The trend in B2B commerce and B2C retail continues to show a shift to online transactions, Customers expect any brand to offer the e-commerce options. For traditional store owners this means that part of their transactions are shifting from in-store to online. For e-commerce pure players this means focus on generating traffic and driving conversion is essential for the online store to perform. 

 

 

Whatever applies to your situation, as soon as you sell online you are competing for online attention, traffic and awareness with many others, primarily through search engines. The others come in many shapes and forms. They compete on price, spend more on SEO and SEA, deliver faster, or all of the above and more.

 

Online competition is fierce and furious.

 

Most brands approach this using the traditional sales & marketing funnel. 

 

This is basically how a physical store works. People walk in, because they come across your store in a shopping area or mall. They might come because you sell something that they are looking for. Or they walk in because of your brand. 

 

Or for other reasons or a mix of all of the above. Whatever it is, they might convert, i.e. purchase something and then walk out.

 

And you have no idea who they were. Unless…

 

You have a loyalty program or you provide a service or product for which a registration makes sense or is required.

 

But most stores have no idea who walked in or out, and who bought what or not.

 

For online this is pretty much the same, although registration is more common as part of the ordering and delivery process. What is similar is the fact that people find you because they come across you, search is similar to a physical store location in this case. But you share your ‘location’ with dozens, if not thousands of others with similar offerings.

 

Some might find you through your brand or a specific product or service. But even there, you are likely to compete with others in the search engines.

 

But wait. Registrations, customer data? Where is that in the classic sales & marketing funnel? It is not there. 

 

More than a decade ago, hour glass funnel models started their propagation. This model looks at what happens beyond a purchase with the customer. Instead of just accepting the money in exchange for a product or service, a brand starts focusing on what happens after the purchase.

 

It introduces the concepts of customer retention, preference, loyalty and turning customers into brand ambassadors, or advocates as it is also called.

 

Think this through for a second and then think about your own website.

 

Are you focused on the awareness-to-purchase part only?

 

For reference look at the funnel model supporting this approach.

 

Now while that is fine, you are leaving something on the table. It is called customer data.

 

The big advertising en search platforms are gathering that to a level of detail that you don’t want to know about.

 

Or… do  you honestly have a focus (and the associated KPIs) that drive retention, re-activation and brand ambassadorship?

 

There is an opportunity for brands to gather data as well and use it for benign purposes. This is called loyalty. To give you a more complete picture, please have a look at the hour glass model for sales & marketing. 

 

 

As you can clearly see there is a data collection part. Though this can start at the purchase level, especially when it comes to offering services like tracking e.g., a better approach is to develop a loyalty program that provides customers with additional reasons and incentives to stay close to the brand.

 

Now what does the above mean for a website? To help you get started, here are some requirements that a website, and especially e-commerce websites should have so that you can support an hour-glass funnel strategy end-to-end.

For reference we have created this table.

 

 

The Ninjible team is ideally positioned to support you with the above features. Not only do we know how to build superfast websites fast. Ninjible has a long history in the area of CRM and loyalty and can support you. Every step of the customer way.

 

Let’s talk!