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Black Friday Ideas, Discount, Ecommerce Discount strategies, Sales

2018 Black Friday: Survival Kit For E-Store Owners

Black Friday ideas for WooCommerce / Ecommerce — A young woman texting on the phone outdoors.

2018 Black Friday is here. Increase in sales, converting slow sales products into demand full products, Customer acquisition, and Whatnot.

This is how 2017 black Friday was,

The E-commerce sales of blender increased 10 times than the usual sale in 2017 Black Friday. And expects to quadruple in this year.
Gymshark, who provides workout essentials had increased their holiday revenue by 197% and is growing to settle for $128M in the coming year.
The Due outages faced by SweetLegs in 2016 was settled just a month before black Friday. And Effectively proceeded to break all the previous records.

With no doubt, this is for what we prepare for when Black Friday is approaching.

Yes, I’ve quoted only the glorious stories which happen during a Black Friday season sale. This is not always the same.

But there are some unexpected guests popping up. Like what?

Out of control inventory management – OMG, what’s happening
A pile of product orders – which to set of first?
People go unnoticing your 70% off tag – Unbelievable
Angry shoppers – Mind the reviews.

The crazy sale ideas that you implement at your store has all the potential to drive you crazy. Not to mention the competition that is out there during this day.

Seeking the bright side, we have brought you some essential ideas and strategies to gear up your online business during this black Friday.

Don’t wait for Thanksgiving

Start the prep at the earliest because shoppers start window shopping at the end of October itself. And make your store discoverable so that the users can look around. Sure, they’ll be evaluating whether to buy the products from your store and guess what? Most of them will be buying some.

Start with optimizing your app:

Store app should be highly optimized in order to make sure all the customers arriving at the store has a good user experience. This will do miracles on converting the store visitors into buyers.

Start optimizing your WooCommerce app and website. The images that are added to the app and website effects the loading time and performance of the app. Appropriate size for images has to be chosen so that it does not intrude the working of the app.

Campaign:

Email:

Connect with customers in order to keep them informed about the deals and offers that are up to come. Send Emails to give the users a clear idea about how the store is going to be in Black Friday. Moreover, Emails are always an initiative for starting a conversation with the users.

The Emails can be of informative and if necessary you can add a questionnaire regarding their personal interests. This data can be used to give special offers for that potential user and learn user expectation. The reports of the custora state that 25% of the online sales during Black Friday is generated through Email Campaign.

So why not make the fullest of it?

Social media:

Social media networks are just new channels for your brand. Reaching new customers and Spreading a word about the brand is easier nowadays. With just Email marketing, the inbound traffic of your WooCommerce store is limited. It is more like reaching out the same set of users who know about your brand.

With social media marketing, you can generate more inbound traffic. More Leads increases the probability of having more conversion rates.

Inventory under control:

Offering several deals for this day is easy. Stocking up the inventory with the right amount of commodities to fulfill all the orders fails most of the times.

Let’s be careful that this doesn’t happen this year.

To start with, taking the numbers will be the best way. Examine the financial data and sales record of the last year. Look for a trend or sequence with which you can take an estimate of the inventory cost. Then, you can use the gross profit method and retail method to look up the inventory cost.

Fake Scarcity

Creating a sense of scarcity can be advantageous even when you have surplus products. The limited products can induce curiosity and eagerness among the users.

The users think the limited supplies were limited because the products were either high of demand or were popular. That’s the reason why people opt products that are scare.

Notify the users that there are only a handful of products at your store.

Incentives at the exit doors

Even after putting up the banner “Hurry up! Few more left“, shoppers may abandon their shopping cart. Giving an exigent offer just before the user leaving your app will increase the likelihood for the user to buy the product.

For example, Along with an irresistible offer, enable countdown whenever a user is not proceeding with the checkout procedure. This gives 2 choices for the user, either to refuse the offer or proceed with the checkout.

Don’t forget Staffing

The rush at the store during the holiday season is not uncommon. Proper customer support has to be given during these days or else you will be dealing with angry customers. Assigning staffs for shipping can help you lessen work load and concentrate on the business.

M-Commerce, Sales, Stock Clearance, WooCommerce Mobile App

8 Best Online Stock Clearance Ideas For Your E-Store

Inventory management is a nightmare when ‘Excess stock ‘ shows up. The excess stocks eat up your inventory space and fill up your mind with worries. Don’t worry- Even the most successful online stores suffer the same problem.

Stores experience the problem with excess products normally when it is the end of the year or season. This is mainly because of the demand for the product reduces as new products arrive. You probably think that someone is coming to buy all those products sometime…

…but this ain’t is happening. You need to take immediate action if you find the store is getting filled up with Surplus.

Because excess products can cause you,

No return over the capital that you invested.
Need for more space.
Stock either becomes obsolete or expires.
Surplus effects in the future investment of your store.

The first solution that rises up in your mind is Stock clearance. And what with that? It isn’t easy as you thought. Right?

Excess Stock can directly affect your business. As time and trend change, people easily get turned away from old commodities. Apart from the negative side lets see how you can smoothen this situation.

#1: The New look

Engaging the users with your store is the first thing that you should take care of if you plan an inventory clearance. Invoking curiosity among the users is the best solution to make users visit your online app or website.

A changeover for your WooCommerce store can bring in a lot of attention and new customers.

Start with a new stunning WooCommerce store theme. Just like redecorating your home interior, replace all the In-app contents and include as many as banners and sliders to your home page. Move and change everything that is necessary to bring a totally new and cool look.

