Category: Blog

Social media marketing is an incredibly powerful but time-consuming digital marketing activity. Social media management tools enable eCommerce stores to be more efficient with their social media marketing, enabling them to reduce the time and cost of allocating resources to this area of digital marketing. In this article, we highlight five social media management tools that your eCommerce store needs to optimize your social media marketing. 

1. Best Tool for Design: Canva

Canva is a free or paid to use tool that marketing teams can use to make social media design more efficient. The platform simplifies the design process with free stock imagery, visual elements, and templates to manipulate for social media post creation. The tool is also used by designers for social media tasks to make their processes a lot quicker. Canva is incredibly powerful in the way that you can use existing templates with small but significant tweaks to create visually striking social media content.

2. Best Tool for Analytics: HubSpot

HubSpot is a powerful social media tool that provides comprehensive social media analytics and digital marketing metrics to optimize your online presence. The brand offers an integrated platform that ensures social media management, sales, and SEO activities are easy to develop and improve, contributing to a stronger omnichannel marketing presence with engaging social media content. As analytics are important for creating clear strategies, this is a tool that eCommerce stores should not overlook.

3. Best Tool for Advertising: Meta Ads Manager

The Meta Ads Manager is a tool that eCommerce stores can use to advertise their profile and products on Facebook and Instagram. The tool is incredibly powerful, offering targeting options and campaign objectives that allow marketing teams to create clear social media ads for specific audiences with distinct metrics in mind. The platform makes ad creation simple and the analytics are comprehensive, giving you a better idea of how consumers are engaging with your social media ads and where their most valuable actions are taking place. 

4. Best Tool for Management: Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a comprehensive social media management tool that allows eCommerce stores to promote across social media platforms. The tool enables simple scheduling of social media posts so that you do not have to spend time throughout the month releasing content. The platforms easy-to-use and navigate interface makes social media posting a breeze. 

5. Best Tool for Reviews: Trustpilot

To run successful social media campaigns, you can leverage consumer reviews. Consumer reviews are essential for other potential consumers understanding the benefits of your store and the quality of your products. Trustpilot makes the collection and display of positive customer reviews seamless, allowing you to express your online authority to potential audiences. Trustpilot is used by the biggest eCommerce brands, showcasing its reputation among the digital marketing industry as one of the leading review platforms.

Additional eCommerce Tool: Online Financing

While not a social media management tool, online financing services are a checkout management tool that can supplement your social media strategy. Online financing from ChargeAfter is an integration that allows shoppers to secure loans during the checkout process. These loans come with no interest and are personalized for each shopper. The ability to secure them is beneficial for the customer and they do not have to undergo credit checks for approval. This tool can clinch the sale of consumers that have arrived at your website via your social media activity.

Level up your social media management and marketing with tools that support your design, scheduling, review collection, and more. These are the top tools to support your eCommerce store, with online financing an additional recommendation to improve sales.

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Buy now pay later (BNPL) solutions are becoming a mainstay feature for successful eCommerce, so much so that Visa has recognized the significance of the solution. ChargeAfter is a leading BNPL fintech company that, among others, has caught the attention of the American multinational financial services corporation for its convenient, consumer-centric service that enables efficient and effective online shopping. Visa and companies like ChargeAfter continue to offer seamless shopping experiences for consumers around the world thanks to the integration of novel online financing technologies with eCommerce businesses across the globe.  

What Working With Visa Means for BNPL

The adoption of Visa into the BNPL framework enables Visa cardholders to utilize the features of the online financing solution. Consumers can input their card details through integration at checkout to receive consumer financing from networks of reliable lenders. ChargeAfter’s partnership with Visa ensures that businesses can access a wider audience, facilitating profitable growth through broader market share. Working with Visa means that BNPL financing companies like ChargeAfter can fulfill eCommerce customers browsing the various competitive online stores for their favorite products. Visa’s plans to leverage the existing BNPL platform with in-store shopping should ensure that online businesses are more capable of facilitating traditional brick-and-mortar operations as physical retail rises. This could ensure further market penetration for brands as profitable in-store solutions can provide a reason to open up a physical store. The future of BNPL with Visa looks promising for eCommerce stores big and small that wish to expand their operations.

