Tag: online brands

Powerful Referral Marketing Strategies For E-commerce Businesses

Humans have a natural tendency to share their personal experiences with those in their close social circles. Whether it is the frustration of delayed delivery or the delight of discovering a new product they like, people pass on their experiences to friends and family in casual conversations.

What might seem like a simple chat can hold immense significance for E-commerce businesses like yours. Every time a customer recommends your online store, they are essentially providing you with valuable, trusted marketing for free. And this is the whole idea of Referral Marketing.

In this post, we will understand the ins and outs of Referral Marketing, including its definition, benefits, examples, and some best practises you can follow if you plan to adopt it for your online store.

What Is Referral Marketing, And How Does It Work? 

Referral Marketing is a marketing strategy that encourages happy customers to advocate your brand to others in exchange for incentives. This word-of-mouth marketing tactic is more commonly known as a refer-a-friend program. Referral Marketing has been the go-to marketing method for all those E-commerce businesses looking to grow their sales without spending thousands of rupees on marketing. Overall, it’s a win-win situation for all parties involved. 

The working of Referral Marketing is pretty straightforward. 

How referral loyalty program works 

You first create a Referral Program for your business, wherein you decide the incentive (type and amount) to give for every successful referral. Types of incentives could be coupons, discounts, gift cards, or cash rewards. The referrer is rewarded only if the referred person completes an order with the store. You also need to provide the existing customers with a unique link or a code that they can share with their friends and family. This step is essential to link the referrer, referred, and the incentive and complete a successful referral. 

Types Of Referral Programs

Types of referral program 

There are several types of Referral Programs:

Standard Referral Program: In this, your loyal customers are encouraged to refer others to your E-commerce store. When a referred friend makes a purchase, the referrer receives an incentive. This is the most common type of referral program.

Double-Sided Referral Programs: In this, you reward both the referrer and the referred customer. This type of referral program is more capital-intensive but encourages customers to refer others more actively.

Tiered Referral Programs: In this, your customers earn increasing rewards as they refer more and more people. For example, a customer might receive a 5% discount for their first referral, 10% for the second, and so on. This can gamify the referral process and motivate customers to continue referring over time.

Points-Based Referral Programs: In this, instead of offering immediate incentives to customers, you let them earn points for each successful referral. These points can then be redeemed for products or discounts. This type of referral program can create a sense of achievement and encourage ongoing referrals.

How Is Referral Marketing Beneficial For E-commerce businesses?

Here are some key benefits you will enjoy by adopting referral marketing for your E-commerce business:

Build Trust Towards The Brand

When an existing customer refers your store or your product to someone else, it carries a strong endorsement. In other words, since these recommendations are coming from someone they know, it automatically builds trust in the minds of potential customers. Ultimately, trust is a key component of the customer journey in an industry like E-commerce, where customers cannot touch or feel the product before they buy.

Improved Sales With Targeted Marketing 

When satisfied customers refer your products to their contacts, they are essentially matching your products with individuals who are likely to have similar needs or interests. This targeted approach increases the likelihood of converting leads into sales. Think of Referral Marketing as having your own brand advocates working on your behalf to identify and attract potential customers who are genuinely interested in your offerings. 

Recommended Reads: How to measure your online sales success 

Increase Reach And Brand Awareness

Referral Marketing is all about gaining access to new audiences who may not have otherwise heard about your E-commerce store. As these referrals continue from one known person to another, it creates a cascading effect where your brand’s presence multiplies organically, creating a broader customer base. Moreover, since referrals often come from trusted sources, your potential customers are more likely to pay attention to your brand, leading to heightened awareness and recognition in the market.

Cost-Effective And Low Risk 

Referral Marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies currently available. Traditional advertising and marketing can be expensive and uncertain when it comes to ROI. However, Referral Marketing revolves around the concept of rewarding customers only when their referrals result in actual sales. This means it is a “pay-for-performance” model where you spend marketing rupees only when you see actual results. 

Easy To Track & Manage 

There are several Referral Marketing tools available today that can accurately track the performance of your Referral Program. For instance, you will know who referred whom, which referrals converted into sales, and what incentives were delivered.  Such visibility allows you to constantly refine your referral program for the best results. Additionally, the simplicity of managing Referral Programs means you can focus your time on other aspects of your store while your Referral Program continues to generate leads automatically. 

E-commerce Referral Program Examples 

Here are some examples of brands that have crafted some of the most successful referral programs today:

1) Nykaa

Ecommerce Referral Program example 

Source: Nykaa website

Nykaa, a leading beauty and wellness E-commerce business, has a highly successful Referral Program. With a dedicated landing page that talks about the benefits of referring a friend along with the incentives, Nykaa has got all their basics right. 

Nykaa follows a double-sided Referral Program where both the referrer and the referred person get incentives. Both parties get cashback on their wallets, ensuring that they make their next purchase in Nykaa. The referral process is very easy, too. All you need to do is share the link to your favourite product with friends & family who have to shop using the same link.

2) Boat

Referral Marketing example of Boat 

Source: Boat

Boat, a popular electronics and lifestyle brand, has implemented a Referral Program that benefits both its existing customers and their friends. When an existing customer refers a friend to Boat, both the referrer and the referred friend receive a discount of 100 rupees that can be redeemed on their next purchase. The discount is usually shared with the referrer via email 15 days after the referee completes their first purchase. This Referral Program reflects Boat’s commitment to providing value to its customers and strengthening its community of loyal customers. 

3)  Lenskart

Referral Marketing example

Source: Lenskart

Lenskart, the eyewear brand has one of the most user-friendly Referral Programs. Users can seamlessly refer their friends by either syncing their contacts through the Android or iOS app or by sharing a unique referral code. When contacts are synced, there’s no need for the friend to input a referral code during sign-up; the system automatically recognizes the connection. 

After a successful purchase, both parties stand to gain ₹50 LK CASH+, which can be utilized on their eyewear purchases. It is a great example of a double-sided Referral Program. 