#2: Upload a new product picture:

Many of us don’t give much importance for the picture of the product which is to be uploaded in the E-Commerce/WooCommerce app or website.

Upload a high-quality image and take the photos from all the angle so that the user gets to preview the product easily.

#3: Better Deals

Discounts are the one thing that is loved most by the users and a traditional method applied for stock clearance.

There are various discount tactics, but not all will be suitable for stock clearance.

A flash sale: Offers for ‘Limited time period‘ is very effective for stock clearance. An urgency will arise among the shoppers to buy the product which has offers, especially under timestamp condition. Notify the users about the sale which is yet to come. Here you can use push notifications and Emails to capture users attention.

Even after sending the Emails and push notification in advance, there are chances for the users to miss out the sale.

To avoid this and to increase user engagement, You can send them messages to ask them whether they should be reminded about the upcoming sale.

If the shoppers are interested in the product, the probability for them to hit the ‘ Notify‘ button is high.

‘Buy more, get more’ is an even better offer which can help you move excess products from the E-Store. Give a discount or coupon for the shoppers when they make a quality purchase.

..For example when a shopper makes a purchase of 3 T-shirts and if it comes under a conditional discount, you can either charge only for 2 t-shirts or give one additional T-shirt free.

Remember, Running frequent offers may change the users perspective to the products quality and this may end up hurting your business. Show up some discounts during special occasions like festivals or holidays.

#4: Convey the products demand

One reason for shoppers buying multiples of the same product is people easily get tempted to buy a product when it is either scarce or of high in demand. Put a banner ‘limited stock only ‘ and see the miracle.

Indeed, Slowing moving products can be made more popular with this method.

#5: Grouping the products

Grouping the products is another tactic which can be used to sell the surplus products. While grouping the products, remember that the grouped products make sense.

For example, If you are selling cycle parts, grouping 3 cycle light won’t make many sales as people who buy 3 cycle lights are rare. Instead, you can make a group which includes a cycle light, A cycle horn, and a cycle basket.

..and last but not the least, give a discount for this combo pack.

Yaas! I would buy this pack.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t sell bundles of the same product. Actually, this works even better for many products.

Consider selling 3 T-shirts in 3 different shade. Aye, that is an attractive bundle when it comes with discounts.

#6: Incentives and Freebies works in every era

Not all surplus products can be sold out using the above ideas. Waiting for someone to come purchase these products is not a good idea. Instead, you can give away such products which have very less scope to be sold.

To determine to whom you should give away the freebies, Set a purchase condition.

For example, Make the free offer available only when the shopper purchases a set of products. Like, you can give away a jar when the user has purchased a set of crockeries.

You will only be looking for additional methods if all the above-mentioned idea is not suitable. There are two options during such a situation.

#7: Donate and gain tax benefits

If all the above plans don’t work donating is the next best option for you. You can donate the surplus products to charitable organizations. This can help you get tax privileges for your business.

#8: Return or exchange

See whether the product supplier can accept a return or exchange for the slow-selling commodity. This is possible if the product package is undamaged and packed. Moreover, if you are a potential customer of the supplier he would accept deals from you as a part of customer retention.

Conclusion

Managing surplus products are always a burden for a store owner. but with the above-mentioned methods, you can resolve this problem easily.

Put forward better deals and offers to the shoppers and this will turn in more customers. But before diving into a stock clearing, the inventory has to be analyzed and all the sales data has to be recorded.

Monitoring the best selling and worst selling product can help you understand which item should not be purchased for your store. This can help decrease surplus products.

Customer retention, Discount, Halloween special, M-Commerce, Sales, WooCommerce Mobile App

7 Best Ways To Spook Up Your WooCommerce Store For Halloween

How does your WooCommerce store welcome Halloween?

Halloween 2k18 is closer. One of the best time in the year to bring an overall change in the look of your WooCommerce store. People love trick or treat, JAck-O’Landtern, candy bags and ‘HALLOWEEN OFFERS‘.

Try out everything that pops up in your mind. You dress up weird, why not your Store?

Bring in Halloween based marketing and an outlook for WooCommerce can be the first effective method to break the ice. Let your WooCommerce store be the candy bag for the users.

Let’s see what more can be done to make the full usefulness of Halloween.

How about “Pumpkinizing” your WooCommerce web and In-App page

A costume makeover is just perfect for your WooCommerce store when Halloween is nearing.

This brings an effect of silently screaming…

…” Hey! well, we sell all the Halloween products”.

Change the entire store theme to a ghosty look – Including some cobwebs, spiders, skeletons and pumpkin ghosts can do even better.

Like being creativity? then Halloween is the best chance which you can use to bring out and experiment them.

Be creative while giving a title for the product and giving the images.

Halloween special product page

A Halloween special page for both your WooCommerce website and store is always inevitable. It can bring in more customers and do a great part in enhancing the business. This is because users browse for Halloween special offers.

Moreover creating one landing page for Halloween don’t hurt your business nor eat your time.

Showoff latest Halloween products and trends in here. Make it clear that the page is entirely for Halloween products. And this can be shown through the titles and description and pictures that you add to your Web and In-App.

Don’t forget to optimize your pages by giving titles and Meta-Description which includes the keywords ( Probably words including Halloween and related words).

Decorate your Web and InApp page with the following,

Banners and sliders:

Banners are eye catchy, create one or two banners for each pages representing Halloween. Promotions and discounts regarding Halloween can be displayed here and go for deep linking.

