an instant communication channel that you can add to your website to stimulate and generate real-time customer engagement. 

Live Chat is undoubtedly one of the most effective ways to generate meaningful engagement. It is better than chatbots since it adds the much needed human factor to ongoing conversations with customers. 

Can Live Chat Really Help To Drive Sales Conversion? 

Yes, Live Chat can truly help to drive sales conversion. As we’ve established already, it is one of the most effective ways to generate meaningful customer engagement. Live Chat customer service will also boost sales conversion in the following ways: 

  • It delights customers 
  • It shortens the sales cycle 
  • It  facilitates upsells and cross-sells 
  • It brings some level of personalization to marketing 

What Can You Do To Optimize Live Chat For Engagement And Sales Conversion? 

Implementing Live Chat will undoubtedly help you to generate engagement and drives your sales conversion. However, to get the right result, you will have to make the right decision with your Live Chat service. The first important thing is to choose the right Live Chat tool. Over the years, Arena Live Chat has helped several businesses benefit immensely from customer engagement. 

In addition to choosing the right Live Chat tool, you need to customize your Live Chat to have the desired impact and bring the right benefits. There is a need to follow a protocol and create a template that is purpose-oriented. This is the only way to ensure that each Live Chat session with a customer is treated with the utmost regard. 

Success Stories With Arena Live Chat 

As hinted above, the Arena Live Chat has helped several businesses to record meaningful success in their marketing. One outstanding case is the success story of Rogers Communication. The giant Communication and Media Company used Arena to increase customer engagement by more than 64%. Live Chat Roger also helped the company to achieve 28% customer retention and many more benefits. 

Endnote 

Customer engagement is a critical aspect of marketing. Among many things, it can help to drive sales conversion. As we’ve discussed here, Live Chat can play a significant role in boosting customer engagement and driving sales. You just need to choose the right tools and implement them the right way to derive the full benefits. 

Are you ready to implement the best Live Chat service for your business?

Customer service: mistakes, strategy and trends

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Customer service is a must for any business today, and for a reason. Brands need to gain a competitive edge, and winning over the customer is the best way to do so.

It’s not new to say that the customer is a key piece in the business’ success. But for a long time, companies were trying to sell their products at any cost without focusing on the “perfect” customers. Now, that’s the real key: finding the right customers for your product.

While you can convert people that are not exactly ideal, do you know what will happen then? They will probably find something to complain about, say that it wasn’t what they expected or that it didn’t meet their needs.

Still, even in those cases, exceptional customer service will make customers have an overall positive experience.

Common customer service mistakes

Bad customer service will cost your business a lot. Not only will you lose a customer because of that experience, but you also are losing the chance to acquire new consumers that would, otherwise, get a recommendation from that person.

Not being proactive

If you keep waiting for people to reach you and ask about their problems, that’s what we call reactive customer service. Although this is still a good way to offer your support, it’s a mistake not to provide proactive services.

This is about anticipating the customer’s needs. For example, using a chat to ask if the person needs any help.

Not training attendants

You might hire the best and most experienced agents around, that doesn’t discard the necessity of training them to be your employee. They need to learn about the company’s culture, customer service strategy, the product, the protocol you follow for support and sales, etc.

They must receive proper training to perform better at their jobs.

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Having a lack of availability

If you offer customer service online, it’s crucial to be available for the consumers. Can you imagine acquiring a Live Chat feature and not having an agent to answer the conversations? What’s the point of getting a real-time chat tool if you’re not going to take advantage of its prime quality?

You see where I’m going with this, right? It actually doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with phone calls or emails, the client needs to have someone answering them as fast as possible.

Taking too long to answer

On the same note, taking too long to answer will make customers angry and upset. It’s not like speed is the most critical factor. You should take your time looking for the customer’s information since a high-quality service is more important than quick answers.

However, don’t leave them waiting too much. At least send a message: “just one more minute, I’m getting the information for you” if it’s not going as fast as you’d like.

Not listening to the customer

When you listen to the customer, you know exactly what to do, talk, and look for solutions to solve their problems. Even when they ask about something, you might notice they actually want to know something else. You should still answer their question to the point and then complete it with further information.

Customers want to be heard, understood and cared for. More than reading their message, you need to detect their tone of voice. Keeping this in mind, delivering a more personal service will make your brand stand out from peers.

Not having an omnichannel support

Even though Live Chat is currently a crowd favorite, many customers like to have other options to contact the brand. Phone and email are still popular and used by many, though social media has grown a lot these last couple of years.

There are tons of companies using social media chats as an SAQ 2.0 because clients and prospects are always reaching them through this channel. It doesn’t cost you much to offer omnichannel support because you will be rewarded with more satisfied customers.

Not being polite, empathetic, and positive

This one is pretty obvious: you can’t be rude to your customers, even when they’re rude to you. One of the most praised skills of customer service attendants is patience. Alongside that, keeping a positive attitude towards the conversation.

Since customers will react to how you treat them, your support team needs to learn how to be empathetic to understand the customer’s point of view and how to turn it around.

Impersonal customer care

Customers want to feel close to the brands they purchase from. That is probably not new information. Besides, they hate it when brands sound like a robot and treat them like just another person.

That’s why, even when companies have model answers and a protocol to be followed, attendants should edit and personalize the message according to each customer. It will have a huge impact on customer satisfaction.