What Sets BNPL Apart From Other Financing

BNPL is one of the most on-demand financing solutions on the market as it provides consumers with the most online shopping benefits. In a nutshell, BNPL solutions like those offered by leading company ChargeAfter provide consumer financing options that are split into monthly installments at no additional costs and without credit checks. This means that consumer shopping decisions are not stifled by hefty interest on monthly installments and more consumers can purchase products from online stores. For the business, eCommerce stores see an increase in sales as these benefits are tremendously appealing to the modern, skeptical, and tech-savvy online consumer. 

How Easy is it to Integrate BNPL?

With the help of Visa and companies like ChargeAfter, all eCommerce stores can quickly integrate BNPL solutions that will attract consumers and encourage business growth. The integration process is seamless, requiring owners or marketing teams to contact ChargeAfter for pricing and plans. Once an agreement is arranged and payment made, the BNPL checkout plug-in is installed on one’s behalf and available to consumers in no time. The integration is then managed and monitored by ChargeAfter to ensure that your consumers enjoy a seamless online shopping experience when utilizing the consumer financing feature. Other benefits of partnering with ChargeAfter’s trusted Visa BNPL solution include reporting and analytics from the ChargeAfter team. This data reveals ways to improve an online store’s functionality to improve the consumer experience, further promoting sales and better eCommerce. BNPL solutions from ChargeAfter can be integrated on all major eCommerce platforms including Shopify, Magento, Bigcommerce, WooCommerce, and Hybris. Therefore, all online stores can utilize the integration and reap the rewards of consumer financing functionality at checkout.

The partnership between Visa and ChargeAfter provides eCommerce owners with a reliable and profitable fintech solution that enables greater eCommerce growth. The consumer financing model provides shoppers with affordable, efficient, and effective financing options at the push of a button and without having to pay costly interest or process credit checks. The benefits to both consumer and business ensure that companies partnering with ChargeAfter see a profitable return on their investment and greater sales on their online retail platforms. 

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This year, more millennial and gen z shoppers have entered the world of digital retail as mobile shopping has become more convenient than ever. The modern online shopping experience is extremely appealing to younger shoppers as it saves them time and money, that they would otherwise spend on having to travel to brick-and-mortar stores. Furthermore, millennial and gen z shoppers enjoy sourcing their favorite products from eCommerce platforms that align with their interests. This is more possible through online selling as millennials and gen z shoppers have few shopping restrictions in the digital space. In this article, we provide tips and tricks on how to reach more millennial and gen z shoppers this year to capitalize on their growing purchasing power. 

Integrate BNPL Options at Checkout

According to authoritative sources, buy now, pay later (BNPL) services are incredibly appealing to millennials and gen z shoppers. This is linked to the fact that BNPL services provide the most affordable financing on the market and require very little time investment traditionally required to take out loans from a financial service provider. Furthermore, these options do not require credit checks. Most of the shoppers within this category do not have credit cards or may have low credit scores as a result of foregoing the use of credit cards as traditionally done by older shoppers. BNPL options at checkout attract this consumer category as they solve several key pain points, and eCommerce businesses would be wise to partner with the best BNPL service providers to increase their sales to this shopping segment. 

Create Interactive Content

Beyond providing an affordable and seamless shopping experience at checkout through the integration of BNPL services, eCommerce brands should create interactive content that appeals to this younger demographic to win their attention. Dynamic content like quizzes and animated graphics are extremely appealing to millennials and gen z shoppers as they are more interactive than traditional forms of media. Furthermore, the use of these types of interactive content can help brands cut through the clutter on social feeds and Google.