Halloween ideas for WooCommerce store, Happy Halloween

Include sliders into your mobile apps and showcase some Halloween special product in those.

Quiz and win:

The best way to acquire new customers is to introduce a quiz. Relate the quiz questions with the subject Halloween and choose a winner at the end of the process.

This can be more interesting for the shoppers and a way to show our store’s loyalty.

Halloween gift cards:

Halloween Gift Cards for WooCommerce store

Make sure you announce the Halloween special deals and offers 2-3 week ahead of Halloween. Let the users be aware of the gift card and Halloween deals that you are going to sprinkle.

Pro tips:

Treat your regular customers special. Reward them with a gift card which normally includes discounts, free shipping, surprise gift. This is an excellent method to start with promotions.

Include Social Media:

At this age what is more fun than posting crazy photos and videos in social media?

Line up your employees in spooky costumes and make a crazy video, so that you can share it on social media or make your users post their pics in costume.

Bringing transparency always grabs peoples attention and attention drives sales.

Wrap it all

People exchange small gifts during the days of Halloween – “Wrapped in cute ghosty covers“.

Design several packs for the products and combine a set of products which are similar and offer a nice deal for your customers.

Consider this example.

People who want to buy a mobile phone from your store is likely to buy a headphone or phone case.

Why not place an attractive deal by providing a combo pack of all the three!

Summing it up

Halloween is so close. It is the peak time to bring a change over for your WooCommerce store. Start the marketing campaign and put up the Halloween banners for your E-store.

Don’t forget to include Halloween special products. Do SEO so that your products and pages rank up. Including a quiz and win program helps you engage more users with your E-Store

Customize push notification for Halloween and notify the end-users with the Halloween special products and offers. Sending the right amount of push notifications has the ability to engage the uses.

Bring the sales on track on this Halloween with our M-Commerce Free Evo

Customer retention, Discount, M-Commerce, Sales, WooCommerce Mobile App

7 Effective Ways To Engage Users With Your Mobile App

Two months before When I suddenly got a thought of “getting fit” I surfed along the internet and discovered there are many apps serving the same purpose. I took a tour through the reviews and ratings before I clung to an app and downloaded it. The first day I opened the app and so did the following 3 to 4 days.

As the usual case the interest to ‘get fit’ got faded and less served the purpose of the app. Not even bothered to update it and eventually ended up not using the app. The days passed and there comes the issue with the phone space and finally, I uninstalled the same fitness app which I was so eager to download.

“Install the app”- This though comes easier than “Update the app”. Yes, I agree that making the users download is not easy. But what comes after that is even difficult.

What your app really serves is really gonna matter after the installation of the app. You can see a fashion in what apps are downloaded by the users. Competition is always one step ahead. Give reasons for users why they should use the app and why keep it even when they are running out of space.

Let’s keep your app out of these

#1 letting it crash:

You put all the effort in marketing the app and when it comes to the performance, let them not say – “The app crashed”. Therefore, instead of putting them in a” hey test my app” situation, test the app before launching.

#2 Slow as snail:

Speed is the first reason why people choose apps over websites. Make sure that your app never lets this ideology down. Believe me, performance stands up on the ladder. Don’t mess it up.

#3 Filled up with ads:

Adding Ads are the normal scenario and a better way to add up the revenue. I wouldn’t say to cut all of it, But it could turn into an annoying experience for the users. Moreover, they pull down the speed of the app and this could be a reason for the users to uninstall your app.

#4 Similar apps (That too free!!):

While launching an app, competitions can be there and it will be even more challenging when some other app serves the same purpose and with free of cost. I know, that’s hurting. This free app has the potential to make you lose all your customer.

To dilute the seriousness of the situation, you can bring in more offers and temporarily compromise in price to drive more customers.

#5 Forcing to signup/login:

Signups are not always necessary. It can entirely depend on the purpose of the app. There exist apps which do not require any kind of logins, but still forces the users to signup.

This is one reason for people uninstalling the app. Even if the signups are necessary for your app, give them a choice at the beginning.

Placing your app in the user’s priority list

#1: The bang entry

Trying to teach the users how to use the app is not what users expect when they first see a video or an introduction of a newly launched app. The onboarding should be something that reflects the value of the app.

You are having you’re first ever conversation with the users while onboarding the app. WIth no doubt, it should be appealing and friendly to the end-users. Since the first time user experience(FTUE) really matters, follow the latest trends to launch the app.

As said before, it normally includes a walkthrough within the app. Show them that you are launching something that they badly want or have been waiting for.

In order to achieve this, the app developers should focus on delivering much simpler and instinctive design and content.

#2: Concentrate on the performance of the app:

All the issues which cause crashing should be properly evaluated and solved. The loading time should be minimal and give no excuse for the users to abandon the app.

The app should be tested thoroughly before you launch it. Afterall continues monitoring has to be done. Do not settle with what your app has currently. research and implement new ideas. Regular updates should be provided.

#3: Push Notifications :

Push notifications have the ability to increase the app retention by 20%. This is the case of a common push notification. The retention rate can even increase by 7 times if the notifications are personalized. Don’t get too excited to send push notifications.

The app users opt out from the app notification when they get frustrated due to continuous push notifications and messages they receive. Send the right amount of notifications at the right time and this could help you engage the users back with your app. You can gain a set of loyal customers by sending the right messages through the app.

And that’s what you are looking for!

#4: Is your app expensive? If yes, explain why.