Things You Need To Do Before You Start Your Referral Marketing Program

Here are some prerequisites you must fulfill before kickstarting your Referral Marketing Program. Following them will ensure that your Referral Marketing efforts bear fruits in the long run – 

Focus On Building Your Brand 

Let’s face it – your brand is the heart and soul of your business. It’s the impression that your customers will carry forward when interacting with your brand. To lay a strong foundation for Referral Marketing, it is important to strengthen your brand identity. After all, a well-defined brand that customers remember easily and believe in is more likely to be referred to, than the one they can’t recall. Also, a strong brand will generate a sense of pride and affiliation among your customers. When they refer your brand to their friends and relatives, they are indirectly quoting, “I am proud to be associated with this brand.”

Here are some tips to build your brand successfully:

  • Ensure consistency in your branding. Right from your logo to your website colours, everything should create a cohesive and memorable image in the customers’ minds.
  • Develop a distinctive brand voice that aligns with your brand’s personality, resonates with your audience, and is memorable for a long time.
  • Share your brand’s story, including its origins, challenges, and successes, on your website. A compelling narrative can create an emotional connection with customers.
  • Create a content marketing strategy that provides a lot of value to your audience. Constantly share informative, entertaining, or inspiring content that your customers will consume and have a positive experience with.

Make Sure Your Customers Like Your Product

No matter how big your incentive is, your customers are not going to recommend you if they don’t like your product. You must provide your customers with high-quality products that they love and use. This is an important step before asking for any referrals. If they like your product after using it, they will recommend your brand to others because they will believe that you will offer quality products to every customer. 

Now, how do you know whether your customers like your products or not? Simple! Go online and find out if your brand is mentioned in social media posts or any review portals. You can even check customer reviews on your own website. If the reviews are largely positive, you can go ahead and ask for referrals from your customers. 

Provide Exceptional Customer Service 

Along with good branding and great products, you must also offer exceptional customer service. For instance, providing 24/7 live chat support for instant assistance, hassle-free return and refund process, safe and timely delivery, faster or free shipping, etc.

This is important because when issues about your product’s quality arise, excellent customer service can counter the negative situation. Customers who experience quick and effective resolution for their problems or get faster than usual services, often become more loyal and enthusiastic referrers. 

By providing exceptional customer service, you are essentially creating positive experiences that customers want others to enjoy. Outstanding customer service also builds trust and reliability in your brand, both of which are key ingredients for referrals. 

By successfully completing these steps, you will be able to build a loyal customer base that will be more than happy to refer your brand to their friends and family.

6 Effective Referral Marketing Strategies For E-commerce Businesses 

When done right, Referral Marketing can harness the power of word-of-mouth marketing to acquire new customers and boost sales for your E-commerce store. Let us explore six effective Referral Marketing strategies that can help you achieve this:

Choose The Right Incentive For Referral Marketing

Your entire Referral Marketing Program revolves around incentives. Incentives give your customers a compelling reason to refer your products to others. So you need to carefully pick an incentive that is valuable enough to motivate your customers to take action. Here are some different types of incentives you can adopt for your Referral Marketing program:

  • Discounts and coupons: It offers the referrers a discount on their next order. It can be a percentage off the total purchase or a fixed amount of discount. Besides incentivizing customers to refer their friends, this incentive can drive repeat purchases from your existing customers. This type of incentive is suitable for all types of E-commerce businesses. Looking for inspiration? Checkout the best discount marketing examples from E-commerce businesses.
Use discount as an incentive for referral marketing

Source: Samsung

  • Points: These can be awarded for referrals, which can then be redeemed for discount coupons, gifts, or exclusive perks. Customers love the idea of accumulating points and getting rewarded for their loyalty. This is an ideal incentive for those stores where repeat business is common. For example, grocery. 
Discount marketing example 

Source: Fabindia

  • Exclusive access: This type of incentive gives your customers a unique opportunity to be among the first to experience a new product after a successful referral.  This incentive taps into the desire for novelty and exclusivity and is effective for businesses selling tech gadgets or entertainment products. 
  • Freebies and Product Samples:  In this type of incentive, you offer customers free products or samples in return for referring friends. This is quite appealing to customers because they get to experience your products without cost. This is ideal for stores selling cosmetics and food, where product quality and taste matter more than anything else. 
  • Cash: It can either be a fixed amount or a percentage of the referee’s order value. The best thing about cash incentives is that even a small value can motivate people. In other words, even ₹50 or ₹100 will motivate people to take action. This is ideal if your product has a long buying cycle, such as furniture, appliances, or luxury items.

Do Research To Understand How Other Brands Are Doing Referral Marketing

Before launching your Referral Program, conduct thorough research and understand how your competitors are implementing Referral Marketing. Study their strategies, their success stories, and learn from their mistakes. This will offer valuable insights and help you fine-tune your own referral marketing program. 

Visit the websites and social media profiles of these brands to gather information on their Referral Programs. Learn what worked well in terms of incentives, timing, and targeting.

You can learn about their promotional strategies by keeping an eye on their email marketing campaigns, social media posts, and other marketing efforts related to their Referral Program. 

Competitor research can help you assess whether your program is competitive in the industry and make the necessary adjustments to stay competitive.

How competitors entice your customers with marketing

 

Ask For Referrals At The Time Of Maximum Conversion 

When it comes to Referral Marketing, timing is very important. You need to know when it is a good time to ask for referrals. Your goal must be to pick a timeframe when the chances of conversion are high.

Humans like to feel appreciated. So when your customers feel appreciated due to something nice you have done for them (could be early delivery, quick resolution, or a surprise gift), it is probably the best time to ask for referrals. Do not wait for too long, as by then; your customers will have forgotten about their positive experiences. Similarly, do not ask for referrals from customers who have had a negative experience recently.

To find happy customers, you can closely monitor your website’s review section or your social media handle.

Try Email Referral Marketing 

Sending emails can be an effective strategy for Referral Marketing. Once you create a referral program, you could send out emails to all those customers who have made purchases. This strategy is particularly useful if you are new and don’t have a large customer base yet. The key is to make the referral process as easy as possible. Here is Ugaoo, the online gardening store, sending out emails to existing customers to refer their friends and families:

Use email marketing to send referral emails 

Source: Ugaoo 

Here are some tips to get your email Referral Marketing right:

  • Create an attention-grabbing subject line that motivates customers to open the email.
  • Always address the recipient by name. Wherever possible, use dynamic content to personalise the message based on their past interactions with your brand.
  • Clearly state what you want the customer to do. In this case, mention you want them to ‘Refer a Friend’. Use persuasive language to encourage action.
  • Emphasise the benefits of referring friends and family. That is, talk about the rewards they get and explain how it’s a win-win situation for both the recipient and their friends.
  • Include eye-catching visuals, such as images of your products, to make the email visually appealing.