Not having human agent

In the same context, if you don’t have a human agent to answer the customer questions, your customer service results will be harmed—the same way as being passed around from sector to sector trying to resolve a problem.

Can I tell you about a personal experience? Earlier this year, I ended up with a debt with my phone company and, as I tried to call and negotiate with them, I couldn’t reach a human agent with ANY of the options.

There were six options; none of them were going to resolve my problem, but I tried one by one to talk to an attendant, and it simply wouldn’t happen. At last, I reached them through an online service that, by the way, was also not at all efficient.

The conclusion is: I never want to do business with them again, and that’s how people will feel when you offer this type of poor customer service.

This is what you need to improve your customer service strategy

Overall, to improve your customer service, you need to check that list of mistakes and see what you’re doing wrong today. Once you discover that, you can start to fix and improve your processes.

Some examples of what you need to improve your strategy are:

Although it seems obvious, it’s not so evident for many that you need to put the consumer at the center of your actions to improve your brand’s perception. Every decision should be made based on the customers’ data, principally if you already performed surveys beforehand, use the feedback you got to learn what you need to do.

That being said, putting the customer at the core of your business will reflect on the culture inside the company, which every collaborator needs to know about and follow to provide the best service.

Moreover, you also need to analyze important metrics, such as customer satisfaction, conversion rates, retention rates, churn rate, average resolution time, and average response time, to name a few.

Some tips to boost customer experience

According to a research, 45.9% of businesses say they will focus on customer experience in the next 5  years. This number represents how brands started to notice their product has no value if they don’t provide good service and experience for their consumers.

Which reminds me, even though customer service and customer experience are related, they are not the same thing. While the service part is about customer and brand interactions to, yes, provide a service, experience is more about the entirety of the relationship with the brand.

To clarify, customer service will include a chat conversation, ease on problem-solving, and making purchases easy to complete. Meanwhile, CX will include all of that and more, like sending a surprise small gift after the client made a big purchase.

So, how can you make your Customer Experience better?

Firstly, you need to understand who your customers are, that will make it easier to know how to talk to them, what type of content and offer to make, and what is the best approach to increase conversions.

In addition, it also helps on the next tip: create an emotional connection with your audience. People like it when a brand transmits positive feelings and, although it seems hard to do that, if you follow our first advice, it should be quite simple to communicate with emotion.

I’d also like to mention the importance of getting feedback, both from customers and employees. After all, your collaborators are the ones who are dealing with the clients on a daily basis, so who better to help you learn what are the pain points and what to improve than your own team?

And, of course, you know that the information customers share with you are worth gold, right? That’s the moment they’re talking loud and clear what they want from your brand, some even give suggestions of what you should do — good ideas can come from this practice!

Customer-centric: the strategy of the moment

As I said earlier, being customer-centric is having a business that works with the customers at the center of everything. Every decision made, whether for marketing, sales, or even product development, has to be made thinking about the customer first.

Will they like it? Will it be effective? Will it be worth the investment? All of these questions need to have an answer and you may be wondering how will you know that before anything happens. It’s simple: Customer Data has all the responses.

By understanding behavior patterns, interests, audience engagement, and so on, it’s possible to create a strategy that will be beneficial to the customer and the brand equally.

In spite of this method having become popular in the last years, it’s definitely not a new strategy. It has been around for many years, but now, with the growth of the digital world and the increase of generated data, companies realized they need to stand out for something other than a great product.

Hence, the customer-centric approach gained a new perspective. More than ever before, customers are being considered the most important aspect of a business.

Overview of customer service in 2020 and beyond

This year, customer service in eCommerces suffered a big unexpected impact with the pandemic. Nonetheless, many companies were able to keep quality in their services. From that, we learned a number of trends and predictions for the upcoming year. They are:

  • Higher customer expectations: service needs to be quick, available at all times, personalized, effective, and of high-quality
  • Proactive support: companies started to be more active and look for the customer instead of waiting to see if someone would show up and it has shown amazing results
  • Chatbot and Live Chat: chatbots can help deliver fast answers and sift the problem so the customer can either resolve their issue alone or be transferred to a human agent on Live Chat. This tool that is a new customers’ favorite is essential to provide personalization and fast responses.
  • Predictive analysis: with the growth of data generation, companies understand their consumers better than ever, enough to the point of being able to predict their needs and anticipate solutions
  • Privacy and security: also because of the increase in customer data, the laws of privacy and protection are becoming more strict, for the next years, there’s a tendency to see new, more specific regulations on the subject

At Arena, we offer solutions that will make your customer service shine. I can keep telling you how our thousands of clients worldwide are succeeding in their strategies, but the truth is, each one has particular needs, and so do you.

If you came here, you’re most likely looking for ways to improve your brand’s customer experience as a whole, am I right? With our platform and content just like the one you are reading, you can create an unbeatable strategy that will make you grow and stay ahead of competitors.

The best part is: there’s a free trial period. If you don’t see the results (which I highly doubt will happen), you can just stop using – no cost. Start using the Arena platform for free today!

 

Benefits of using Push Notifications for eCommerce

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No doubt, you have come across Push Notifications within your own daily business and e-commerce needs.

However, you may not be aware of how such a tool is used for communication updates, specifically by internet-based businesses and—most importantly—you may be unaware of the major benefits that push notifications can offer your own business and e-commerce. 

Here we will look at a brief history of what push notifications are, and how they best benefit e-commerce within the modern global market.

What exactly are Push Notifications?