A majority of the users prefer the cheapest and at the same time the app which delivers higher quality. There will be cases when your competitor is offering the exact product of yours and even with better features. To overcome this issue, you can bring down the price of the product or deliver a much worthier app.

Users browse for alternative apps serving the same purpose if they discover that the money they spend on an app does not worth it. Indirectly tell them why your app is costlier and be up to the point.

A proper research and studies about the competitors before you get into building the app will yield better results. Enhance your app with extra features than the competitor. This can increase customer acquisition and helps in better user engagement.

#5: “Your friend Ed has earned 10 points..”

Users have the tendency to know what the other users or their friends are doing with the app. Take advantage of this curiosity and send them messages or push notifications saying what their friends have gained from the app or how useful the app has turned out to be for them. This encourages the users to engage back with the app.

Use this wisely.

#6: Better rewards

Rewarding the customers can even be used for making the users download the app. The point is you can give rewards for any indirect need which requires customer participation because rewards always work for users. They can help you increase customer loyalty and increase customer engagement.

#7: Easy signups

I don’t like signups. Do you? People always try to avoid filling long forms. This could be because of either they don’t want to give away their details, or just because they are lazy to fill the forms.

Avoid signups if not necessary. In case if it cannot be avoided give chance to the users to decide whether to signup or not. In such cases, you can provide social login.

By providing this, for the users signing in will not be bothering and for app owners, social login is a better way to collect users data and it helps to provide personalized service.

After making the users download the app, User engagement is the problem faced by the app owners. Performance of the app is so crucial. If that doesn’t crack then the users won’t give a second chance. Choose the best app builder and build your app with the latest feature set.

Discount, Ecommerce Discount strategies, M-Commerce, Sales, WooCommerce Mobile App, Woocommerce plugin

Discount Tactics To Drive More Sales in E-Commerce Business

At first glance, it appears that implementing discounts in E-commerce won’t be a profitable move. This is not the case. The only thing is, proper objectives and studies should be conducted before offering any discounts. Even after implementing an offer, It has to be carefully monitored to see whether the intended results and outcomes are the same. Make the customers come back to the store is the first intention while offering a discount. This is for nothing but to increase the sales.

Why give a discount?

I know people who wait for festival season to buy products. Buy One – Get one free, 50% off, save Rs33 – These are the ever winning words that customers fall for.

There aren’t any particular reasons to include discounts and offers to your business at the same time that part cannot be excluded either meaning that discounts are a part of a business. Some situations in the business are favorable to put up an offer, while some are not. What matters is when we choose to give a discount and how it is done.

If you are an Estore owner, probably you’ll be looking for a ‘profitable’ reason to raise some discounts at your Estore. Normally the E-commerce business owners say that implementing discounts hurt the business. Sometimes yes, this can be the condition but not necessarily always. With certain tactics, you can overcome this problem. For example, if the shop owner raises some offer every weekend and when the shoppers identify this pattern, then during the weekdays the sales will be low and your business will suffer. To avoid this situation give discounts randomly.

A proper understanding of different methods of discounts are necessary to discover whether a discount is a lucrative tool for your business or not. Continue reading to know more about discount strategies and methods used in E-commerce.

When to put an offer?

DIcount coupons with WooCommerce Appmaker

Every discount strategy that is going to be implemented will depend on the type of store being run. Discounts are most suitable for stores with large margins because it can help increase sales and achieve desired revenue goals. This is not the case for small-scale businesses. Comparatively, they have a smaller profit margin to be met and offering discounts for customer acquisition alone will have negative impacts. Instead, the strategy which can be used here is offering discount coupons.

Here are some effective ways to implement discounts for E-commerce businesses

#1 New Collections:

Announcing the arrival of the new collections or products along with the offers. This method can easily grab customers attention. Introducing the arrival of new products reaches the customers with word of mouth while offering a quite good discount.

#2 Clear excess and old commodities:

There are situations where you mistakenly over- order products for your Store. During such a situation give a discount to move the products instantly.

#3 Festivals and season sales:

Festivals and seasons are mostly known as the offer season. There are plenty of holidays and celebrations throughout the year which gives the opportunity to offer a discount. Among them, there are some events where you provide a discount naturally and for some events, you get to creatively implement a promotion strategy. During these days customers will be actively looking for offers.

#4 Large customer orders:

Buy more save more is a typical discount which can make people buy more products and at the same time, the store owner can move the stock. This type of offers encourages the shoppers to buy products in bulk. Moreover, it is observed that buy more get more offers are more effective in business to business sales.

#5 A group of people( Students, Mothers, etc):

Public awareness can be easily built while targeting a particular group of audience. Making offers and deals with such group creates a goodwill for the business and they will refer the products a person of the same group.

#6 Products that are perishable:

Sell the products which are perishable at lower prices as itis much better than finding a method to decompose bulks of such products whose expiration dates are closer.

Pro strategies for discounting in E-commerce

#1 The loyal customers

If a user has made a purchase in the past. Don’t wait till the next time he stops at the store. You can reach out to the customer with an offer for the product that he is going to purchase. This can be prudent and also a way to thank a loyal customer for maintaining the business with you.

#2 Discount for influencers:

Forming allies with social influencers such as industry bloggers are common in the E-commerce field. While getting in touch with them, including discounts. This as an incentive encourages them to try out the product and promote it through their social channels. This results in a good Exposure for the business.

#3 Emails for carts abandoned:

To engage the customer with the same product that has been abandoned by him, one can send a discount coupon valid for a time period. This invokes the customer to come back and buy the product.