Choose Better Advertising Placements

Hand in hand with creating content is distributing that content via the right platforms and at the right time. eCommerce marketing teams need to understand the platforms that millennials and gen z shoppers use, especially when browsing for products within specific industries. These consumers categories are particularly active on platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Reddit, making these channels ideal areas for advertising placements. That said, you should analyze your key metrics to determine the best areas to approach your younger shoppers. 

Offer Better Deals Than the Competition

Younger shoppers love a good deal, so eCommerce businesses should attract their attention with specials or discounts that are superior to that of the competitors. There are many ways to distribute deals, from coupon codes to influencer referrals, so consider all avenues while developing your promotion strategy. 

Take Advantage of Email Marketing

Be sure to take advantage of email marketing to distribute any and all of your most significant pieces of content. Email marketing is one of the biggest trends in digital marketing, and it applies to millennials and gen z shoppers. You should deliver promotions and other content via an email database that you can collect using powerful email magnets. 

By integrating BNPL services at checkout, creating interactive content, choosing better advertising placements, offering better deals than competitors, and taking advantage of email marketing, eCommerce marketing teams can reach more millennials and gen z shoppers this year to improve sales and grow profit margins. 

Want to learn more? Reach out to us here.

Whether your main marketing channels include email marketing, social media advertising, or SEO, consumer financing can support your marketing strategy in several beneficial ways. In this article, we provide insight into the role that consumer financing plays in an eCommerce business and pinpoint four ways that consumer financing supports your main marketing channels. 

Consumer Financing: An Overview

Consumer financing is a term that refers to buy now pay later services offered to eCommerce businesses by leading fintech companies. Buy now pay later, or BNPL, is a modern marketing tool that enables efficient consumer financing during checkout on an online store. The tool allows customers to secure financial support when buying on websites that integrated BNPL. Consumers can receive personalized loans within a few simple steps that are far more affordable than those offered by financial service providers, with the best consumer financing platforms offering eCommerce customers zero-interest repayment plans. 

Integrating consumer financing from companies like ChargeAfter not only benefits the consumer but benefits businesses by supporting various marketing channels. Here’s how!

1. Consumer Financing Speeds Up the Sales Funnel

One of the most important benefits of consumer financing is that it provides consumers with quick access to financial support. When assessing your marketing channels, the speed at which a consumer moves through the sales funnel is a powerful consideration to analyze. Faster movement through the sales funnel means sales happen more frequently. As a result, the introduction of consumer financing to speed up customer flow through the sales funnel with positively impact the frequency of your sales. Instead of consumers leaving your website to seek financial support elsewhere, they can procure their cart within a push of a button via the checkout process. This is incredibly beneficial for sales funnel consumer flow.

2. Consumer Financing Provides Additional Value

Many of your marketing activities will aim to offer consumers additional value when they interact with your marketing channels. For example, providing free resources is a great way to attract consumers to your newsletter in which they then become part of your email funnel. In the same way, consumer financing provides additional value by improving and streamlining the consumer journey with your website. Consumers no longer need to organize loans elsewhere and spend time undergoing a cost analysis to determine whether or not their purchase is worth the long-term investment. Instead, they can receive zero-interest loans extremely easily, encouraging them to make a purchase. 

3. Consumer Financing Promotes Other Products

Your marketing channels may be designed to promote specific products, and you may struggle to find ways or resources within your budget to promote other products in your store. For example, electronics like televisions and cellphones are trickier to sell as they require more consumer buy-in. Consumer financing can alleviate this problem by facilitating the promotion of your more costly products. Customers that are interested in specific products in your store may be encouraged to make larger orders as they can receive affordable financing for these costly orders. Consumer financing works in this way as a promotional strategy, aligning with your upselling or cross-selling strategies to generate sales of expensive items in your store. 