First off, let’s be honest. To many people, many traditional web-based marketing formats have become outdated. Email marketing is more often than not regarded as “spam,” and SMS marketing is slowly being phased out by new, modern trends to match updated software and industry standards. 

Today, “push notifications” has now taken over as the most reliable and utilized tool for consistent, trusted updates for businesses to “get the word” out in all kinds of industries. For example, if you use online shopping apps, you’ve been using push notifications for the past few years and not been aware of how often.

Over the last few years, the practice of using push notifications as the most powerful and effective marketing tool chosen by online businesses to reach out to their demographic in real-time has become incredibly popular. 

Most companies now rely on the push notification method to keep their clientele updated on sales and premiums, ultimately driving more e-commerce conversions.

Thanks to their current popularity, push notifications capture almost double “open and click-through rates” as compared to email. The trend of app-based push notifications is now being followed by “Web Push Notifications,” also known as “Browser Push Notifications—messages or notifications that are delivered to the subscriber’s device in real-time. 

The notifications are sent even if the subscriber is not present at your website, making them all the more attractive within the world of e-commerce.

What are the benefits of Push Notifications for e-Commerce?

Just a brief look at some of the most current shopping trends impacting the world of e-commerce can give an idea of the importance of reaching your audience on a real-time basis. Just to list a few statistics, for example:

  • 67% of Millennials and 56% of Gen Xers prefer to shop online rather than in-store.
  • Baby Boomers spend 4 hours per week shopping online.
  • Men and women both report spending 5 hours per week shopping online.
  • When shopping online, 48% of online purchasers first turn to an eCommerce store that offers various products.

Of course, all mobile shopping apps first ask for a user’s permission to access their location. If they grant it, you’ll get a great opportunity to personalize the customer experience with location-specific push notifications—another incredible e-commerce benefit unheard of with traditional web marketing. Now, you can target users according to country, state or city.

Moreover, you can alert users to discounts or specials when they’re in a particular location. Push messages based on a user’s location can help you engage users with a high degree of personalization and relevance, while making the potential shopper of client feel as if their unique needs are bing specifically addressed—which, of course, they are.

Are there any drawbacks to Push Notifications?

While it wouldn’t be fair to say that there are any genuine “drawbacks” to utilizing push notifications for your e-commerce needs, it must be considered that some of the flexibility offered to potential customers can also undo some of the “direct” communication that notifications can provide.  

For example, it is crucial to remember that push notifications must be manually permitted by each person before your message is allowed to reach them.  In fact, Nearly one-third of users disable push notifications—and opting out, or ignoring, push notifications is becoming easier.

Updates to notification settings—like provisional authorization, push notification groupings, and notification center features—mean users have options for de-prioritizing your notifications.

Finally, it must also be noted that most people still prefer emails or ads. Nearly half of users (41%) say they prefer to receive marketing messages via email or mobile ads, while fewer than one in five (18%) prefer push notifications.

Of course, depending upon the generation of users pooled, these number can also reflect the growing popularity of push notifications, as more mobile-based shopping trends evolve.

Arena for all your push notification and e-commerce needs

If you are considering integrating push notifications into your e-commerce practices, and want to make it your goal to reach as many potential clients and customers are modern technology trends allow, then you can truly benefit from using Arena—a state-of-the-art cloud-based marketing platform that can be uniquely catered to all your marketing needs.

At Arena, our mission is to empower media companies to take back ownership of their audience from social networks and grow their community within their own website.

With our cloud-based e-commerce technologies, we enable publishers, media, and broadcasting companies to cover events such as news, sports, finance, and tech. Through powerful AI technology, Arena is capable of aggregate, curate, and distribute content to any device, anytime, anywhere.

Our fully customizable widgets help media companies to increase traffic, engagement and earn revenue. From bloggers to large enterprises, from Oscars to Super Bowl, Arena.im is ideal to manage any type of live experience.

Partnering with the largest media groups, Arena has grown rapidly in over 120 countries and reaches over 100 million monthly page views. Companies such as Microsoft, Turner Broadcasting, and DMG Media count on Arena to increase organic traffic, encourage engagement, and generate revenue directly from our platform.

If you are considering push notifications for your e-commerce needs, as well as utilizing all the new marketing trends as they are developed in real-time, then Arena.im may be perfect for you and your company.

You can also learn more about our state-of-the-art cloud-based software, as well as try it for yourself for free, at Arena.

The Future of Customer Experience

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The first Arena Customer Experience and Data Live Event is happening soon! Arena GO will introduce you to the tools that connect all user data dots to create world-class customer experiences.

The Future of Customer Experience

In the digital era, capturing and owning the right data is the recipe for success. Business solutions must be integrated and condensed in a single touchpoint, instead of being pulverized and lacking coherence. A-list services platforms, such as Arena, understand the importance of guiding strategies throughout the entire customer journey.

This unique 360º view of the user allows the brand to follow the customer along the entire buyer’s journey, from lead acquisition to purchase, until post-sales services. That’s because Arena provides the right tools to create a data driven and highly personalized customer experience.

At Arena GO you will explore our real-time customer experience data platform, discover our tools, and link them to serve relevant, meaningful, and engaging content.

You will be able to create an environment with powerful triggers to achieve your purposes, whether it is a purchase, a new subscription, or whatever else you need.

Learn how to explore real-time possibilities better, and exceed your customers’ expectations. 

At Arena Go, We will walk you through product demos and use cases to give you a glimpse of the future of customer engagement.