#4 Referral offers:

Offers can be made for the current customers when he refers a new customer. This is worth implementing as customer acquisition can be met.

#5 Instead of discounts:

Implementing seamless discounts may result in decreased Return Over Investment (ROI) and also it will be hard to obtain long-term customers. Instead of deploying discounts, store owners may follow an adaptive pricing model. A product could have varying versions and one can sell them under varying prices. This could catch the attention of different types of shoppers.

#6 Free shipping:

This is a popular discounting strategy which is widely implemented in the E-commerce business. People opt to buy products which provides a free shipping.

Implement free shipping if it goes with the profit margins.

According to bargainfox the consumer psychology about free shipping works like this

The #1 criterion for a user to make a purchase online is free shipping.
47% of users would abandon the cart if they find out that free shipping isn’t included during checkout.

Various discount methods

It is to be understood that not all type of discounts are created the same. To apply some discounts the user’s participation is required whereas the others don’t. Store owners can give away free discounts or make the shoppers earn their discount.

Read on to know different discount methods and their benefits

Discount codes

These are the common types of discounts which you can see on E-commerce websites. It is a series containing numbers, letters or special character. The shoppers can avail the offer only after entering the series.

The store owner can use this method because they are easy to distribute. Social networks and Emails can be used for this purpose.

Gift vouchers provided by appmaker

Conditional Discounts

In this type of offers, Before the discount is applied, certain conditions have to be met. For example, consider the offer is applicable only when a combination of products are purchased within a single transaction.

Normally these discounts are automated ie, In such cases, the shopping cart will detect whether the conditions are met.

These types of discounts are usually automatic, meaning the shopping cart will detect whether or not the conditions are met and apply the discount if they are, rather than the customer having to take action to apply the discount.

The store owners can set on what conditions the discount should be applied.

Incentive Discounts

Accessing the incentive discounts requires an action from the user’s side. For example, The discount will only be applied after the shopper shares about the store in a social media and like in facebook. These types of discounts are called incentive discounts. The shopper can be rewarded with both the discount codes and conditional discounts.

Understanding the discounts measures for the E-commerce business type that you are into powers your Ecommerce store. Set goals and take real-time data into account to find out what types of discount strategies drives customers. Remember, the value of the discounts are entirely dependent on how you use them.

M-Commerce, WooCommerce Mobile App

11 Best Strategies To Influence Users To Download Your Mobile App

In this era of apps, an app for your E-commerce business is essential. Once you identify the necessity of having an app, the next moment you start searching the best app builders and try to implement the latest innovational ideas on the app and finally you’ll build a mind blowing app. Soon or later after publishing the app, it is discovered that your app is not getting enough attention or downloads. All the effort that you have put in to build the app has become in vain. This is not that you want. Influencing the users to download the app is not easy. Even though there are some minor (but important enough to affect the app download count) points we don’t take into account while we are publishing an app to the app store.

Read on to learn more about the strategies to influence app downloads and sales.

#1: Marketing while developing

This is the best time to start announcing and letting the users get to know about your app. Give them hope that the app which is about to launch is something that they have been waiting for.

Take advantage of the meet-up groups and internet forums in order to make sure that the launch of your spp is known to all the targeted customers. Moreover, you’ll get valuable feedback and ideas to put it into practice.

#2: App store optimization (ASO)

If sending app download links is not just the way you want your app to be reached to a crowd, app store optimization is the first option which has to be considered. Discoverability comes before making the users download the app.

Main factors that effect ASO are

- - The title and the keywords: The title should carry a keyword which has the largest search traffic. Google keyword planner or ahref tool can help you with this. This is mainly to reach the targeted customers of your app. Changing the title often is not a good idea as you can see once your app gain popularity, it will be hard for the new users to discover the app.

App downloads: The download count of the app really means for this but at the same time this is not a factor which is completely on our control.

Pro tip: Include the app name or the best keyword to the package name.

#3: App name | App title

The title of your app is the first thing that you show off to the users, besides the name is the most important ranking factor which is taken into consideration. Hence you can spend some time to get it right. Including the prime keyword to the to the name are add-ons. Make sure it doesn’t look spammy. Even if the app has a name not related to the app content, you can give a subtitle like the below example.

#4: App Icon

The quality of your app really matters here. Rather than remembering app names people capture images. Create an app icon with high quality and of course, you can choose unique shapes for your app icon. App users should be able to identify the app just by seeing the app icon.

A symbol or a letter can be used as an app icon. Do not use long words as they are hard to fit in such a small space. Instead, you can use the first letter of the word, which is probably you store name, brand name.

Icon Color

While choosing app icon colors you can choose vibrant colors for your app. Choose a color which is suitable for most of the background color. Most of the apps are in blue color. Choose blue if you are okay competing with the top companies app.

A/B testing

Before submitting your app to the app store, create several variations of the app. In order to know how users are gonna react to the app, tools like UsabilityHub’s Five Second Test and Pickfu can be used.

#5: Uploading the app

Along with the app, you can upload the screenshots and video to the app store. Create a video in which the working, and usage of the app are properly depicted. Before installing the app, the users take a look at the app video and the screenshots.

App Description:

The app description is categorized as

Short description-A short preview field which can carry 80 characters.
Full description- This can include up to 4000 characters. Write the description using keywords. Do not stuff the keywords into the description because, its ‘Google’s Smart Algorithm’. Write a convincing and appealing description for your app which makes sense.

Screenshots:

Adding the screenshots to the app store page is necessary to achieve complete app store optimization. Upload all the screenshots that approved by Google and Apple.