4. Consumer Financing Creates Action

Consumer financing is the final piece in your marketing strategy that will encourage action from your consumers. If you are sharing social media ads and running Google PPC campaigns, then consumer financing can be the ultimate companion to drive conversions and increase the performance of your campaigns. Consumer financing encourages customers to make a purchase, positively influencing your advertising key performance indicators (KPIs). 

Integrating consumer financing can support your main marketing channels by speeding up the sales funnel, providing additional value, promoting other products, and creating a reason for customers to take action.

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Setting up an eCommerce store can be done quickly but there are several things to bear in mind if you want to create a store that stands out from the competition. Furthermore, you need to ensure that every aspect of your online platform is optimized for the consumer. When it comes to selling products online, you can make your life as a business owner easier with essential integrations for your eCommerce store. In this article, we discuss the most important integrations and how they can help you.

1. A Reliable Payment Gateway

To ensure that customers can purchase from your online store, you need to have payment gateways installed on your platform. When it comes down to selecting your preferred payment gateway, you should consider the consumer-facing benefits and features of the gateway. Are they able to pay with an array of payment options, such as Visa, Mastercard, ApplePay, and more? If the answer is yes, then you are doing everything that you can to capitalize on all types of consumers.

2. Waterfall Consumer Financing

Another integration that you should consider for the checkout page of your online store is waterfall consumer financing. Waterfall consumer financing refers to a checkout plugin that allows customers to receive on-demand financing for their purchases. They do not have to consult their financial service provider and their repayments come with zero interest. The waterfall consumer financing integration is very appealing to consumers and encourages them to convert. Therefore, this particular integration can have a significantly positive impact on your sales and revenue generation.

3. Shipping and Fulfillment Software

Shipping is a critical part of online selling that many business owners leave up to the shipping companies themselves. This is extremely dangerous as a lack of accountability is a red flag for the modern consumer. Instead, customers want businesses to fulfill the shipping process whether they partner with an outsourced logistics company or not. The responsibility is on businesses to deliver consumer products as quickly and reliably as possible and to take accountability for any delays or issues in the shipping process. Therefore, we highly recommend investing in shipping and fulfillment software. Comprehensive integration suites will allow you to automate much of the shipping process, enabling you to free up time to deal with customer support and service. Furthermore, these products minimize errors and other slip-ups that can lead to unsatisfied customers. 

4. Advertising Accounts & Social Media Tools

You should ensure that you have established advertising accounts with major commerce-enabled platforms, such as Meta. These accounts should be linked to your online store and you should integrate your shop into these additional commerce platforms. This broadens your sales funnel, attracting consumers that are active on a variety of digital channels. Furthermore, you should invest in social media tools that can save you time and money. Platforms like Hootsuite allow business owners to schedule and automate large parts of their social media activity, saving time and money as much as possible.

5. Analytics Platforms

You should ensure that your website pixel is integrated with the platforms that you sell on over and above your website. For example, your pixel should reflect in your Facebook commerce store. This pixel will generate important analytics for you to assess ad and shop performance. You can use these analytics to refine your marketing strategy and improve your return on ad spend (ROAS).

To succeed as an online store, you should ensure that you have the following integrations for your eCommerce store: a reliable payment gateway, waterfall consumer financing, shipping and fulfillment software, ad accounts and social media tools, and analytics programs.

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KPIs (key performance indicators) refers to measurable digital marketing analytics that provides insight into the performance of various marketing activities. These quantifiable statistics offer an understanding of how consumers interact with eCommerce platforms and how much it costs to make sales or convert consumers. Improving the values of these KPIs can increase the profitability of your business as they each reflect a key area of digital marketing necessary to move consumers through the sales funnel. Below, we discuss the five best digital marketing KPIs to consider as well as a strategy to improve them.

1. Cost Per Click (CPC)

Cost per click refers to the cost that a business pays for a consumer action on paid media, specifically a click-through to the website, landing page, or another platform. Cost per click providers an oversight of the actual advertising budget spent to drive each consumer to the website. A lower cost per click means your advertising campaigns are more affordable and successful. It can indicate that your targeting is correct, your platform choices are appropriate, your media is attractive, and more. It is a great gauge of the quality of your search engine marketing and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. 