Recommended Read: Abandoned cart email examples you can refer for inspiration 

Promote Your Referral Program

Unless and until people know about your Referral Marketing program, they are not going to bring in new customers for your brand. You need to talk about your Referral Program in every possible channel and highlight the benefits of successful referrals. 

One common place to promote your referral program is on your own website. You could talk about it on your homepage or add a link in your website menu so that customers can easily access information related to it. You could also talk about it on the order confirmation or thank you page. This will ensure that customers see it as soon as they complete a purchase. 

The other option is to talk about it on social media platforms. You can also try WhatsApp marketing or SMS marketing if you have the budget. 

Keep Track Of ROI On Your Referral Marketing Efforts 

Thanks to modern Referral Marketing software, it’s very easy to track your Referral Program. You will instantly get access to information like how many referrals you have got in a month, what percentage of existing customers referred others, what percentage of referrals ended in sales, and so on. Many businesses also track the total revenue they make from referrals along with the AOV of an order made through a referral link versus the value of overall orders. Besides these metrics, you could also track the following: 

  • Customer Participation Rate: Number of customers taking part in your referral program. 
  • Referral Rate: Number of referrals made by each customer
  • Website Referral Traffic: Number of people who visited your website after receiving a referral link. 
  • Conversion: Number of referred people who completed a purchase on your website. 

Must Read: E-commerce KPIs & Metrics you should track for business success

Conclusion: Make Referral Easy With ANS Commerce 

Referral Marketing is one of the most effective ways to boost revenue growth and drive customer acquisition in an E-commerce business. Following the tips and strategies highlighted in this post can ensure that your Referral Program becomes successful and helps in fulfilling your business goals. 

If you are looking for assistance to create and manage your referral program, you can partner with ANS Commerce. With ANS Commerce by your side, creating and managing your Referral Program becomes a breeze, ensuring that your customers can effortlessly refer your brand to their friends and family. 

Besides referral marketing, ANS Commerce can handle other aspects of your E-commerce business, too, such as performance marketing, marketplace management, warehouse, and fulfillment, so that you can focus on more strategic components of your business. To know more about how we can help you, contact us now. 

Referral Marketing Vs. Affiliate Marketing: What Is The Difference?

In the dynamic realm of modern marketing, where strategies shift in the blink of an eye, it’s easy for terms to get intertwined, blurring their definitions and implications. One such intriguing case is the conflation of Referral Marketing and Affiliate Marketing. 

Referral Marketing and Affiliate Marketing have key similarities in terms of cost-effectiveness, expanding the audience pool, and driving sales revenue. However, their marketing strategies, audience targeting, and techniques are completely different.

In this blog, we explore the key differences between Affiliate Marketing and Referral Marketing, how they work, and which strategy is best suited to meet your company’s goals.

Let’s get started!

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy where businesses collaborate with third parties or affiliates to promote their products or services. Here, affiliates use unique tracking links provided by the company. These links help companies track traffic to their websites. This further helps affiliates earn commissions for each sale or action generated through it. 

In addition, Affiliate Marketing can be implemented for more than just generating sales. For instance, it might encourage your users to download an app, click on a specific website, or get interested in trying your products or services for free. Due to its adaptability, you can further customize your Affiliate Marketing programs to suit specific business objectives.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Affiliate Marketing starts after the completion of the sign-up process. This process involves agreeing to the program’s terms, understanding how the commission structure works, and getting access to the necessary tools and resources.

How Affiliate Marketing works

For instance, imagine that you run an online fitness business that sells gym clothes, supplements, and fitness equipment. You want to expand your audience and boost revenues. Instead of relying solely on your marketing efforts, you decide to implement an Affiliate Marketing program. Here’s the step-by-step process for how Affiliate Marketing works:

Program set up by the company: You create an Affiliate Program and provide interested individuals (affiliates) with a unique tracking link. This link allows you to track the conversions generated by each affiliate.

Sign-up process by affiliates: After the program is set up, fitness enthusiasts, health bloggers, and other social media influencers who are interested in your products or services sign up for your Affiliate Program.

Promotions by affiliates: Affiliates promote your product through a variety of marketing channels. In addition to blogs and websites, these channels may also include social networking sites and email newsletters. For instance, a fitness influencer with a sizable Instagram following joins your program. She promotes your product, highlighting its benefits with a post that includes a link to it.

Audience Engagement: When potential customers click on an affiliate’s unique link and visit your website, a tracking mechanism records this action. This link guarantees that the affiliate will receive credit for your product introduction.

Conversion and Commission: If the visitor buys your product after landing on the page through the affiliate’s unique link, we can consider it as a conversion. Affiliates receive a commission for the conversion. This commission can be a percentage of the overall sale value, or a specified fixed amount for each sale.

Payment to affiliate: Payments are typically made once a target is completed or on a regular basis. 

Thus, affiliate marketing makes use of the advantages of both affiliates and businesses to build a mutually beneficial ecosystem in the ever-expanding world of E-commerce.

Example of Affiliate Marketing 

One prominent Indian E-commerce brand that employs Affiliate  Marketing is “Nykaa.” A diverse group of people, such as beauty bloggers, makeup artists, skincare enthusiasts, fashion influencers, and content creators in the beauty sector, can be Nykaa affiliates.

Nykaa Affiliate Marketing example

Image Source: Nykaa Website

Nykaa’s affiliates are individuals who have a strong online presence and a significant following on social media platforms, blogs, and YouTube channels. These affiliates work with Nykaa to market their products to their audience and receive payments when customers buy things through their affiliate links.

For instance, here’s a YouTube video by one of the beauty bloggers named Mridul Sharma, who has made a YouTube video on “Nykaa’s Top 50 Products Under ₹500”.  

Affiliate marketing on youtube example

Image Source : Youtube

As shown in the image, she has linked all of Nykaa’s products in her description, and at the beginning is a disclaimer about affiliate links. An affiliate receives a percentage of sales made on Nykaa’s website after customers click on one of their tracking links. The tracking link makes sure that the right affiliate is given credit for the sale.