Online tools such as AppLaunchpad can be used to generate the app’s screenshots. You can add texts to the screenshots and make it easy for users to understand.

#6: Reviews

Users rely on ratings and reviews of a mobile app before deciding to download it or not. Moreover, it is not in our control. The only thing which you can do here is asking the happy users to comment reviews. A positive review comes from a positive customer. Ask for them when they are in a Good Mood – Maybe after the customer winning a coupon or after purchasing a product from the app.

Sometimes people purchase fake reviews to increase the amount of buzz the app is receiving. This is not a good idea because this might cause to suspend the app entirely. You wouldn’t want to risk this. At the same time, organic reviews are more valuable to your business because you can learn from it and know the actual feedback what users think about the app.

#7: Revenue

In order to increase the sales/revenue through the app, here are a few tips to consider:

Social media influencers:

Influencers are the best alliance which you can depend on while getting your products offshore.

Consumers seek a third party recommendation before they buy a product. And this is where you take advantage of. The loyal customers of the influencers have the potential to drive more customers to your app. Other than this, this will give a better social media exposure. Get tied up with the influencers within the same domain and increase your revenue just by appearing in their stories and recommendations.

User lifetime value ( ULV ):

The total net profit of an organization from any given customers is called the customer lifetime value (ULV). Maximise the user lifetime value (ULV) to increase the app revenue.

Interactive Ads:

Present the ads like a game which requires the user’s participation. When users spend time in a joyful manner the chances to download your app is more.

Native Ads:

In native Ads, you can present the Ad content without interrupting the users. This is possible because the add adapts the layout and functionality of the website in which the add is displayed.

Implement growth haking techniques:

Using out of box marketing experiments in order to transform the business to the next level is called growth hacking. The main goal is to acquire more customers and increase revenue.

Use Deep linking:

A uniform resource identifier(URI) is used to link to a specific location or page within a mobile app. Deep links to the app content are allowed in deferred deep linking, even when the app is not installed. There are many ways to do deep linking. Mails, notifications, Email, Social media, and SMS are used for sharing deep links to direct to the product page in the app.

#8: Country | Localisation

Regional success is also a factor which has to be considered. It can influence the ranking of the app. At the initial stages, it will have only a small significance but later on, it builds upon itself and creates a snowball effect. The localization appeals to native users in that particular country or region. There are plugins such as WPML which enables multi-language features in the app.

#9: Backlinks

Building backlinks to relevant pages can improve the ranking of your app. When an external website links to your app, a backlink for your app is created. There are free and as well as paid backlink submission sites. Ensure the link to your app is listed there.

pro-tip= Backlinks from Youtube Videos produce more effect in long-term.

#10: Social Proof

Social proofing helps to increase a visitor’s confidence in your app. The basic idea behind the social proofing is the normative social influence. For example, If you are searching for some page online and see a testimonial from an influencer whom you admire, we call it as social proofing. Get product review from your loyal customers and post them on your Youtube channel to build trust.

Also, a blog is an example of social proofing.

Users will conform to be liked or accepted by social influencers.

#11: Regular updates

Keep looking for new ideas which can be implemented in your app. Removing the errors and improving the performance of the app will help to achieve greater user experience. The usability of your app is dependent on the number of updates that you make. Minimum one update should be made per month.

Along with that don’t just sent push notifications once in a blue moon. It should be periodic and engaging to your target audience. Your app should be at the top of their mind when thinking of buying products online.

An app is the best approach to brand your business. Other than that apps have many advantages(Reduced cart abandonment, instant engagement with push notifications, faster checkout). Overall, making the customers download your app is as important as building the app with great features.

The initial stage of marketing to updating the apps regularly and steps in-between are crucial to increasing the discoverability as well as to increase app downloads/Making Sales via Mobile App.

If you have read till here, You might be interested in our new E-book where we unveiled successful apps and other growth hacks which worked for them in order to build their brand on mobile.

Customer retention, Sales, Uncategorized, WooCommerce Mobile App

Top Strategies To Improve Customer Loyalty In Your WooCommerce Store

Loyal customers are extremely important for any business. This is because they are capable of contributing to your store revenue more than new customers. According to this study by Bain, customers spent more on apparels from a brand after knowing the brand for 2-3 years. The figure was 67% higher than what they spent on the first few months after being introduced to the brand. This fact itself should motivate you to maintain long-term relationships with your customers, who tend to trust you more as time goes by. Here, we will look into some of the strategies you can try out to improve customer loyalty in your WooCommerce store. You will also get an overview of some of the best tools you can use for this.

Create a mobile app

While doing a demographic analysis of your customers, you may have noticed that the younger generation of shoppers prefers mobile shopping more than using the desktop. According to this article by Neil Patel, over 52% of millennials use smartphones to shop. As a WooCommerce store owner, you need to make your store ready to address this challenge. Nothing helps here more than having a dedicated mobile app for your store.

Mobile apps help a lot in improving customer loyalty. To begin with, customers who download and install the app are already committing their time to you. Once a significant number of users install the app on their mobile device, your brand recognition will increase. Also, there are more chances of prospective customers seeing and recognizing your brand icon on their mobile screens. This will be a good assistance to your marketing efforts and helps a great deal in developing trust for your store and products. Overall, having a mobile app has become one of the essential items in the checklist of a budding store owner.

You might be postponing the app development citing several reasons such as lack of resources or time. However, solutions like Appmaker.xyz make it pretty effortless to build a mobile app for your WooCommerce store.

