 Consumer shopping habits have transformed over the years with more shoppers going online to buy. I mean I know I am personally all the time to a fault maybe, but with the way things are looking there's no likelihood of e-commerce sales declining soon. So once shoppers develop these new habits they're more likely to stick to them rather than go back to the traditional brick-and-mortar shopping. And even with an uncertain economy opportunities to grow your business are everywhere, trust me. And if you currently don't have an online presence this could be the right time to get your e-commerce site established. Now if you already have an e-commerce site cool you might want to optimize the service you offer your buyers. So your technology needs they'll vary but there's definitely some basics out there that every e-commerce owner could benefit from. Starting with personalization of your e-commerce strategy. While some online stores attempt to just compete on price this doesn't always make financial sense right and you might be thinking of a time you even did that at your business itself. But if you really want to stand out one of my favorite ways is to do this through personalization. Survey after survey highlights the importance of personalization in e-commerce. And one study shows that it actually increases conversion rates by nearly 8% and about 75% of shoppers say they appreciate that personal touch. And if that's not enough to convince you let's look at some of the other benefits of personalization. For one it encourages loyalty and increases your sales so much of that status is shared. It enhances customer communication and makes them feel valued. It improves consumer recommendation and conversions and it ultimately reduces your bounce rates. And you know take a minute to think of any large e-commerce stores that you buy from. Chances are they use personalization which means you get sent content about products that you are interested in. Products that you're most likely to respond to. And also anything that's newly released or relevant to your purchase that you made recently. Happens to me all the time. But this personal touch doesn't need to just apply to larger brands. There are several simple tools that you can use to tailor your offerings. Google Optimize 360 is a fantastic resource because it lets you create A-B testing. So A-B testing is where you have say your landing page and it's running fine but you want to do an alternate version of that landing page and change the button text or change the real main call to action or persuasive. And you can compare those side by side to see which one performs the best. And then there's also Optimize Lee and Adobe Target. These are some great resources to really start to tailor your offerings to your customers. Let's talk about newsletter management. Do you currently have a newsletter? If not maybe now is the time. I mean this is a great way to reach your customers and while there are plenty of other marketing methods available research demonstrates that most consumers do in fact want promotional emails and coming from you the brands that they like and that they want to buy from. Not only that but there's enough research out there to show that email newsletters can be more effective than social media. Yeah. So what makes newsletter marketing so effective? Well newsletters offer an affordable way to create and nurture those brand new leads and also helps you establish your company as an authority by sending out that awesome content that you do. And it also allows you to highlight your new products. But you can start to tailor them to individual customers to also bolster your conversions. And if you think of the prospect of setting up a newsletter sounds daunting. Don't worry. It actually is pretty simple. With GoDaddy you can create newsletter in just a couple of minutes. Now we're going to get into analytics and inventory trackers. And this is where data comes in. Think about it. If you want to better understand consumer behavior then you'll need to do some digging into your data. And this is one approach that many companies are turning to to enhance not only their online success but also their offline success as well as providing an increasingly personalized approach to marketing. Businesses are also using data to do a few things starting with respond to changing needs, measure their marketing efforts, also manage inventory and predict future trends which is pretty cool. Increase conversions, determine product strategy. The list goes on. Also improve customer service. Now once you have access to all the detailed data here you guessed it. You can make better informed decisions about your direction as well as you could possibly reduce costs and then totally maximize your earnings. Exactly. And now let's talk about some social media tools. So as we all know social media enables you to really engage with customers and answer their questions. But there are plenty of other ways can help you grow your e-commerce site. So you can do things like send out promotional offers like pre-orders and sales. You can also allow your customers to share their recent buys with their followers and get that user generated content that we all love. You can also start to develop targeted efficient campaigns to reach a wider audience. So not just the people that follow you. And then one of my personal favorites here is hosting contests. I love entering those contests with the ability to potentially win some awesome swag or your product or service but it helps encourage that user generated content really getting your name out there. But not every e-commerce owner has the resources to take on a full social media manager. You're already wearing a ton of hats but this is where some essential tech tools can prove invaluable. You know what else is out there? Customer service management tools which are great. There's no getting away from it. Good consumer relations are essential to your growth. You know that. And most consumers when interviewed and asked about poor customer service they said it absolutely influenced their buying behaviors. The survey revealed the one that I read recently revealed that shoppers 67% of the shoppers expect customer service to be efficient. With e-commerce tech you can automate many of your usual processes in optimized service level. And as a small to medium-sized business you can't always be there for your customers but you can use e-commerce tech to automate many of your usual processes and optimize those service levels. For instance you can use analytics tools to improve response times or you can use specific customer relation management software or CRMs and there's plenty to choose from including hub spots free CRM for sales leaders, SOHO's CRM which has several paid membership levels to name a few. The shift to e-commerce shows zero signs of slowing down I'm sure you can relate and also global events have even pushed us and consumers towards online shopping even further. And many experts state that once consumers have changed their shopping habits guess what they're not likely to go back to their old ways of buying so in with the new out with the old. You've got that right and if you haven't made the move to e-commerce or if your store is lacking the tools that you need to make it a success now might be a good time to optimize your online offerings but that's all I've got for you we definitely hope this video helped you with your e-commerce success and if you've learned anything in this video let us know in the comments below and while you're there make sure you smash that like button and don't forget to subscribe and ring that bell so you are the first to know and we come out with another video this is a journey