How To Boost Retail Stores Sale With Web Push Notifications

eMarketer shows that retail stores sales will increase to $4.058 trillion in 2020, making up 14.6% of total retail spending. Retail stores have an advantage of having a presence offline as well as online. 68% of shoppers said that they regularly research products in-store before they purchase them online. The millennials prefer shopping online than going to retail stores and searching for products. Marketers and brands are using digital tools such as Web Push Notifications to maximize customer engagement.

Though they have a wide scope, it becomes difficult to combat the big shot E-Commerce websites that already exist. Downstream pressure from tier 1 retail stores have also put the other retailers in a tight spot. Shoppers now have more than 800 other options of purchase available to them. Fierce competition among retail stores have put the small-scale retailers in jeopardy.

Users have numerous options these days and their expectation has shot through the roof. You need to provide an ever increasing value to increase user engagement. It has become critical to increasing local brand exprience by creating a brand image and nurture trust and credibility both in-store and out. It is a challenge for an online retail store to boost user engagement, generate repeat traffic and increase sales. 66% of retailers believe that they need to incorporate some technology to make the cut.

Web push notifications are swift and concise updates that are sent in real time. They are delivered across devices, reaching the target audience on desktop and mobile. It makes it possible to segment users based on their interest and location; which makes it possible to push personalized and hyper-local notifications. With multi-language support, one can create a better connect with the users. It increases user engagement and helps to achieve repetitive footfalls.

Web Push Notifications are clickable bite-size updates that work seamlessly across Desktop (all OS) and Mobile (Android only). Website Push notifications are supported on Chrome 42 and later, Firefox 44 and later and Safari 7.1 and later.

Many retail stores have seen tremendous improvement in metrics once they have started using web push notifications. Ecommerce website like Koovs, Jabong, Stalkbuylove have been using web push from quite some time and have been seeing amazing results in a short span of time. Koovs built 100K subscribers in just 6 weeks, saw a 25% increase in average cart value and 28% increase in time spent on site, after implementing web push notifications.

These amazing results have lured the Ecommerce retail stores users and have encouraged them to give web push a try. Needless to say, they were impressed with the results. Some early adopters are ChaiPoint, Lenskart and Faballey, who have experimented with different use cases and seen outstanding results. They segment their users and sent personalized notifications according to actions, interest and behavior.

Use Case References To Create A Campaign That Converts

1. Hyperlocal updates

An Ecommerce retail store needs to send out geography specific notifications to reach out to the right audience about a location specific sale. Hyperlocal web push notifications help in contextual targeting. This is the first step in ensuring that your communication is relevant, not spammy and builds on user trust. Location specific notifications target a section of your target audience and give them sole attention, hence catering better.

CTR: 5 – 10%         Audience: Location Specific            Ideal Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm

2. Retargeting

By this, the users are encouraged and brought back to the website to make a transaction. As mentioned above, cart abandonments are at its peak and this issue can be easily resolved. Cart abandonment is one never ending problem which is solved by retargeting the user and nudging them to revisit your site. It's usually observed that the users forget that have saved something in their cart for the future. A quick reminder goes a long way.

CTR:10- 15%         Audience: Event Specific            Ideal Time: 5:00pm- 7:00 pm

3. User Engagement

Sales and offers need to be announced, for the users to avail all the benefit. This is an opportunity to lure the user to your website. It increases user engagement and encourages a revisit to your website. Sales and offers attract users and increase the chances of a transaction. Notifications can be sent before the sale, during and after the sale to keep the users in the loop if they are a regular customer.

CTR: 15 – 20 %         Audience: All           Ideal Time: 9:00pm – 11:00pm

4. Customer Feedback

No one knows you better than your customers. You need to know your pros and cons to you conduct yourself better. It also shows that you care about the user’s experience and want to make it better. Feedback is easy to receive with web push notifications as one can directly click on the response or direct the user to the feedback page.

CTR: 5 – 10%         Audience: All            Ideal Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm

This article was originally published on Zepo.