What is Referral Marketing?

Referral marketing is a strategic approach employed by businesses to encourage their existing customers to bring in new customers. In this marketing approach, referrals or brand advocates promote your product or service to new customers. When brand advocates successfully refer a friend or relative, they are rewarded with benefits like discounts, store credits, gift cards, or special services.

How Does Referral Marketing Work? 

Let’s go through an example that explains the step-by-step process of how Referral Marketing works. 

Imagine an E-commerce brand that sells organic skincare products. They launched a Referral Program to expand their customer base. 

Enrollment of brand advocates for the program: The E-commerce brand creates a Referral Program and asks its existing customers to sign up as brand advocates.

Sharing the referral links provided by the company: After enrollment, a brand advocate receives a shareable referral link or code provided by the company. A brand advocate further shares the referral link with friends through various channels, like emails or direct messages.

Action of the referred friend: One of the referred friends clicks on the referral link, visits the company’s website to explore the offerings, and decides to make his or her first purchase.

Reward for both parties: With the use of this special link, the business can keep track of every referral and reward both parties by providing different benefits. These benefits completely depend on the company’s reward system. 

Thus, Referral Marketing creates a win-win situation. Additionally, it expands a company’s customer base by using trust and personal connections.

Example of Referral Marketing 

Myntra, one of India’s leading online fashion and lifestyle retailers, had a Referral Program known as the “Myntra Insider” program. Customers who join the Myntra Insider program can refer other people. Both the referrer and the referred friend can earn Myntra Insider points or additional rewards after signing up using the referral link.

Referral Marketing example

Image Source: Google

Likewise, Myntra also promotes its referral advertising through its website and social media posts as shown in the image below. 

Myntra Referral Marketing example

Image Source: Myntra Website

As shown in the example above, Myntra has used the “Shout and Earn” phrase to entice its customers to spread the word about its annual sale. It’s a win-win strategy in which customers and the people they suggest benefit, and Myntra grows its customer base through reliable referrals.

Referral Marketing Vs Affiliate Marketing: 10 Key Differences 

Here are some important factors to take into account that explain the differences between Referral Marketing and Affiliate Marketing.

Relationship With The Brand

Affiliate and Referral Marketing differ significantly in their relationship with the brand they promote.

In Affiliate Marketing, the relationship with the brand is more professional, as affiliates work with the brand to promote its products or services. Since the affiliates earn the commission based on the conversion, their primary focus is often on financial benefits. On the other hand, Referral Marketing focuses on the personal relationships between existing brands. Here, brand advocates share their positive experiences of products or services with friends and family.

Reward System 

Both Affiliate and Referral Marketing employ different reward structures to motivate their respective participants.

Affiliate Marketing frequently works with influencers or celebrities, providing them with commissions and free products. On the other hand, Referral Marketing focuses on rewarding both parties with discounts, gifts, rewards, or exclusive deals where the purchaser benefits from a one-time referral reward. Here, the reward system depends on the nature of a business, its target audience, and the objectives of the marketing plan.

Medium Of Share 

Affiliate Marketing uses online platforms, such as social media, blogs, and websites, to promote the products or services of the brand. They create a variety of content, provide product reviews, and create informative videos of products and their benefits. On the other hand, in Referral marketing, brand advocates share referral links to their personal connections through one-on-one text messages or display them on their website or youtube channel. 

Cost of Marketing Campaign 

In Affiliate Marketing, businesses often pay affiliates a commission for every conversion that takes place through their effort. The other cost includes the initial planning and program set-up process. On the other hand, in Referral Marketing, the primary cost includes setting up the referral program and rewarding the brand advocates for successful referrals and providing discounts or benefits to the referred person. Since these expenses are frequently fixed, planning for them is more secure.

The Means Of Compensation

Affiliates frequently receive financial rewards in the form of commissions, depending on activities or sales. On the other hand, Referral Programs offer non-monetary rewards, such as discounts, store credit, free subscriptions, or cashback, primarily benefiting existing customers who successfully refer new customers.

Trust And Credibility

The popularity of the affiliates is the key factor that builds trust and credibility among the users. Affiliate reviews are highly trusted by their audience, which makes their promotions influential. On the other side, Referral Marketing relies on personal trust and genuine recommendations from satisfied customers. Both strategies rely on trust, but they do so in different ways and with different customer bases.

Target Audience

When it comes to the audience, Affiliate Marketing’s target market goes beyond friends and family. They reach a wider audience (followers or subscribers) through their social media posts or videos.

In Referral Marketing, a target audience is a close group of family, friends, or colleagues.

Customer Lifetime Value

Referral programs have a positive impact on businesses with higher customer lifetime value, as it completely depends on the recommendations provided by the brand advocates. On the other side, businesses with low customer lifetime value can find Affiliate Programs more effective.

Traffic Volumes

If you choose affiliates with a significant number of followers, you can gain a higher number of visitors, which can convert into potential customers. On the other hand, referral programs will not be able to boost higher numbers of sales as the audience is limited to a small group of people.

After-Sales Relationship Between Marketer and Lead

In Referral Marketing, there is already a relationship between the referrer and the purchaser. Here, they have a long-lasting relationship even after the purchase is made. However, it is different between affiliates and buyers, as their relationship ends after the purchase is completed. 

Similarities Between Referral Marketing and Affiliate Marketing 

Here are some of the similarities between Referral Marketing and Affiliate Marketing:

Customer Centric Approach

Both programs focus on the customer experience. Affiliate Programs provide value to their audience by promoting products that align with their interests. Whereas, Referral Programs depend on brand advocates’ recommendations. In both cases, the focus remains solely on the customer’s perspective, whether it’s through targeted content from affiliates or genuine feedback from satisfied customers.

Rewards Driven

Both Affiliate Marketing and referral marketing use rewards as a motivating factor to encourage people to take initiative in the promotion of products or services. Referral Marketing focuses on existing customers, whereas affiliate marketing targets external partners with online platforms.

Cost Effective Marketing

When it comes to cost-effectiveness, both of these strategies are quite similar. In Affiliate Marketing, businesses provide commissions to affiliates when there are visible outcomes, such as sales or clicks on websites. Whereas, in Referral Marketing, the company provides different rewards to both parties when the brand advocates bring in new customers.