2. Cost Per Conversion

Cost per conversion refers to the more granular cost of the consumer actually purchasing your platform. This consumer, which would be within your CPC pool of consumers, needs additional incentives to drive a sale depending on where they are in the sales funnel. When looking at your cost per conversion, you should determine whether or not that cost to run a conversion campaign is profitable in comparison with the average order values during the campaign period. For example, if you spend $5 per conversion, you should receive over $5 at least for each order.

3. Return on Advertising Spend

The above consideration is especially important when looking at return on advertising spend. Advertising spend is only beneficial if your ads are driving profitable purchases. You can use this resource to learn how to calculate the return on advertising spend. With an idea of your ROAS, you can make executive decisions on how you would like to prioritize your advertising efforts. 

4. Monthly Website Traffic

Monthly website traffic is one of the most important organic KPIs to consider when assessing the performance of your platform. Monthly website traffics gives marketers an idea of the total traffic on a site, which can be compared month in and month out to determine if there are any problems with the site. For example, a dip in monthly traffic can indicate a drop in search rankings. This would suggest focusing on SEO in the coming months. Marketers can also see where the website traffic is coming from to make informed decisions regarding mobile-friendly content, geolocalized content, and more.

5. Average Session Duration

Business owners and their marketing teams should also look at how long consumers are spending on their websites. Average session duration refers to the length of time that a potential customer will spend on a specific page of the website. The longer they spend on the website, the more interested they are, and the more likely they will be to buy. Increasing average session durations can also positively impact your SEO as Google sees this KPI as an indication of the quality of your platform. 

How to Improve Your KPIs

One of the fastest ways to improve your KPIs is to introduce consumer financing from ChargeAfter. This powerful checkout plugin for online websites encourages consumers to make an order. It adds value to their shopping experience with your site by providing zero-interest loans instantly. Consumers are far more likely to engage with and buy from online stores that provide this incredibly beneficial customer-focused purchasing tool.

Want to learn more? Reach out to us here.

Running a successful online store requires business owners to adopt several strategies and integrate them into their eCommerce operations. There are an array of interesting tools to use to increase sales and one of the most influential modern tactics is upselling. Upselling is a marketing strategy that we will share more detail about in this guide, and we will also discuss how waterfall consumer financing can help support your upselling tactics. 

What is Upselling?

Upselling is a sales strategy that eCommerce stores implement to encourage consumers to purchase more expensive items when browsing online stores. Upselling is a technique that businesses use to increase the average sales values of their consumers. Upselling is also incredibly beneficial when it comes to selling to existing customers, who are far more likely to invest in expensive items than new customers. By promoting more frequent sales of costly products, upselling also has the potential to raise customer lifetime values. Customer lifetime values refer to the total spend of a customer on an online store for the duration of their buying cycle with that store. Increasing this value can have significant benefits for your profit margins.

Difference Between Upselling and Cross-selling

Upselling differs from cross-selling in the way that it encourages the purchase of more expensive or premium items. Take, for example, a paid subscription plan. Most sellers will encourage customers to purchase their more exclusive plans by promoting several benefits of these premium packages that the more basic options do not deliver. Cross-selling differs in the way that it does not promote more expensive items but items that pair well with a customer’s chosen product. For example, a customer buying shoes may be interested in purchasing a new set of laces or socks with those shoes. Cross-selling helps customers find those related products quickly.