Customer Experience

What does your audience want? Why do they want it? How? When? If key-questions like those aren’t guiding you through your CX strategy, the odds of failure are higher.

That is because you are not building a connected experience for your customer. Although, when you count on tools, such as Customer Data Platform (CDP), that provide you high-quality data analysis, you can tailor each stage of the strategy based on real demands and information.

Customer Data Platform (CDP)

A strategy that is not data-oriented can’t really be called “strategy”. 

Having Arena’s Customer Data Platform (CDP), a unified data source that gathers all your touchpoints in a single place, will offer you the most reliable insights to build up a killer strategy for your audience.

Besides gathering the data, Arena’s CDP analyses it and creates organized clusters of customers with matching information. As a result, you will have much more depth of knowledge about your customer. It will feel like you are looking at a picture of them to truly understand their needs.

Live Chat

As we have said before, using real-time solutions is the way to exceed customers’ expectations. So, having Arena’s Live Chat allows you to engage in real-time with the audience while they are browsing on your website. That will enable you to create meaningful approaches, increasing the value of your customer’s experience.

Whether it is a reactive contact (which is when the customer looks up to you when they need something; to get a question answered, to get more information, etc.); or a proactive one (when your team approaches the audience to offer something able to raise the value of that browsing moment) Live Chat can be the most strategic and successful way to do it.

Live Blog

Still following the steps of creating meaningful real-time engagement, Live Blog is the answer companies needed to increase browsing time.

Through Arena’s Live Blog, you can create live coverage of an event, display updated news, use text, audio, video, and extra-sources. All on a single screen!

Your audience won’t need to look up for updates on other pages or keep refreshing the website to check if there is anything new. Also, using Arena’s Live Blog, the audience will be able to simultaneously engage that content on their social media pages without shifting tabs and bouncing off of you.

Rogers Media increased engagement by 64% using Arena

One of the world’s largest communications and media companies, the Canadian Rogers, was looking for a smarter and more efficient way to make their audience engage with their content and, thereafter, increase retention. They needed straightforward ways to integrate other tools used by more than 50 teams. 

Combining the power of the Live Chat, Live Blog, and the Content Wall to cover real-time events, Rogers was able to promote users’ interactions in their multiple domain channels. At Sportsnet, for example, Arena’s Live Blog covered all the matches with exclusive content, and Live Chat enabled fans to engage with passionate discussions during the games.

As a result, Arena helped Rogers to increase their engagement by 64%, and retention by 28%. Besides, their ROI skyrocketed, increasing the numbers of new subscriptions, app downloads, and advertisement revenue.

Globo brings real-time coverage to the next level with the NBA 

The second-largest commercial TV network in the world, Globo TV was a pioneer by adopting two of Arena’s Customer Experience solutions to broadcast the NBA Live finals. Globo was looking for fresh and real-time alternatives to provide relevant and valuable content to their audience.

By using Arena’s Live Blog to cover NBA Live matches play-by-play, with Arena’s Live Chat to create an environment of enriched engagements, Globo had audience peaks of tens of thousands of users simultaneously. 

Arena helped Globo understand the importance of delivering dynamic and interactive content for such an amazing event, during all the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, which was the key to a successful strategy.

Providing multimedia content and an innovative experience paid off well for Globo. Their user engagement had amazing growth, as well as the time the audience spent on their domains and the higher ROI.

Tecmundo covered Amazon Prime Day and boosted engagement

One of Brazil’s most popular technology websites, Tecmundo, combined Arena’s solution to bring massive traffic to their page and increase revenue during Amazon Prime Day. 

Creating a unique environment, what Tecmundo did was pretty much comparable to a real store during Black Friday season: it had customer interactions, conversations, and lots of sales. 

Prime Day is the most profitable day of the year for eCommerce. On that day, Tecmundo created a hot site to cover Amazon’s best deals in real-time using Arena’s Live Blog. To stimulate users’ engagement, they also had Arena’s Live Chat. 

The audience could get the offers while they had ongoing discussions about them, the products, and providing honest customer reviews. 

The complete solution made by Arena to Tecmundo also used the Customer Data Platform (CDP). As a result, they gathered data from different touchpoints, enabling companies to find out where their potential customers were. By doing that, a more assertive approach was made and better deals were closed.

Arena GO

To dive into the possibilities of Arena’s real-time customer experience and data platform, Arena GO is an open event to walk you through the construction of consistent and effective customer engagement strategies.

Next level of Real-time coverage at the NBA

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The NBA finals are one of the most anticipated sports events in the world. This year, apart from the coronavirus pandemic and record-low TV ratings, over 7 million viewers tuned in, just in the US, to watch the games. 

With millions of die-hard fans and worldwide visibility, it’s natural that some businesses turn the event into a giant marketing funnel.

In fact, the NBA itself has proven to be one of the most profitable sports businesses ever, with estimated annual revenue topping 8 billion dollars.

NBA real-time coverage

In times of quarantine, the interest in real-time content is even higher amongst internet users. 

Customers are always on. Given the newness of technology and innovation, they have all the tools to remain connected nonstop and wish to consume reliable information that leads them to make better decisions. The faster, the better. 

People are getting used to new ways of consuming digital content.

With empty stadiums and arenas, live content has become the closest fans can get to live-action. High-quality content is more important now than it has ever been.