Expanded Reach

Here, the Affiliates introduce your products and services to a larger audience through social platforms. Whereas, referral programs rely on existing customers to recommend your product to their friends or family. Therefore, both of these strategies help businesses expand their reach and drive sales.

Referral Marketing Vs Affiliate Marketing: Which One To Choose?

Choosing between Referral Marketing and Affiliate Marketing completely depends on the brand’s business goals. Referral Marketing works best for you if you want to grow your customer base. As it involves minimum cost, it is the best option for businesses operating on a tight budget or seeking a cost-effective strategy to expand. 

On the other hand, Affiliate Marketing works best for companies seeking to reach a larger audience quickly. It is a powerful tool for companies to enter niche markets. However, the decision should align with your business’s unique goals, target audience, and available resources.

Need help with increasing your E-commerce profits? 

We at ANS Commerce (A Flipkart Group Company), offer end-to-end E-commerce solutions to brands launching and expanding their presence in India. 

From advanced technological solutions to executing effective marketing campaigns and streamlined warehousing and order fulfillment services, we are supporting 200+ E-commerce brands in India.

To learn more about us and how we can help, book a demo now.

Instagram Affiliate Marketing: A Complete Guide For E-commerce Brands

Affiliate marketing is a popular advertising method where you collaborate with individuals, known as affiliates or influencers, to promote your brand. You pay commissions to these affiliates for every lead or click they generate for your brand. While you can use affiliate marketing on any digital channel, many businesses prefer Instagram due to its impressive engagement rates. 

In fact, Instagram has a median engagement rate of 1.22% – a whopping 13.5 times higher than Facebook posts and 27 times higher than a Tweet. If you’re interested in learning more about Instagram affiliate marketing, you’ve come to the right place. 

In this article, we will cover the basics of Instagram affiliate marketing, including its benefits, steps to run, and best practices to follow.

Why Should E-commerce Brands Use Affiliate Marketing On Instagram?

The growing popularity of Instagram affiliate marketing is evident by the fact that  93% of businesses on Instagram use social media influencers (affiliate marketers) to build brand awareness. Let us find out why  so many E-commerce brands use affiliate marketing on Instagram: 

People Love Recommendations

Humans have a natural tendency to seek recommendations from trusted sources before making purchasing decisions. Around 49% of people rely on recommendations from influencers when making purchase decisions.  When these recommendations come from affiliates on a popular and reliable platform like Instagram, it carries significant weight. Therefore, partnering with the right affiliates on Instagram can help you boost your brand’s reputation and drive sales. 

It Has A High ROI

The best part about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to reach out to celebrity influencers to promote your E-commerce brand. Instagram is inundated with micro-influencers (less than 100K followers) who will be happy to promote your products for a nominal affiliate fee. This can drastically boost the returns on your investments in Instagram affiliate marketing. 

Better Reach To Larger Audience 

According to the latest data, Instagram has 1.628 billion users. That’s 1.628 billion potential customers you can tap into! All you need to do is partner with relevant affiliates and influencers who resonate well with different audience segments like millennials, Gen Zs, and Gen Alphas. This scalability is important, especially for fast-growing E-commerce brands.

How To Start Affiliate Marketing On Instagram?

Here are five simple steps to get started with affiliate marketing on Instagram – 

Step 1: Create An Affiliate Marketing Action Plan

Before you kickstart your affiliate marketing on Instagram, it’s essential to lay down a well-thought-out action plan. This plan should ideally encompass your marketing goals and target audience. 

Possible goals could be sales generation, brand awareness, or better user engagement with your brand. Having clear goals and objectives will guide your affiliate marketing efforts in the right direction.  

When it comes to the target audience, you need to define the demographic characteristics of your ideal customers. It could include factors such as age, gender, location, education level, and occupation. This information will help you identify affiliates whose followers align with your target audience.

Step 2: Decide On Your Commissions 

Commissions are the amount you pay an affiliate for each sale they generate for your E-commerce brand. There is no right or wrong amount when it comes to commissions. It has to be fair to both you and the affiliate while also providing sufficient incentive to the affiliate to promote your products. 

Now there are several ways to determine the right commission. One way to do this is by analyzing the profit margins of your business. After all, commissions are going to come out of your profits. So you need to decide the percentage of profits you are willing to sacrifice for your affiliate marketing program. 

You can also find out how much your competitors pay their affiliates. This can give you a good idea about the industry standards and what can keep affiliates happy in your industry. 

Along with the commission rate, setting your payment terms is important. Typically, payouts happen once in 2 or 3 months. This will give sufficient time for your brand to accommodate failed orders, returns, and exchanges. 

Step 3: Choose The Right Affiliate Partners

When picking affiliate partners, there is only one mantra to follow- the quality of your affiliate is way more important than the quantity. You do not have to collaborate with hundreds of affiliates to boost your store’s sales. Even if you pick a handful, make sure they serve as strong voices for your brand and products. 

The easiest way to find affiliates is by analyzing your competitors’ partnerships. This can provide insights into which affiliates are influential within your niche. Research their content, engagement rates, and audience demographics. Selecting an affiliate with a smaller, engaged audience is better than partnering with one having a large but disengaged audience. Selecting affiliate marketers whose values and content align with your brand is also important. 

Step 4: Share Your Unique Links Or Codes With Affiliates

Equip your affiliates with all the necessary resources and information they need to promote your products. Sharing unique affiliate links or codes is a crucial part of the process. These links or codes enable you to track the sales generated by each affiliate so that you can accurately calculate commission payouts. 

Communicate the guidelines for using the affiliate links or codes. For instance, provide instructions on how the affiliates should incorporate links into their content. You can even provide content guidelines to the affiliates so that your brand message is consistent.

Lastly, outline the objectives you want to achieve with the affiliate marketing campaign to the affiliates. Establish a timeline for the campaign, including start and end dates. This will help the affiliates better plan their content creation and promotion activities on Instagram.

Step 5: Build Your Brand With Affiliate Marketing An Instagram

Your job is not over once you have started running your affiliate marketing campaign. You need to consistently track campaign performance, build long-term relationships with the affiliates, and keep building your brand.