Best Upselling Strategies

Upselling is an effective sales strategy that can generate greater revenue than other tactics, such as cross-selling. Below, we share some of the best upselling strategies to consider for your online store:

• Display recommendations at the bottom of a product page pointing towards more expensive items or premium products to encourage consumers to purchase these products.
• Utilize pop-ups as recommendations that appear during the checkout process of the consumer journey. These can be a great way to encourage consumers to change their minds after they have landed on a specific product.
• Follow-up emails can be sent to customers after a purchase to encourage them to shop again. You can personalize this form of marketing, offering products that may provide additional value to their lives based on their order history.
• You can incentivize customers to take advantage of your upselling offers by sharing discounts or rewards with them for doing so.
• You can allude to the potential downsides of not taking advantage of the upsell offers.

How Waterfall Consumer Financing Supports Upselling

Waterfall consumer financing can support your upselling strategies. Waterfall consumer financings as a service is an integration that enables customers to access financial support at checkout. They can apply for loans without having to undergo credit checks or leave your online store. One of the main benefits of waterfall consumer financing is that it encourages customers to purchase more expensive items. It enables them to easily access the financing necessary to order premium products. 

Upselling is a strategy to implement in your online store. It is a great way to increase customer lifetime values and generate more profit. With the addition of waterfall consumer financing, you can see improvements to your average order values and enjoy a greater return on marketing investment.

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Running an eCommerce store comes with many challenges. From attracting new consumers to keeping them engaged and converting them into returning customers, there are several hurdles to jump on your way to becoming one of the best online stores in your industry. In the world of online selling, it is important that businesses utilize new tools to gain a competitive advantage. One such tool is online POS financing, a solution from leading fintech providers that enables customers to buy more easily from your online platform.

POS financing is a powerful integration that benefits the consumer by allowing them to make purchases more efficiently and affordably and also benefits businesses by increasing conversion rates and customer lifetime values. In this article, we discuss the reasons that you need to consider integrating online POS financing for your eCommerce platform. 

1. Competitors Are Using POS Financing

If you have not integrated POS financing online, then you are missing out on consumers shopping with eCommerce platforms that already have the integration. Online or BNPL financing is proving invaluable and many online stores are utilizing the feature. Without it, you run the risk of losing customers to these online stores. This is because BNPL financing offers a number of appealing consumer benefits. eCommerce platforms that take advantage of the benefits of BNPL financing are attracting more consumers than ever before, bridging the gap between the best and all the other online stores operating in the competitive digital retail space.

2. Customers Are Abandoning Their Carts

While you may have traffic on your website, that does not guarantee that consumers are converting. Many online stores suffer from high abandon cart rates, an indication that consumers do not have many incentives to make a purchase. If your abandon cart rates are high, you should consider integrating BNPL financing. BNPL financing can greatly reduce your abandon cart rates by encouraging purchases. The ability to receive on-demand financing for purchases at the push of a button is a very appealing prospect for the modern consumer. This feature is a great way of closing a sale and, therefore, increasing the rate at which customers actively move through the checkout process in the consumer journey.

3. Consumers Are Losing Interest

Customers are drawn to online stores that provide new and modern features. Online POS financing is a novel integration that showcases a brand’s desire to push the boundaries of online shopping. As a result, businesses that use BNPL financing online attract consumer interest. New customers that arrive on these eCommerce platforms are eager to purchase using the new features, taking advantage of the ample benefits associated with online BNPL financing.

4. Customers Are Not Buying Again

Customer retention is a critical aspect of running a successful online store. Keeping customers actively shopping is far less costly than acquiring new customers. Therefore, another advantage of introducing BNPL financing online is that it is an appealing selling point to keep consumers engaged for longer. Online stores that offer BNPL financing online benefit long-term customers by consistently keeping them coming back for more of the feature. Customers who shop with stores with online financing can confidently purchase multiple times, acquiring their orders and moving through the sales funnel more frequently. This can have a significant impact on your revenue generation as your return on investment is greater with return customers utilizing this financing option. 

BNPL financing online is a great addition to your eCommerce platform that can help you circumnavigate typical problems associated with online selling. BNPL financing can help you stay ahead of the competition, reduce abandon cart rates, keep customers interested, and keep shoppers returning to make more purchases. 

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