Salla: The Future of E-commerce, an Easy Platform to Start Your Business

The customer goes through different stages before making a purchase decision. If you think there is a secret formula that makes the customer's journey to your online store buy your product with the click of a button, I regret to inform you that this is a misconception, and that the customer's journey to your online store requires more effort that you must make. In fact, you need to understand how the customer progresses from one stage to another before purchasing a product from your online store, and this is what I will discuss with you in detail in this article.

The path the customer takes before purchasing the product:

As I explained to you in the introduction, before purchasing, the customer goes through what is called the Customer Journey Value or the E-commerce Marketing Funnel, and this process consists of 4 main stages, as follows:

1- Awareness stage

2- Consideration/Interest stage

3- Decision/Purchase stage

4- Loyalty/Repeat purchase stage

These are general and comprehensive stages, which is why some experts divide this journey or path into more detailed stages, which are:

1- Awareness stage

2- Engage stage

3- Subscribe stage

4- Excite stage

5- Convert stage

6- Ascend stage

7- Advocate stage

8- Promote stage

Let's imagine that a customer is facing a problem, for example: this customer has a problem with clothes, especially since he is a travel enthusiast, and wants high-quality clothes that save him at the same time the hassle of changing them due to stains or odors.

The customer's journey to your online store begins with searching and online marketing for a company that addresses his problem and eliminates it. After a long search, he found Sigma Fit, an e-commerce company that has a store selling clothes embedded with odor, stain, and liquid-resistant technologies, as in the following image:

After browsing their website, he liked the products, and then purchased one of the company's products. The experience was wonderful, the product suited his needs, he recommended it to his relatives and friends, and after a while, he bought another product from them.

In this example, the customer has gone through all stages of the buyer's journey, whether from the first time or at separate intervals, starting from the stage of awareness of the company when searching for it, then interest in the products or considering them after finding a unique selling proposition (USP) unique selling point, then comes making the purchase decision, and finally the stage of loyalty, recommending the company's products, and repeating the purchase process again.

Note: You may find different names for the customer's journey to your online store or the stages of the E-commerce Marketing Funnel, but you will find the content is standardized. If you understand a specific model, you will be able to understand any other model, even if the names change, because they refer to the same details.

Here lies the question: As an online store owner, how do you convert your website visitors into customers? How do you smoothly transition the customer's journey to your online store from one stage to another? What content and strategies must you follow in each stage individually?

The stages a customer goes through from the first visit to your online store until the first purchase:

1- Awareness stage

This stage includes customers who visited your website for the first time, through search, by chance, through various social media channels, or perhaps through a referral from a friend or colleague. At this stage, the customer recognizes a specific problem and realizes that your online store and products might be a potential solution for him.

In this stage, your mission should be to provide educational and informational content to build trust in the customer's journey to your online store through paid content, such as advertisements of all kinds, or organic content.

What kind of content is suitable at this stage?

1- Blog articles.

2- Posts on various social media networks.

3- Videos about topics that interest customers and which they always search for.

This image is from a detailed article on how to balance school and life. You need this kind of content at this stage, because you want to prove to the customer that you care about him and want to provide something valuable to him. Therefore, the customer must not feel that your only goal is profit; if he feels this, he will never buy from you. People do not want to feel that you want to take money from them; rather, they buy for emotional reasons, and then justify the purchase decision with logical reasons, such as that they needed or wanted the product.

Another example is the famous skincare brand owned by L'Oreal, which offers an article on the golden rules of daily skincare, which is a common question among women and girls. It contains simple information without focusing on sales in a pushy way.

Tip: At this stage, it is preferable to focus on blog articles in particular, because of their ability to improve visibility in search engines, and thus appear to a larger number of customers when searching on the Internet.

Start by conducting a comprehensive search for all keywords that your customers are searching for, and cover them through topics about these keywords. As in the previous picture, you might find that skincare is one of the questions that women search for very commonly on Google, but always try to provide valuable, high-quality content.

What strategy should be used in this stage?

1- Using Advertisements

Advertisements have a great capability to reach a very large segment of people and build awareness for your brand and your online store. You can also consider advertising on the Facebook platform, which helps expand your potential customer base.

2- Introducing the products you offer

As we said, we will not focus on sales in a pushy and exaggerated way at this stage, but it is okay to introduce customers to the products you offer - in case you have more than one product - which you can do through a sponsored ad via Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.

2- Consideration/interest stage

This stage includes customers who are interested in the product you offer, or the problem your product solves, or are comparing the product you offer with one of the products offered by your competitors.

In this stage, your job is to make it easy for these customers to know about the product/products on your online store, and to reinforce your value proposition and unique selling point that is not available with one of your competitors.

 What kind of content is suitable for the consideration stage?

1- Videos describing products (Product videos, Demo videos).

2- Description and definition of the products available on the online store.

3- Stories.

4- Articles about how your product helped someone overcome a specific problem.

5- E-books and how-to guides.

What strategy should be used in this stage?