For instance, you need to analyze key metrics such as clicks, conversions, click-through rates, and revenue generated from influencer content. This data will guide your decision-making, help identify affiliates helping build your brand, and reward them for their efforts. 

You also need to encourage open dialogue with the affiliates. You can seek their input on campaigns, products, and marketing strategies that can improve your brand. At the same time, be readily available to address any queries or concerns they may have. Prompt and clear communication helps build a strong working relationship and boosts their confidence in promoting your brand.

Lastly, you need to implement an approval process for affiliate content. Reviewing and approving posts before they go live guarantees that the content adheres to your brand’s values and messaging.

Instagram Affiliate Marketing Examples By E-commerce Brands

Let us now look at 3 popular brands from different industries that have mastered the art of affiliate marketing. 

1. Nykaa

Affiliate Marketing example by Nykaa

Source: Instagram

Nykaa, the cosmetic brand, has built an affiliate partnership with Ankush Bahuguna, a rising micro-influencer on Instagram. Ankush has nearly 500K followers due to his engaging posts capturing various fashion and beauty trends. Ankush’s collaboration with Nykaa involves creating Instagram posts that talk about different products from Nykaa’s extensive range. Through these posts, he effectively showcases the products, highlights their features, and shares his personal experiences. He also offers authentic reviews of Nykaa’s products, discussing how they have worked for him and emphasizing their effects.

2. Boat

Affiliate Marketing example by BoAt

Source: Boat Instagram Account

The collaboration between Boat and Aadar Malik on Instagram demonstrates how a brand can leverage an influencer’s creative content to resonate with audiences and establish a strong brand presence. This collaboration is part of their popular friendship band contest campaign. In this example, the influencer has captivated Boat followers through his creative and funny compositions. While he doesn’t directly promote Boat’s products here, his artistic pursuits align with Boat’s ethos.

3. Pepperfry

Affiliate Marketing example by Pepperfry

Source: Pepperfry Instagram Account

Pepperfry’s collaboration with Sughandha Gangwar(mi_colourfulworld) is a prime example of how strategic affiliate partnerships can generate impactful content that effectively promotes a brand’s offerings. This micro-influencer with 11.4K followers shares aesthetically pleasing visuals of Pepperfry’s products within real-life home settings. By artfully integrating these products into relatable spaces, she captures her audience’s attention and imagination and directs it toward Pepperfry’s products.

Strategies To Making More Affiliate Sales On Instagram: For Affiliates

Here are some key strategies specifically tailored to affiliates for making more affiliate sales on Instagram:

1. Label Promoted Products As Paid Partnerships 

Transparency is crucial in affiliate marketing. Your affiliate must clearly label the posts featuring your products as paid partnerships or advertisements. This will not only build trust with your audience but also ensure compliance with Instagram’s guidelines.

Instagram offers a “Paid Partnership” tag that your affiliates can use to label their posts. This tag appears below the Instagram handle and signifies to the users that the affiliate is compensated for the promotion. In the below Instagram post, you can see the words ‘Paid Partnership’ just below the Instagram handle. 

Paid Partnership transparency example

Source: Instagram

Alternatively, the affiliate can include a clear disclosure within the captions. For example, they can use phrases like “this post contains affiliate links” or “This is a paid promotion” and place them at the beginning of the caption to make it easily visible. 

2. Add Product Promotion Links To Instagram Bio

One of the most direct ways to drive affiliate sales on Instagram is by adding product or brand links to your affiliates’ Instagram bios. This strategy makes it convenient for their followers to access and purchase your products, increasing the likelihood of conversions. Here is a popular Instagram influencer who has added Myntra’s link to his Instagram bio:

Example of Product Promotion link in instagram bio 

Source: Instagram

Instagram initially allowed users to include only one link in their bio, which hindered many affiliates from promoting multiple products at the same time. Instagram then increased the count to 5, but even this was not sufficient. Luckily, there are several workarounds for this.

One of them is to use a tool like LinkTree. It can create a landing page with multiple affiliate product links. This allows your affiliates to place just one link in their bio, which then leads to a page where their followers can choose among various products.

3. Promote Affiliate Links Via Instagram Stories And Posts 

Your affiliates can leverage both Instagram Stories and regular posts to promote your affiliate links. Both these formats allow your brand to engage with the affiliate’s followers directly. Engaging, informative, and visually appealing stories and posts revolving around your products or brand can make the users curious and encourage them to click on your affiliate link to know more about you and your products.

 Here is an Instagram influencer who has promoted the brand Flipkart using engaging storytelling:

Example of Promoting Affiliate Links Via Instagram Stories And Posts

Source: Instagram

Here are some ideas to promote the affiliate products via Stories or Posts:

  • Using storytelling, anecdotes, or relatable scenarios around the product to capture followers’ attention and encourage them to click the link.
  • Comparing the affiliate product with similar alternatives and explain why it stands out. They can even highlight the unique benefits that make it worth purchasing.
  • Engaging the followers with interactive elements like polls and questions. Your affiliate can ask the followers about their preferences or needs related to the product and then direct them to the affiliate link for a solution.
  • Your affiliate can take their audience on a “day in their life” journey, showing them how they use your product in their day-to-day life.

4. Share Product Demonstrations And Reviews 

Your affiliate marketing will bear fruit only when your affiliate’s followers know, like, and trust your brand enough to purchase the products recommended by the affiliate. So your affiliate must help their followers do just that. More importantly, the affiliate must achieve this without letting the followers exit their Instagram feed in search of answers. Wondering how this is possible? 

Simple. Ask your affiliates to demonstrate how to use the product or share authentic reviews about it. Such demonstrations and genuine reviews will tell the followers that they genuinely like this product and want their followers to experience the same happiness using it. If the followers are convinced of the benefits of the product after going through the demonstration, they will click on the link to know more about the product. 

Here is an affiliate and a popular influencer demonstrating and talking about the key features of a hair straightening brush of electronics brand Philips – 

Sharing Product Demonstrations And Reviews 

Source: Instagram

5. Use Hashtags To Expand Your Reach

Ask your affiliates to use relevant and popular hashtags in their promotion posts to increase affiliate links’ visibility. When used strategically, hashtags can expose your affiliate products to users who are interested in similar topics, products, or trends. 

