The pandemic changed how people shop. Store closures, curfews, and lockdowns pushed many to switch to online marketplaces. Today even with the easing of restrictions, more people are choosing the convenience of online shopping over traditional retail.
5 Ways to Boost Your E-commerce
E-commerce sales have grown massively in Southeast Asia as high-speed internet and smartphones have become more mainstream. Today, the region is in the middle of an e-commerce boom, with sales growing from $37 billion in 2019 to almost $90 billion in 2022. Moreover, insiders expect the number to break the $100 billion mark by the end of 2023, with no signs of slowing down.
To have an edge in an ever-competitive space, you need more than lower prices and quicker delivery times to keep users engaged on your platform. Whether you have a web store or sell on online marketplaces, it’s now more important than ever to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Fine-Tune Your SEO Strategy
SEO is one of the critical factors in driving traffic to your website or listings. Visibility is essential, and it’s vital that when customers search for what they need, your links are in the search results. For the best outcome, you should optimize all listings (including product videos and thumbnails) for text and voice-based searches.
Trust is a vital component of e-commerce success. There are many ways to build trust, such as backlinks, endorsements, certifications, positive reviews, social proof, etc. SEO strategy and best practices keep changing, so it’s essential to keep up to date with trends and remember that “being useful’ is the best way to remain relevant.
Leverage Social Commerce
Research shows that the average person spends about two and a half hours on social media daily. That makes social media platforms a massive avenue for product marketing, increasing brand awareness, growth, and prominence.
Marketing and engaging your clients on social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest increases awareness and traffic and builds relationships. Today, integrations allow clients to buy directly from you without leaving these platforms. Most of these social apps use geolocation and targeting to post ads and send recommendations. One helpful tool in this regard is proxies; they let you quickly open accounts, access customers, and run promotions in your target location.
Push for Reviews
Social proof is arguably the most potent force of brand building; positive recommendations enable us to validate our choices. Several studies show that over 90% of us trust family and friends more than ads, celebrities, or influencers. Word of mouth remains king when making buying decisions.
Most customers trust and rely on the reviews and experiences of others when choosing which brand to purchase. Surveys reveal that over 70% of buyers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Therefore, encouraging your customers to share their experiences goes a long way in building your brand.
Another powerful source of social proof is user-generated content. Having clients post about their experiences with your brand on their social network and your website and social pages makes a powerful statement. Incentivizing your customers to post about their purchases is a great way to grow and increase trust and presence.
Perform Competitor Research
Sometimes, differentiating yourself means doing things better than the competition; this is where competitor research comes in. Information is power, and having the correct data at hand lets you make better decisions promptly.
Web scraping is the best way of getting real-time data. Unfortunately, larger e-commerce platforms know this and use techniques like IP blocking, flagging, and CAPTCHA to prevent the scraping of their sites. While these measures may hinder some bots from scraping data, using IPs with real addresses, like https://iproyal.com/proxies-by-location/asia/vietnam/, will help. If you need to access marketing intelligence focused on Vietnam or Southeast Asia as a whole, location-based proxies circumvent these barriers, allowing you to gather information easily.
Maintain an Omnichannel Presence
Limiting yourself to only your website or one marketplace doesn’t allow you to realize your full potential. Maximize your reach by selling on multiple channels. Maintain your website but still sell on global and regional platforms like Amazon, Shopee, Lazada, and Zalora, and domestic Vietnamese channels like Tiki and Cho Tot. Operating in multiple marketplaces puts you in front of a larger pool of potential customers.
Parting Shot
Implementing all the above strategies will generate new clients for you, but if you cannot keep them, it’s all for nothing. Customer retention is the key to long-term success, so don’t forget excellent customer service. Great customer service ensures that even when things go wrong, the client is satisfied with your assistance and will still return for more.