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Taking Your Magento 2 Project to the Next Level

Gian Genovesi
01/2018

magento phase 2.pngOnce you’ve built a solid foundation for your Magento 2 project, you can start implementing more advanced strategies to help make your new site your dream eCommerce environment. With so many ways to leverage Magento 2, it helps to focus on features as they align with the four components of interactive marketing: driving traffic, converting visitors, increasing average order value, and growing customer lifetime value.  

Drive Traffic 

While building the foundation for your site, you established your customer personas. Now you need to get those ideal customers to your site. You can do this through ads and creating and optimizing content.  

Ads 

When it comes to advertising, there are three types of media to consider: paid, earned, and owned.  

  • Paid media is what you think of when you think of traditional advertising methods: pay per click, display ads, and paid promotions.  
  • Earned media is when your customers share your brand with others through social mentions and shares, reposts, and reviews.  
  • Owned media is your website, blog, and social media channels.  

The ideal advertising strategy includes all three types of media to allow you to target your ideal customer. We recommend enlisting a partner to really maximize your advertising strategy. Essex Digital Platform is a data-driven marketing intelligence consultancy that can help you get the most out of your advertising investment 

Content 

Your content strategy will be a crucial aspect of driving traffic to your new site. After all, owned media is one of the three crucial channels for advertising your site. Your site’s content should include a variety of methods, like a blog or owned content platform, videos, and email. Above all, SEO is crucial for your content. Your site’s content, like product images and descriptions, needs to be properly structured with relevant meta data so that search engines can find it. 

Email marketing is another great way to use content to entice potential customers to visit your site. Dotdigital is a leading email automation platform and Magento’s chosen premier email partner. In fact, Magento 2.2.2 features native integration with dotdigital's email marketing automation capabilities that leverage live Magento store data for personalized campaigns. This integration makes it easy for your team to start using the dotdigital solution, jump start sales, and maximize ROI.  

Convert Visitors 

Now that you have enticed potential customers to visit your site, you need to convert on those visitors. There are various ways to do this, but user-generated content, retargeting, and flash sales are some tried and true methods.   

User-Generated Content 

The content you create is obviously very important, but user-generated content can be a game changer when it comes to converting visitors. Potential customers like hearing from others who have used and loved your product. Things like reviews and Q&A pages allow your customers to create content for you that can help make the sale.  

Magento has a review platform out of the box, but to really get the most out of user-generated content we recommend going with someone like Yotpo. Yotpo is a software that is laser focused on generating reviews, Q&As, and referrals. It allows your customers to create the social proof that will help you make future sales.  

There is another type of review besides product reviews. Merchant reviews are helpful for those in the B2B or service industry. This allows customers to review your organization as a whole, as opposed to a specific offering. Shopper Approved is a great tool for merchant reviews.   

Retargeting and Flash Sales 

These are just two of the many marketing techniques that we have seen be successful for our clients. Retargeting takes place when a site visitor tries to close out of their browser window. A pop up appears on the screen offering the visitor an incentive to stay. Whether it’s a coupon code or a free gift with purchase, the idea is to make the visitor stay a little longer on the site and make a purchase.  

Flash sales are another popular way to drive conversions. This out-of-the-box Magento feature allows you to place certain items or categories of products on sale for a specified amount of time. When paired with email marketing informing people of the sale, they can be a huge conversion booster.   

Increase Average Order Value 

So, you’ve gotten your site visitors to place some items in their cart or even make a purchase. How can you get them to add even more to that order? Magento comes with some great marketing tools to help you increase average order value.   

Rule-Based Product Relations 

Magento has rule-based product relations that enable cross-sell, upsell, and related product capabilities. Rules are established for a product so that if it meets certain requirements, a specific corresponding product is displayed. These rules can be based on anything from price to manufacturer to customer segment as well as custom product attributes. 

Promotions and Shipping Thresholds 

There are two types of promotions: shopping cart price rules and catalog price rules. With shopping cart price rules, discounts are applied once the cart hits a certain value or when specific items are added to the cart. Many companies provide free shipping after a certain cart value, i.e. free shipping on purchases of $99 or more.  

Catalog price rules set the price of an item based on who is viewing it. For example, registered users or wholesalers see a different price than a normal customer.  

Searchendising 

Did you know that searchers are often your most valuable site visitors? Compared to non-searchers, searchers tend to have a higher average order value and conversion rate. That means that a relatively small number of site searches can potentially contribute a significant amount of your site’s revenue.  

While Magento offers search out of the box, to get the most out of people searching on your site, you will want to leverage a tool like SLI Systems, a platform focused on search, navigation, recommendations, merchandising, mobile, and SEO applications. They are pros at making sure your search function is working for you by doing things like presenting high-converting items prominently and ranking more profitable products higher in search results. 

Grow Customer Lifetime Value 

If a customer trusted you enough to give you their money once, how do you get them to come back again? Customer lifetime value is increased by building on already established brand loyalty. One great way to keep customers coming back is through rewards.  

Rewards 

Whether you offer customers a certain amount of store credit with a purchase, keep up a reward point system, or implement a referral code system, rewards can be a great way to keep customers coming back to make more purchases. Magento does have a rewards system out of the box, but some may want to take it up a notch with a third-party partner.   

Smile.io is a reward system that is widely used in Magento. Because they are so focused on rewards for eCommerce business, Smile.io is able to provide an even higher level of reward functionality for Magento sites. They offer points to drive loyalty, referrals to turn your customers into marketers, and VIP programs to reward your best customers. By taking good care of your existing customers, you increase the chance that they will return and make purchases in the future.  

What’s Next? 

Now that you know all of the amazing tools available to your Magento 2 site, it’s time to put them to work! The best way to implement these features is to partner with an experienced Magento partner. Our team is Magento 2 certified and ready to help you make the most out of your Magento investment. Contact us to get started.   

Have an eCommerce project you're working on, need help with, or want to update?  Contact Us!

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