The key is to research and incorporate hashtags that are relevant to your products. You can find relevant hashtags using competition research or with the help of tools like Tagsfinder, Inflact, and Toolzu. Here is an affiliate post with all the right hashtags added – 

Affiliate promotions through hashtags example

Source: Instagram

It is important to incorporate a combination of popular hashtags (with high usage) and niche-specific hashtags (with moderate usage). This balances your reach with the likelihood of being noticed among a specific audience. A word of caution, though, before adding any hashtag to the post, ask the affiliate to double-check that it’s not prohibited. 

Strategies To Making More Affiliate Sales On Instagram: For E-commerce Brands

Here are some key strategies that you must adopt to help your affiliates drive more sales on Instagram: 

6. Promote Affiliate Posts On Your Brand’s Website

This is a strategic approach to expand your affiliate marketing efforts beyond Instagram. By promoting your affiliates’ posts on your own website, you can leverage your existing website’s traffic, engage a broader audience, and increase the visibility of your affiliate partnerships.

You must designate a dedicated section on your website to showcase your affiliate partnerships. Ideally, it should be a section on your home page where you feature affiliate product reviews, recommendations, and related content. Here is an example where Loom, the popular clothing brand, has created a separate section for influencers to showcase their products. 

Affiliate promotion on brand website example

Source: The Loom

You could also show it on the product page. But keep your affiliate section on your website up-to-date. Regularly review and refresh your reviews, recommendations, and any product-related information. 

7. Run Ads On Affiliate Posts To Further Boost Sales

If you have a bigger budget, you could always run ads around affiliate posts to further boost sales. You could convert the affiliate’s post into a sponsored post, which can be a great way to increase followers and engagement. Instagram-sponsored posts also let you target specific audiences by filtering them based on demographics, location, interests, behaviors, and purchase intent. Many businesses use this strategy to support their awareness campaign. 

The other option is to run a paid search campaign via Google ads. You can direct the user to the influencer’s post to drive more engagement. Yes, you could always direct the user to your store directly from the ad. But directing them to Instagram posts is pretty useful if:

  • The affiliate is adding a lot of value to the product or the brand 
  • The promoted product is a high-ticket item and requires a lot of social proof.
  • The affiliate is a big influencer or a celebrity who brings additional visibility to your brand. 

The other option is to embed affiliate posts on the landing page, which the ads direct to. 

8. Track Affiliate Performance

This strategy is essential to gauge the effectiveness of your campaign and optimize it further. By monitoring key metrics and analyzing data, you can allocate appropriate budgets to the right affiliates to maximize your earnings. Here are some metrics you must focus on – 

  • Click-Through Rates (CTR): Measure the CTR for each affiliate’s content. A higher CTR signifies engaging content that entices users to interact with the affiliate’s links.
  • Conversion rates: This metric reveals how effectively an affiliate’s content is turning clicks into actual sales or desired actions.
  • Revenue generated by an affiliate: This metric can help you calculate the return on investment for every affiliate.
  • Engagement metrics: This includes user actions like likes, comments, shares, and swipe-ups. Like CTRs, these metrics indicate if the affiliate’s content is resonating with your audience or not.

After measuring the metrics, you may want to compare each affiliate’s performance against the goals you’ve set. This evaluation indicates whether affiliates are meeting, exceeding, or falling short of expectations. It is also important to keep an open line of communication with your affiliates. Regularly discuss their performance, provide feedback, and offer suggestions for improvement.

Must Read: Top E-commerce KPIs & Metrics You Should Track For Business Success

Conclusion

For an E-commerce brand, Instagram affiliate marketing is a great way to boost brand presence, engage audiences, and drive conversions. In a world where customer engagement is paramount for E-commerce businesses to succeed, the significance of Instagram affiliate marketing can’t be denied. 

To execute a successful Instagram affiliate marketing campaign, partnering with a seasoned expert can make all the difference. ANS Commerce, a popular name in the E-commerce industry, offers affiliate marketing services along with performance marketing and marketplace management. To know more about how we can help, book a demo now. 

E-commerce SEO: How To Drive Organic Traffic To Your Online Store?

E-commerce SEO is one of the most complex practices today. It is also such a broad field that the internet is inundated with tons of information (and misinformation!). Navigating through this maze of SEO advice can be overwhelming, often leaving you unsure of where to start and which strategies to implement. 

To cut through this noise and provide you with clear and actionable insights, we have compiled this exhaustive E-commerce SEO guide. This is the only handbook you would need to drive organic traffic to your online store and generate more sales. 

What Is SEO for E-commerce?

SEO for E-commerce is a collection of strategies that helps online stores rank higher in SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Contrary to popular belief, SEO for E-commerce is much more than simply adding keywords and writing blogs. 

Yes, a well-designed website with high-quality content will certainly rank higher in Google, but that’s not enough to reach the top. You need to understand the guidelines of search engines, how they work, and your buyer’s intent before implementing various SEO strategies.

Benefits of SEO for E-commerce Websites

Here are a few benefits you can enjoy by implementing SEO for your online store:

Wider Reach

E-commerce SEO is all about improving your brand’s visibility on search engines. It automatically improves your reach among audiences by increasing organic traffic to your online store. Once a visitor lands on your website, you can even reach out to them later via paid retargeting campaigns, further widening your reach. 

Better User Experience

When you focus on SEO for your E-commerce website, you are essentially targeting the right keywords. This way, you are not only attracting relevant visitors to your website but also answering all the key queries they might have. Focusing on SEO makes your website more attractive and improves its overall user experience.

Better Conversion Rate

This is a given. When your website ranks for relevant keywords, it will attract visitors interested in your products. It drastically improves the likelihood of them purchasing from you, which, in turn, improves your store’s conversion rates. 

Cost-Efficient

SEO is undoubtedly one of the most cost-efficient ways to drive website traffic, especially when you compare it to paid ads. Unlike ads, you do not have to pay for every click or action. You can continue to attract organic traffic for free with E-commerce SEO.

On-Page SEO Strategy

Your on-page SEO strategy should ideally focus on enhancing the elements within your E-commerce website to improve its relevance to search engines. From embedding relevant keywords to optimizing title tags, every minute detail plays a significant role in signaling your website’s value to search engines. Let us quickly go through the different strategies you can employ.