1- Reinforce your unique selling point

You must be sure of and fully understand the Unique Selling Point (USP) of your product. If you have no idea about this term, let me explain it to you. Simply, the unique selling point is the advantage that you have, which is sufficient to make the customer leave all your competitors and buy from you.

This point could be product quality, a suitable price, or perhaps professional handling by customer service or after-sales services. Perhaps the strangest thing that you won't believe is that your point of distinction might be in providing an ideal, seamless User Experience in your online store.

 This is an important advantage that you must pay attention to, especially if you have a store. This means that if the customer finds your site difficult and does not provide an easy experience, they will not buy, resulting in no sales—the worst-case scenario you want to happen. Here are the most important 7 sales increase strategies which have a noticeable impact on your e-commerce business.

Let's take an example of two of the biggest burger giants around the world who are always in intense competition: McDonald's and Burger King. "Mac" has a unique selling point, which is speed most of the time. When you are hungry and want a meal as quickly as possible, you often turn to them. It also promotes itself as having the fastest delivery service, which is a fact and an advantage it has, explaining its great popularity around the world. Perhaps this example clarifies what I mean.

Therefore, you must make sure to reinforce this point through your posts on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and others. The customer must feel the true value they obtain through the product, which is not present in competitors' products. Customers must feel that the only solution to their problem is your product.

2- Using social proof across all channels

Imagine you are looking at two products: one has many positive reviews, and independent expert opinions recommend it, while the other has no reviews at all; which product will you buy?

Undoubtedly the first one. We humans tend to buy based on the experiences of those who came before us, and this principle is applied in all fields, including e-commerce. This is simply what the term Social Proof means, so it must be present on all channels where your product is displayed, such as your online store and social media platforms.

Forms of Social Proof:

1- Facts

Proven and known facts that support your product, such as nutritional calories if your product is food-related.

2- Customer stories and testimonials

Customer opinions and comments on your product, whether through Instagram stories, Facebook recommendations, or explicit positive reviews and recommendations for the product.

In the following image, a website that offers loyalty programs for companies provides an overview of some of the amazing results its customers got after using the product, which is considered a customer testimonial even if it did not come directly from the customer.

Another example is high customer ratings. Note that putting these opinions on the product's main page facilitates the customer's transition to the purchase decision easily, especially if the customers are influencers or giant companies.

3- Expert opinions

Expert opinions on a product, such as dentists' opinions on a particular toothpaste. For example, when talking about a new toothpaste, you hear the phrase: recommended by 99.9% of dentists, or university professors' opinions on a specific curriculum or training course.

For example: the global company that includes the famous skincare brand (La Roche Posay), where its products are recommended by more than (90) thousand dermatologists—a huge and very reassuring number that provides the customer with great confidence to decide to buy the product.

4- Recognition and approval

This part is dedicated to awards and recognitions your product has received; for example, the best-seller book award falls under this category. You might have noticed that most authors, when talking about themselves, use phrases like their books were the best-selling in a particular year.

5- Improving product pages and descriptions

We are still in the consideration and evaluation phase. The customer is thinking now and will make their decision soon. Therefore, at this stage, you must make them feel as if they are seeing the product in reality, and the product description must be attractive and carry all the information the customer is looking for.

A very important point to consider, especially in this part, is the user experience. A user experience must be provided that smoothly moves the person browsing the site to the next step. One of the applications that provides a great user experience is the online store.

Important tip: The product description must make the reader interested in learning more, so you should invest in hiring a talented and professional Product Description Copywriter to provide a description that makes the customer feel as if they are seeing the product.

You can learn how to write descriptions for your products from a company that produces different types of pasta and provides a wonderful description of each type with the best way to cook it, so that you feel you are enjoying the most delicious plate of pasta, as in the picture:

You can also learn how to write product descriptions from a company which is an online store specializing in selling unusual, custom-made gifts for people, as it offers an exciting description of the product as follows:

First, it raises a common problem (as in the attached image): Are you trying to identify your luggage among other things, and you even put a colored ribbon, only to discover at the airport that someone else did the same with the exact same color of your ribbon? Then it offers a funny solution to prevent this "baggage claim drama" - as described - through a "personalized suitcase cover" that carries your photo, which is a very genius solution.

When you read this description, you can easily relate to the problem, especially if you are a traveler, and you think it is a great solution, so you buy it.

The same is done by the online store, which is an online store specializing in selling supplies and tools for building workspaces that help increase productivity, such as soundproof booths and meeting rooms.

It uses a brilliant idea that gives an impression of how good the product is, as the store provides a recording showing the difference between the sound inside the soundproof booth and outside the booth, as in the picture:

Pro tip: Do you want your online store to be professional in terms of products and their descriptions? I will tell you a secret and an important step that has begun to be widely applied, which is integrating modern technology into online stores, especially technology that provides a better view of the product.

This step is using Augmented Reality technology, which provides a view of the product as if the customer's journey to your online store is using it in their hands or trying it on. For example: let's assume you are buying a shoe from an online store; augmented reality allows you to see how this shoe looks on your feet.

One of the pioneers in using this technology is IKEA, as it launched an app in 2013 to help customers see how a particular piece of furniture would look in their home. IKEA solved a problem that occupied many of its customers: wondering whether this piece of furniture would fit my home to buy it or not.