With the help of appmaker, you can create a dedicated Android or iOS app for your WooCommerce store from scratch in a matter of minutes. You can customize the design and layout of the app according to the requirements of your store. Moreover, it offers push notifications, which enable you to be proactively in touch with your customers. And you will be able to closely monitor user behavior on the app and accordingly create new promotional strategies. Moreover, it supports multiple languages and payment gateways to make it much easier for you to manage international customers.

Reward customers

Periodically rewarding customers is one of the obvious ways to encourage loyalty. Customers generally love it when you offer a discount or freebie. If you can create a system for this, it can do a lot of good for your long-term strategies in retaining customers. In the WooCommerce landscape, you will find a few good tools to set up a rewards system for customers.

WooCommerce Points and Rewards plugin is a great option to be systematic about rewards on your store. For completing purchases, or for performing some actions like leaving a review, you can reward your customers with points. When they reach a milestone by accumulating a specified number of points, you can let them avail a discount in exchange for the points. This will definitely boost chances for repeat purchases on your store. Customers can avail discounts at product, category or global levels within the upper level defined by the store owner.

With the help of this plugin, you can create customized messages to be displayed on Cart and Checkout pages. You can also use a unique name for the whole process of collecting points and rewards.WooCommerce Points and Rewards plugin is one of the best options for you to set up a reward system on your store.

Configure Pricing Deals

It is no secret that online shoppers love a good deal at all times. With an abundance of choices, customers are somewhat spoiled for choice in the eCommerce world. So there are certain defining factors that are capable to drive customers to your site. Offering a unique pricing strategy is one of them. Dynamic pricing deals for your products will help you build a loyal customer base on your store in no time.

XAdapter Dynamic Pricing and Discounts Plugin offers great scope to offer dynamic pricing on your store. It helps you set up multiple rules to offer price adjustments at various levels on your store. You can configure multiple rules at the same time and define a priority with which it will be applied. With the help of this plugin, you can offer discounts at product, category or cart levels.

The plugin is a great tool to reward customer loyalty. You can create rules to offer discounts or price adjustments based on the amount or number of previous orders from a customer. In addition, you can make it more personalized by offering special prices for loyal customers based on their email id or user roles. Also, it helps you offer layered pricing for wholesale stores, where different customers are offered different prices based on the number of items purchased.

Offer Impeccable Customer Service

Great customer service is another important factor that will differentiate your store from the rest of the pack. A well-organized customer support system should make sure that your customers recognize your brand and develop a comfort zone with you. There are several SaaS-based helpdesk systems that you can choose. However, these tools take away the control of data from you. Having an ‘on-premises’ tool for customer data might be a key factor for a lot of stores. Here is an article that discusses the advantages of using an on-premise helpdesk tool in place of a SaaS, in the post-GDPR perspective.

Lot of store owners, who are using the WordPress-WooCommerce platform, would need a hassle-free, feature-rich helpdesk system like WSDesk. Fundamentally, it helps your customers create support queries by creating tickets using a contact form displayed on your site. However, it does much more than that, with fantastic scope for workflow automation. When you automate the workflow of your customer service department, you can offer quicker resolutions to customer issues.

WSDesk helps you automate the workflow with the help of triggers. You can specify an action based on a particular condition, and avoid manual intervention for a lot of routine aspects of your customer service department. Automatically resolving long pending tickets, prioritizing tickets based on the channels they come from, assigning to a specialist based on ticket keywords, etc. are some of the awesome things you can do with WSDesk. You can read a more detailed piece on what it can do here.

Overall, tools like WSDesk help your support team be more available and productive, and the long-term result would be customer loyalty.

Stay Connected with Live Chat

Most eCommerce customers would like their issues to be resolved instantly. Featuring a live chat option on your site is a great way to handle customer issues quickly. With a live chat window, you are actually opening a continuous communication channel with your customers. It helps you with functionalities that won’t be possible with traditional phone support. And, it can help a lot in creating a personalized customer experience, which is another important factor for customer loyalty.

Advanced tools like LiveChat plugin offer great options to follow up on sales leads on your store. Automatic, personal greetings for customers would be a great way to engage customers in your store. Naturally, this would create a good first impression to new users as well as create a better sense of belonging to repeat customers. In addition, you can gather customer data that would enable you to approach them in a more targeted manner.

If you are able to resolve most of the issues coming from customers quickly, you will create a very good impression among customers. And for more complicated issues, you can justifiably take more time without leaving customers frustrated. You can read this review of LiveChat plugin to understand its features in more detail.

Customer loyalty is an obvious differentiator for business success

According to expert opinion and realistic data, loyal customers bring in more return on investment than new customers. This makes a lot of sense considering the huge financial investment associated with the marketing efforts for acquiring new customers. If you are able to retain customers acquired through different channels, it would significantly increase your chances of conversion too. Having an exclusive mobile app is one of the important steps you need to take in this direction. In addition, a good helpdesk system, a live chat tool, and a reward system too would help a lot in retaining customers. Use your store’s analytics data to identify any potential gaps and accordingly implement these strategies. Leave a comment, if you want to share an insight, or have some query.

Author Profile:

Sujith Reghu: Writing on WordPress and WooCommerce with an unflinching focus, and trying to woo the unyielding Google bots.

WooCommerce Mobile App

Official WooCommerce Android App in Beta

WooCommerce has Officially launched it’s Android App. The app is currently available in Beta. The App helps you with Managing Order updates and review of products( More features on the way!).