Customer Experience tools are on the rise, and Live Blog and Live Chat are quickly becoming the best ally for businesses that rely on content creation and distribution.

Why Live Blog?

A live blog is, put simply, a curated news feed that can be integrated into websites, providing rolling coverage of any event in real-time. It combines content that is usually fragmented across the web, complementing articles and written stories with images, videos, tweets, polls, live group chats, and other digital assets that can be embedded in the feed.

Live blogs are widely used for breaking news coverage as they consolidate reported information to content pieces from outside the news organization, like user-generated content and inputs from social media. 

It’s a transparent format in which journalists can update and attach multiple formats in an easy-to-digest layout. 

How to leverage a live chat to cover real-time events?

A Live Chat is a communication platform that enables users to engage in relevant conversations with each other. Live Chats are commonly used on the coverage of live events to provide an instant communication channel to users of a specific website, for instance. 

A Live Chat is the ideal option for companies that want to provide real-time interactions for customers who are browsing their website, learning about their products, and analyzing the brand’s reliability, for example.

Globo TV and the NBA Finals

Looking for fresh and real-time alternatives to provide valuable content to its customers, Rede Globo, the second-largest commercial TV network in the world, made a pioneering move by adopting two of Arena’s CX solutions to broadcast the NBA Live finals.

Using the Arena Live Blog to cover the matches – play-by-play – and the Arena Live Chat to enable passionate discussions amongst fans, Globo had audience peaks of tens of thousands of users following its Live Blog coverage concurrently. Their Live Chat, which was only open for Globo’s paying subscribers, had over four thousand users at the same time.

Covering such an important event, during a pandemic, can be even more challenging for journalists. Besides reporting on the game, they need to keep an eye on everything that’s happening off the court.

The best way to put all the news together and deliver it to its users is through the Arena Live Blog. Globo used our Live Blog as a sort of “second-screen content” to its users while the finals were going on and aggregated news about the teams, players, and fans.

Dynamic and extremely interactive, the Arena Live Blog allowed the TV network to bring different post formats and sources together to deliver real-time updates for their instant audience. 

Globo live blogged the NBA finals through several content formats, such as videos, audios, texts, and social media posts to shape a diverse and more interactive feed. They also used live polls with game-related questions, to increase user’s interaction.  

We can say Globo mastered the art of live blogging. Already widely popular among their soccer fans, the TV network is now bringing the same recipe – anticipation, hype, real-time – to the national basketball league.

During its live transmission, Globo also embedded paid ads into their Live Blog to increase revenue. The TV network learned that it’s easier to sell when your audience’s interest is peaking. 

And when you have tens of thousands of users simultaneously watching your Live Blog, engaging in polls and Live Chats discussions, it’s fair to assume that user engagement is no longer a problem.

By curating and providing real-time updates from people literally on the inside of the game, Globo had the ability to immerse their viewers in the game like they are actually there. 

With the Live Blog coverage of the NBA finals, Globo also managed to engage paid users in exciting discussions about the game, plays, and players.

In quarantine times, having real-time and play-by-play updates, inside coverage, discussions – sometimes heated – with other fans following the same game, it’s not too much to say this is the closest sports fan will get to a real sports arena.

Providing multimedia content and an innovative narrative experience to its audience is already paying off to Globo. The TV network made the Arena CX solutions a central piece of their communication strategy, and it’s seeing a relevant growth in user engagement, time spent on their web domains, and ROI.

With the Arena Live Blog and Live Chat, the possibilities are endless.

You can also create experiences like Globo did in the NBA broadcast. Take a free trial now and see for yourself.

Ecommerce Customer Experience: how to optimize it

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A good eCommerce customer experience offers much more than just speed and ease: it fits customers’ preferences to increase their lifetime value and keep your churn rate low.

It’s no secret that people are shopping online more and more. With social distancing, the average customer profile has evolved and adapted to navigate and make eCommerce purchases.

Ecommerce has been a key channel in retail, marketing, and sales operations, to the point it globally represents three-quarters of the overall retail growth. According to Statista, eCommerce sales are supposed to reach almost $604 billion in 2021.

Whether eCommerce sales are made overseas or regionally, one thing is true: The customer is at its center, and offering an at-least-good customer experience is a basic requirement.

Still, that is not what we usually see these days. Regrettably, it is very common to find bad eCommerce customer experiences, such as buggy checkout processes.

Well, that’s no laughing matter. Losing a customer in the checkout process means you’re saying goodbye to the most concrete revenue you might be able to get.

Why is eCommerce customer experience so important?

Owning an inventory and simply selling it isn’t enough, especially in the competitive market we witness today. Products and services aren’t differentiators anymore—but good eCommerce customer experience is.

An eCommerce experience refers to the quality of the interactions customers have in digital stores.

To achieve acceptable levels of quality, the user interaction should match customers’ expectations and provide them with fantastic eCommerce customer experience—there is where its importance lies.

Customer experience decides if you’re selling or not—literally—when it comes to eCommerce. 

The following statistics, provided by CX Central, make it clear:

  • After going through a poor experience, 89% of customers say they have stopped buying from a brand
  • Customer experience is overtaking price and products as a key brand differentiator
  • Eighty-six percent (86%) of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience
  • In general, 61% of people have a better opinion of brands when they offer an excellent mobile experience
  • Around 25% of online shoppers leave the website without paying if they find the website navigation too complicated

As you can see, offering a bad eCommerce customer experience is the way to chaos. Simultaneously, a good eCommerce customer experience is the way to customer engagement.