Here is an illustrative photo showing how the Ikea Augmented Reality app works

Think about it, it's worth the investment, especially if your online store has products that fall under the category that people hesitate to buy if they are not visible to them in reality.

- Improving the Call to Action/CTA

If the call to action button in your online store is always "Buy Now" or "Shop Now", you need to reconsider this strategy. Why?

Because in the customer's journey to your online store, some make the purchase decision immediately, while others hesitate or need some information about the product. You must think about what information the customer might need to know before making a decision.

I will give you an example: the company we talked about a while ago has active on its website two different call-to-action buttons, one is "Shop Now" and the other is "Get Specs", which is a very important thing that customers need, as 80% of them may want to know what are the measurements and dimensions of this booth to fit their workspace.

3- Decision/purchase stage

This stage includes the customer who has made a decision to buy the product from your online store, or customers who are convinced of the product but need a slight push to complete the purchase decision. Perhaps these have added a product to the shopping cart or wishlist, but all they need now is the final push to complete the deal.

You will need to save prospective customers in the decision-making stage from potential drop-offs and give them a gentle push to complete their purchase.

On-site messaging and emails will be your favorite tools at this stage.

Let's see how...

What kind of content is suitable for this stage?

1- On-site messages.

2- Emails.

What strategy should be used in this stage?

In this stage, you must focus on the online store to complete the purchase process and convert the customer into a buyer, and you can do this in several ways:

1- Using on-site messaging correctly during the purchase process

It is very important to keep in mind that no two visitors are alike. Some will complete the purchase process from the first time without going through a long journey, while many other people will go through the entire customer journey and conversion funnel to buy from you in the end; that's why you need to differentiate between first-time visitors, subscribers, and returning customers, and you will have to create special campaigns to target them.

If you think of prospective customers in this stage as already customers, I regret to tell you that you cannot take these customers for granted.

Instead, you should engage them with on-site messages and push them gently if they decide to leave your site through discounts or free delivery.

In the attached image, an example of on-site messages that encourage the customer to buy is shown on a website. If you put several items in the shopping cart, this message will appear to you:

2- Sending automated emails based on customer behavior on the site

You now have a treasure trove of information about customers through the pages they browsed, the links they clicked, and the products they added to the cart and either bought or abandoned.

Through this information, you can customize the experience for visitors and achieve higher conversion rates. But don't worry, Email Marketing in e-commerce does not differ from real-world commerce; for example, in the following image you can urge your customer to complete purchasing the items they left in their shopping cart.

4- Loyalty/repeat stage

Great! We have reached what you are striving for as an online store owner; the customer has bought from your site, so this stage includes customers who have bought from you at least once. Your job now is to keep these customers through an effective customer retention strategy, as they will be the primary and main driver of your online store's revenues.

 What kind of content is suitable at this stage?

1- Emails.

2- Thank you messages on the site.

What strategy should be used in this stage?

1- Referral Marketing

Referrals simply mean that your customer brings a new customer, and it is a magical factor in raising your online store's revenues and increasing your sales.

You might ask yourself, do referrals really have a great capability to increase sales? The answer is yes. Consequently, your satisfied customers can recommend your product to many people in their circle of acquaintances in exchange for something they receive, which expands your customer base.

The incentives you offer to your customers must be valuable, such as: a discount on the next order, points that can be redeemed for other products, free samples, or gift cards.

Some companies, for example, offer a sum of money, $10 for example, with every friend who registers through you and orders a product.

2- Promoting Loyalty Programs

Design a loyalty program that suits your customers. Send an email to gauge their opinions, ask them what they want from the program, or give them some options to choose from that suit you.

Once the program is ready, promote it everywhere you can; add it to automated emails, newsletters, or place it on your website.

Think first about giving your customers some points; it will be a nice surprise for them and will encourage them to join.

This is one of the tricks you can rely on as a type of Gamification technique.

One of the best loyalty programs is the one offered by Sephora, a brand specializing in skincare products. The program provides the most loyal customers with free tickets to some important events, offers a chance to try products first, and discounts on some products.

Additional tip:

Showcase your best customers on social media platforms. Some brands film a short video in which the customer talks about their experience and opinion on the products, thereby marketing yourself on one hand, and building a solid relationship between you and your customers on the other.

Summary of the above:

You now have a full understanding of the conversion funnel and the customer journey in e-commerce. I tried to simplify the explanation to you by presenting real examples from global online stores. What I want to emphasize in conclusion is that whatever products you sell, you must not overlook any stage of this path, because that will not achieve the required results, and there is a marketing strategy for abundant sales and satisfied, happy customers.

You will be able to provide an excellent purchasing journey if you follow the four elements of the customer journey and give each of them special attention:

• Awareness Stage

• Consideration/Interest Stage

• Decision/Purchase Stage

• Loyalty/Repeat Stage

Now, you have everything you need to design the buyer's journey on your online store. But if you do not have your own store, you can immediately start with a fully integrated store, with Salla's free package.