WooCommerce Android App in Beta

Verdict

The Official Android app which was in beta since July has not made a public version launch yet. As per the woocommercehalo, where Store owners can use for beta test and submit feedback, the app is undergoing more feature update to launch with a Bang! (By far, Official release dates have not been updated yet).

Having a mobile app is need of the hour and as we deal with many WooCommerce sites on day to day basis, they mainly rely on Email or Website Admin dashboard( Yeah, It’s a task) to know of order and shipping details.

We have been recommending Woocommerce Telegram bot to our customers, which we built internally using Woocommerce API(Yes, We built useful things). Since this blog is not about Telegram bot, those interested can take a look at Realtime Woocommerce telegram bot in action and request invite here[ Yes, It’s invite only at present].

And it’s finally a good news to many E-commerce store owners out there, after 533 votes on “How we can Improve Woocommerce”, the wait is finally[almost] over.

We decided to connect our Demo store to Official WooCommerce Android app and decided to write this blog detailing our experience as Native Mobile app makers.

Read full detailed review on Medium.com

Guest Blog, Sales, Woocommerce plugin

11 Stunning Sales Promotion Ideas to Win More Customers

“10% Discount”, “Buy 1 Get 1 Free”, “Big Sale”, “End of Season Sale” — sales promotions are everywhere. Every online store owner has some kind of sales promotion in place. The ubiquity of sales promotions makes it harder and harder to compete and win customer attention.

While sales promos are integral to all eCommerce stores because they can help in moving faster conversions and driving more sales, it also means that you can easily get lost in the crowd. Thinking outside the box will help you conceptualize new ways and ideas to approach your online store sales promotions.

And that’s precisely what we’ll explore in this post today. We have compiled stunning and out of the box promotional ideas to beef up your sales. More than that, you’ll also learn the key traits of a successful sales promotion and the tips on how to run them effectively.

Continue reading “11 Stunning Sales Promotion Ideas to Win More Customers” →

Case Study, M-Commerce, WooCommerce Mobile App

Woocommerce Mobile App: Ente Book Case Study

Entebook App build with appmaker — EnteBook website and mobile application

Bookstores have gone online. This case study is based on Entebook, who is a delegate customer of ours.

Entebook sells books online. They have a wide range of collection of books matching the interests of Keralites where the targeted audiences are book readers, students of the Malayali community and of course, the book lovers.

A standard benchmark in the domain of selling books is set by Entebook and yes the store is building a great brand.

Entebook has been a customer of appmaker.xyz since December 2k17. A mobile app for a bookstore was a bang. The sales of Entebook have increased by 30%. There were a total 2,400 orders delivered and over 40,000 books were sold out. Out of the total sales, 80% was via the mobile app.

At the same time, Alexa ranking has been boosted from 21 lakh to 74,000 in India.

60-second video showcasing how beautiful the App is-

Most of the features provided by appmaker.xyz was effectively put into practice by Entebook. This makes it clear that we provide a user-friendly platform for building the app the way you dreamed of.

App Walkthrough

Let’s take a leap into their Entebook mobile app!

Splash screen designed with woocommerce appmaker — Splash Screen of Entebook app

The feature set provided by appmaker starts here.

The above image is the splash screen of the Ente Book app. Here they have used the app name as the splash screen icon and if you want, the app icon can be set instead.

App developed build with woocommerce appmaker — Entebook app Homepage

As you can see, the In-app pages are absolutely winning. The home (In-App) page is build using the widgets provided by appmaker.xyz.

Appmaker provides all the necessary widgets to build an app for your woocommerce website.

The home (In-app) page here is build using the following widgets

Slider
Image Scroller
Product Scroller
Grid
Image Scroller
Menu
Pre-Build Scroller

Utilizing the above widgets, the homepage of Entebook is well designed. Other than the above widgets, there is an additional widget, namely text widget.

The navigation menu of Ente book is like this,

Navigation bar build with appmaker.xyz — Entebook Navigation bar

The navigation bar can be divided into two sections

The drawer header
The menu

Both the In-app page and navigation bar contains a different menu set. You can create a menu the way you want it to be.

The drawer header of the Entebook app is the name and logo of the app. The drawer header contains the login and language option.

If the Multilanguage option was enabled by Entebook, the language switcher will be visible in this drawer header other than the login.

An action can be set for each element in the menu.

Social login is highly recommended for every app as this has increased the registration rate in apps. Enabling a social login such as Facebook lets you grab additional data of the end users and know the interests of the user.

Appmaker.xyz supports Facebook login just as you see

Social login enabled with woocommerce appmaker — Social Login- EnteBook

There are certain buttons and options which can be hidden within the app. Add to cart and buy now buttons are two among them. Entebook has not disabled this option and you can see it in their app.

Add to cart, buy now and wishlist can be easily enabled with appmaker. Moreover, filter option and sort options can be set according to the purpose of your app.

Product page build with EnteBook — Product in EnteBook App

The checkout page will be displayed when the customer proceeds with buy now option.

Checkout page developed with appmaker — Checkout Page – EnteBook

Appmaker assists you with publishing the app to play store and App store. There are more than 10k+ downloads and the rating for the app is about 4.6,

Amjad, CEO of Entebook.com on his recent visit to Appmaker HQ(See pic)

Meet Amjad, CEO of EnteBook.comHis App has over 15,000+ downloads in Google Play Store and 90% of sales are through…

Posted by Appmaker.xyz on Monday, September 17, 2018