But how can you avoid being in the bad eCommerce statistics?

Keep in mind that every and each eCommerce operation should be built considering how the customer feels throughout the buying journey. 

If customers feel bad about your brand while on your eCommerce, they won’t hesitate to open a new tab and search for your competitor quickly. Competition is a few clicks away.

This means you have to offer a seamless, intuitive, eCommerce customer experience.

What makes a good eCommerce customer experience?

A good eCommerce customer experience should allow your customers to move through your online shop with speed and ease while matching their personal preferences.

This might differ from customer to customer – that’s why it is important to know them deeply.

In case you’re in doubt whether you’re offering a great eCommerce customer experience or not, there are a few KPIs that can help you get your answers.

We know a large portion of customers abandon the cart because that’s how they browse eCommerce. 

Still, according to Baymard, the main reasons for cart abandonment during checkouts are too high extra costs (50%), eCommerce demanding customers to create an account (28%), and too long checkout processes (21%). 

Another interesting statistic is that customer retention in eCommerce is 5X cheaper than acquisition. 

This suggests that keeping your customers and increasing their Lifetime Value (LTV) is a great way to keep ROI coming back to you. If your customer LTV is good, you might want to keep it high to benefit from consumers’ engagement.

With this in mind, we’ll move forward to some eCommerce customer experience trends that are extremely promising for the upcoming months.

1 – Personalization

You wants your customers to feel like you care about them, right? 

The best way to ensure them you do is to offer them interactions that match their context.

By basing its campaigns on factual data, eCommerce can deliver highly personalized and relevant offers to customers throughout their lifecycle and buying journey.

This means more accurate product suggestions, tailored loyalty points, smart follow-up emails, and more, to guide your customers more easily in the journey.

Please pay attention to the fact 71% of consumers express some level of frustration when their shopping experience is impersonal. On the other hand, 80% of them are more likely to buy from brands that offer customized experiences.

Tailoring a specific eCommerce customer experience based on customer data is no longer a futuristic idea. It is here, and people are demanding it.

2 – Flexibility

Customers expect to buy from anywhere at any time. This means providing them with:

  • A wide variety of paying methods on the checkout page
  • Search bars so customers can quickly find products they’re looking for
  • A small number of input fields in the checkout process
  • Fair price policies that don’t scare buyers away

Are these all? In fair honesty, they aren’t. Granting your customers with flexibility goes much further, and it starts with understanding what their preferences and hopes are.

The omnichannel market, for example, is growing at an impressive speed due to customers’ need to create deeper connections with brands as fast as they need to.

Whether customers want to shop online or to go in-store and have their package sent to their houses, omnichannel embraces countless opportunities across digital platforms and physical operations to deliver customized customer experiences.

This creates a competitive advantage and levels your eCommerce customer experience up.

3 – Human connection

The average Americans see from 4,000 to 10,000 ads daily. This massive advertising has contributed to making customers feel overwhelmed and make them harder to reach effectively.

When getting involved with brands, customers need to understand root-causes to allow an emotional connection. 

This isn’t something that paid ads can tell them, so eCommerce needs to take a step back and focus on organic storytelling techniques.

By focusing their attention on unique, personal brand experiences, businesses can upgrade their marketing campaigns and shopping journeys to build an outstanding eCommerce customer experience.

How does that affect your eCommerce directly? Well, this is a fantastic opportunity to use videos and live content to tell your story in an appealing way to attract and retain customers.

This is also a sign you should focus on more effective human support. 

For example, as much as people don’t mind being served by chatbots, 73% of customers still love being supported by friendly representatives who provide excellent service.

4 – Convenience

Convenience is the key to a good eCommerce customer experience, so fast and free shipping is about to become a brand differentiator.

Hitches and slowness aren’t allowed anymore and might push the demanding, time-sensitive customer away.

Let’s say your marketing team has invested time and money in delivering a campaign to attract customers to a unique sales promotion.

However, as soon as the customers engaged with your campaign get to your eCommerce, they catch themselves face to face with slow loading times, confusing pages, and unclear product descriptions.

Let’s also imagine that, as soon as customers put the products in the cart, the price previously exposed to your eCommerce suddenly increases.

Bad news: You have just wasted all the money your company invested in an effective acquisition campaign.

Studies say 14% of customers percent will begin shopping at another site when waiting for a page to load. Imagine how negatively this can affect your churn and conversion rates.

By neglecting convenience, there is a high chance your metrics towards digital initiatives might not perform the way you’re expecting them to and indicate opportunities you’re losing in the business.

Ways to improve eCommerce customer experience

There are many ways to improve your eCommerce customer experience once you decide to invest in meaningful customer-centric experiences.

One thing is universal for picking and implementing the right technologies to optimize your eCommerce customer experience: your improvements must be data-based.

This means every page and feature on your eCommerce should rely on vital customer information, such as what type of interaction your consumers prefer depending on the journey stage they’re at.

For example, have you ever considered developing a solution that allows your customers to buy from you while driving? Or delivering your products to consumers’ vehicles and other appliances?

Perhaps one of the above might make huge sense and generate even more value to your customers. But you’ll only know for certain if you rely on trustworthy customer data.

This is such a trend that customers will agree to sell their information to brands they choose. 

Whether it is their in-store movements, their location, or online browsing, customers are aware data access is essential to create personal experiences—and they’re counting on you to use it wisely to reward them with the best eCommerce experience ever.

Many eCommerce leaders and professionals worldwide have been doing that and benefiting from Customer Data Platform outcomes to personalize and elevate their eCommerce customer experience.

Improving your eCommerce customer experience with a real-time engagement platform

In the process of improving your eCommerce customer experience, you should strongly consider a few tools to help you build the best user experience.

Arena’s real-time engagement platform is the choice for you. It is equipped with Live Blog and Live Chat that can easily be embedded into your eCommerce to generate leads, increase engagement, and boost your revenue.

Keep reading to find out how both tools can optimize your eCommerce customer experience. We highly recommend checking out how Shoply leverages Arena for their Live Shopping experience.

Live Blog for eCommerce

A Live Blog is a new way to blog that embraces live content to a real-time audience.

When you live Blog, you combine different post formats and sources to create a refreshing coverage feed with the latest news towards an important event in your field. 

Live Blogs are huge in many sectors, such as sports, elections, protests, and conferences. However, these powerful engagement platforms can do much more, especially when we bring your eCommerce to the scenery.

Could you Live Blog a product launch? Sure! Could you live Blog a new promotional sale? Yes! Could you live Blog a special gathering for your loyal top-level clients? Absolutely.

Live Blogs transcend the way blogs have been building content over the years and should be adopted by eCommerce’s that care about the content they’re providing customers with.

Live Group Chat for eCommerce

Have you ever considered working on your eCommerce to embed tools that promote customer real-time interactions 24/7?

Live Chat Groups are an amazing option to achieve that!

As the name suggests, Live Chat Groups are chats that can easily be implemented on eCommerce to allow real-time conversations between your customers and representatives and your customers alone.

By implementing one on your eCommerce, you allow new types of interaction that add on more credibility to your pages and don’t make your customers wait for a response when customers reach out for you.

Live Chats have been used by support and sales teams for years, but now marketers have opened their eyes to its potential to engage and offer excellent customer experiences.

The advantages of Live Chat Groups are:

  • Availability: Consumers want businesses to be available 24/7, and Live Chat Groups are always there to prevent your customers from waiting for a response
  • Support: Sales representatives use Live Chat Groups to give customers great support, whether they’re in the checkout process or in doubt about a specific product
  • Real-time engagement: Replying quickly to customers should spare you the chance to leave them without an answer and lose them to other eCommerce on your field
  • Lead generation: Want a fast, simple tool that collects customer data and lets you smoothly guide shoppers through the customer journey? Live Chat is the answer!

As you read, consumers are expecting your next eCommerce customer experience move

We know how fast you need to implement changes that will give you quick and remarkable results. 

That is why we have decided to let you download our engagement platform for free and get started as soon as you want!

Start now and add Live Chat and Live Blog to boost your eCommerce customer experience!

Reasons you should work with a CDP (Customer Data Platform)

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Why should you invest in a Customer Data Platform? They are revolutionizing the business market, and there’s a reason for it. This system gathers all customer data into a singular font and creates a supreme tool to gain a competitive edge by providing unique and excellent CX.

The future of marketing is working primarily with customer data. This is already happening and has been occurring for a few years now. Data can talk about identity, contact, and even demographic information. But most importantly, online behavioral data is the factor that really makes a difference in understanding how to converse with the audience.

On top of that, data also generates knowledge about the market. So, more than getting to know the consumer, you understand better how to position the brand to attract the public’s attention. Working around the consumer requires a means to control all the information received. As consequence, the Customer Data Platform software was developed.

The CDP system gathers data from all available sources and organizes it in a database. Then, marketing and sales professionals can easily access that information and work on content creation. Besides, it provides insights for campaigns and new products (or modernization of existing products).

Read on to learn more about the importance of having a Customer Data Platform and how it helps businesses grow.

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Why is the Customer Data Platform so important?

A Customer Data Platform is a software designed to collect online and offline data. It deals with three main objectives: collect, analyze, and execute data. Though it was specially developed for marketing teams, it can still be used for other sectors inside a company.

With the organization of all available data, a marketing team’s work will be a lot simpler. By the way, the information contained inside a CDP comes from various sources: website, in-apps, social media, etc. One of the reasons the Customer Data Platform was created was to have all of the data generated from multiple sources gathered into one singular system.

The aim of putting together all information available about customers is to understand them better. The importance of knowing your consumer is undeniable, and the CDP can create an ideal consumer profile from the data collected. 

This means marketing teams have a goldmine in their hands. From the information found within this software, these professionals will know exactly who to talk to, how to speak, and even the best time.

Also, Customer Data Platforms work with real-time data collection. In other words, it gathers data from the first interaction of a user with the brand — whether that’s a visit on the website or an engagement on social media. And it’s not only about the information they share with the brand, like names and emails. So, even if that user doesn’t share anything at the start, their online behavior is already being stored.

It’s worth mentioning that everything is automated in the CDP, from the collection to analysis and database storage. Therefore, marketing professionals have to access the system and start creating content and campaigns.

Why work with customer data?

The reason to acquire a Customer Data Platform for your company is to work with customer data. In this scenario, you can pretty much ask yourself, “why to work with data collection at all?”. The answer to that question could not be more clear: to provide a better customer experience.

Have you heard about the customer-centric strategy? That’s a method of putting the customer in the center of every decision which most companies use nowadays. The reason for that is simple: customers are more demanding than ever before. 

Because the internet has so much information available, it’s harder to create a product or service that will make a person become a customer. Or, even more, make a customer loyal to the brand.

The only way to get to know the consumer and succeed in giving them the best experience is customer data. That is, all the information a company receives from the interaction with a client. Since these are known facts, working with them avoids speculations that could be way off the real deal.

Additionally, some benefits of managing customer data include better segmentation, personalized communication, broader audience understanding, an increase in revenue, and humanization of the brand. 

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That last item is related to what a customer expects from brands. They want the brand to connect and engage with them — just as much as the company wants their audience to interact and communicate too. Customers value their overall experience. It’s much more than only the purchase of a product.

To have a more appropriate data organization, companies invest in platforms that assist in analysis and make their daily work easier. These can include CDMs, CRMs, and CDPs.

What are the types of data?

Of course, to comprehend the best solution for your purpose, you might need a little more information on the types of data that can be collected. Because of that, here’s an explanation about what cookies are and also first-, second-, and third-party data.

Cookies

Cookies are probably the most famous type of data. It’s actually a package of data the computer receives when you first access an online page. After the cookie is on the PC, it will continuously send information to the company every time you access their pages.

More than tracking activities inside their website, cookies also have the function to store information that makes navigation more practical. For example, login and passwords — also called authentication cookies. 

Session cookies and tracking cookies are also varieties of cookies that gather when visitors are active, and the number of visits made to the same page, respectively. In addition, they have an important role in saving information for eCommerce. To clarify, if there were no cookies, shopping carts would be reset every time someone left the page to look for more items.

Even though they are so useful, their minute in the spotlight is coming to an end. Mainly because of privacy issues, cookies have become a concern for the audience. For that reason, browsers have decided to end the support of using cookies. Since cookies’ future is basically non-existing, companies are already looking for new ways to gather and access customer data.

First-party

This is the data collected straight from the relationship between customer and brand. Every piece of information gathered by the company itself can be classified as first-party data. It can be generated from monitoring the website, marketing campaigns, social media, etc. But also from website analytics platforms, CRM systems, and business analytics tools. 

This is the best type of data to work with. It’s the most trustworthy and reliable data. More than that, it’s also confidential data — since you are collecting it directly from your consumer, no other company will have that same information.

Of course, if there is no customer-brand interaction, no data about that person will be collected. That’s not exactly a downside, but it’s important to mention. That way, if your goal is to expand your audience, first-party data isn’t so recommended.

Second-party

Despite not being so talked about, second-party data is real. It’s essentially first-party data from another company. The idea is that you create a communication with a brand that has the same niche, but different products. Seeing that you’re not competitors, you can share each other’s first-party data and expand the brand’s audience.

This agreement between two companies can be an excellent means to improve your audience targeting as well. Further to this, you might create a bond with a powerful ally in the market.

Third-party

Third-party data can be used for the same purpose as second-party; however, it comes from a different source. That is: the information is bought from an external data provider.

Usually, companies that work with an incredible amount of data can decide to sell this information for other companies. Like most things in life, there are ups and downs. The positive point about buying customer data is that you’ll have a lot to work with, grow your audience, and practice better targeting. Moreover, purchased information is wide-ranging and can be used for several purposes.

On the other hand, this information is not exclusive. There are high chances of your competitor ending up with the same data package as you. This data isn’t so reliable since you don’t know where it came from and from who it is — the information is anonymous. Lastly, there’s also the chance of violating data privacy regulation.

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How to use data-driven marketing with a Customer Data Platform?

The primary intention of using customer data is to manage marketing strategies. This has become so huge these days. We even have a new expression in the business world: data-driven marketing. This is about creating a better experience and communication for the customer through data collected. Sound familiar?

A Customer Data Platform brings some benefits to the company that wants to practice data-driven marketing. For starters, the capacity of originating their own database. This gives the brand more control of sources and customer privacy. Easy access to information and anticipation of customers’ needs also get on the list.

The software will also have processes automated, meaning it’s easier to understand what data is essential and what can be left aside for the moment. As previously mentioned, each type of data is good for a specific strategy. Do you want more audience engagement? Get some first-party data. Do you want to expand your audience? Then work with third-party data.

Nonetheless, if you want to stand out in the market, use a combination of both types of data. That’s the most powerful tool you’ll have in your hands. And you know how it’s called? It’s the Customer Data Platform.

Why should you work with a Customer Data Platform?

There’s a whole list of reasons any company praises growth and customer satisfaction should acquire a Customer Data Platform. Some of those include:

  • knowing the consumer
  • improving relationship and engagement
  • creating tailor-made content
  • avoiding data silos
  • improving ROI
  • boosting predictive marketing

Coming from a wide variety of sources, the compilation of first-, second-, and third-party data into a singular system allows the Customer Data Platform to create the ideal customer profile and also unified customer profiles. Both of which will assist in a brand’s communication strategy.

More than that, the CDP works with real-time updates and connects online and offline data. Can you think of a complete database than this? Acquiring this solution will guarantee you better results in marketing campaigns.

Of course, a Customer Data Platform can be used as more than a marketing tool. It can help sales teams, product development, customer support, and pretty much all company sectors. Arena offers a CDP solution so you can work towards all your goals.

That being said, we want you to thoroughly understand what we do and how to use a CDP to your advantage. Because of that, we’ve created an ebook to explain more about it! 

Download it for free now: Customer Data Platform 2020: the future of marketing and sales.