Perform E-commerce Keyword Research

Solid keyword research is the key to a successful E-commerce SEO strategy, as it provides invaluable insights into the language and phrases potential customers use when searching for products. Understanding the right keywords can make all the difference between driving relevant and irrelevant traffic to your website. Now, there are multiple ways to perform keyword research for your store. Here are three popular ones:

Using Flipkart For Keyword Research

Flipkart is one of India’s largest marketplaces selling every product that you can imagine. What this means is – it is a goldmine for product keywords. All you need to do is head over to www.flipkart.com and enter the product type you plan to sell in the search box.

Using marketplaces for keyword research

Source: Flipkart Website

Flipkart will start suggesting the most popular keywords around your product type. Pick all the relevant keywords and embed them into your product description for your online store. 

Finding Keywords Through Competition 

Along with Flipkart, you can explore your competitors’ websites for keywords. This way, you will be able to discover keywords that are effective across multiple online platforms, including search engines, social media, and other E-commerce sites. Also, you will be able to identify gaps in your own keyword strategy and find opportunities to differentiate your online store. Also, exploring your competitors’ websites might help you in identifying long-tail keywords that cater to specific niche audiences. There are high chances of you finding content and pages that target long-tail keywords, which can be valuable for attracting highly targeted traffic.

Using Keyword Research Tools 

Use tools like SEMrush & Ahrefs to find keywords and search terms related to your niche, assess their search volumes and trends, and evaluate keyword difficulty and competition. Additionally, these tools help you in analyzing your competitors’ strategies and understand their top-performing keywords with relative ease. You also gain in-depth insights into backlinks, content performance, and search visibility. 

SEO Optimize Your Product Pages

By optimizing various elements on your product pages for relevant keywords, you can significantly improve that product’s visibility on search engines and drive targeted traffic. Here are the different product page elements you must optimize for better SEO:

URL: Create SEO-friendly URLs that include relevant keywords. It should accurately describe the product and, at the same time, should be kept short, readable, and without unnecessary characters or symbols. Here is a good example:

Example of SEO-optimized URL

Source: Juicy Chemistry 

Title Tag (H1): Use a keyword-rich H1 title tag for your product. It should accurately reflect the product’s main keyword. More importantly, it should be clear, concise, and easy to understand for both users and search engines. 

Meta Description: Set the meta description for every page of your website. This is a great opportunity for you to write an engaging intro for your pages, which, in turn, will garner clicks on the search results page. Here is a good meta-description:

Example of meta description

 Source: Google 

Product Description: Craft unique and informative product descriptions that incorporate all the necessary target keywords naturally. Avoid keyword stuffing and focus on providing valuable information to potential customers. Here is a great product description from FabIndia:

Example of product description

Source: FabIndia 

Header Tags (H2, H3, etc.): Use header tags to organize your product page content logically. Incorporate relevant keywords into these headers to give search engines a clear understanding of the page’s structure and content. Nykaa, the cosmetics brand, has neatly organized all its blog content in H2 and H3 tags:

Optimize Header tags for SEO

Source: Nykaa 

Image Alt Text: You also need to ensure that all your images have alt text which is descriptive and keyword-rich. Alt text helps search engines understand your images, making them more likely to appear in image search results and improving overall accessibility to your products.

Product Reviews: Encourage customer reviews and User-Generated Content on your product pages. This not only enhances credibility but can also naturally include additional relevant keywords. Here is a product description from the brand Nykaa:

Example of a product review

Source: Nykaa 

Using E-commerce Content Marketing For SEO

E-commerce content marketing is a powerful tool to drive organic traffic to your E-commerce store. You need to consistently create valuable and engaging content such as blogs containing your target keywords and answer questions that your audiences might have. 

You can also leverage social media to promote content and interact with your audience. Posting content on social media is a great way to foster brand awareness, and ultimately enhance your website’s authority in search engine rankings. It’s also important to maintain a consistent publishing schedule. Regularly posting content will increase the likelihood of attracting backlinks further boosting search engine visibility. 

Technical SEO Clean Up

The technical clean-up involves a careful review and enhancement of various technical aspects, including your website’s structure, page speed, mobile responsiveness, canonicalization, and internal linking, among others. By conducting this process, you will be able to improve your website’s overall health, facilitate better search engine indexing, and ultimately boost organic traffic.

Make Your Site’s Architecture Simple

Site architecture is all about how the pages on your website are arranged. Your goal must be to keep the architecture simple and well-organized. A typical E-commerce website tends to have significantly more number pages than an average blogging website or a service-oriented website due to the presence of category pages and product pages. This makes it even more crucial for your site architecture to be simple, as it helps search engines to effortlessly browse through your site and assists customers in finding the information they need.

When your architecture is well-defined, you can also scale your website in the future. As you add more products and categories, you will find it easier to maintain your website. 

While designing your website architecture, your goal must be to ensure that every page can be accessed within three (or fewer) clicks from your homepage. This ensures that your customer journey is short and frictionless, making it more likely for users to complete their purchases. 

Let us now look at the structure of two websites, one with bad site architecture and another with solid architecture. 

Bad Site Architecture Example For E-commerce

Example of poor site architecture

As you can see in the above example, the architecture is not straightforward. It’s challenging to understand what category comes where. This means it’s not scalable. Whenever you plan on adding a new category, you need to build an additional layer and(or) reorganize all your existing categories and subcategories. Lastly, if you notice, some of the pages can be reached only after 6 clicks from the home page. 

Good Site Architecture Example For E-commerce

Example of good site architecture

This is an excellent example of how your site architecture should be. It is simple and scalable, which means it is completely future-proof. Also, every page can be reached in 3 clicks from the home page, ensuring that the user journey is short and without any obstacles. 

Improve your Page Speed

Your website’s page speed is a key ranking factor for Google. Why? Because Google values user experience and if your page takes a long time to load, it will result in a poor experience, and most users will abandon that page. The probability of users abandoning a page almost triples if the page takes longer than 2 seconds to load. If you’re not sure about your current page speed, you can check on PageSpeed Insights.

Now, if your page speed is low, it simply means you either have too much content on your website or too many scripts are slowing down the page speed. And don’t forget, images take a lot of time to load, so if you have a lot of images on a page, it will slow the load time. 

Here are some tips to improve your page speed – 

  • Do not overload the webpage with too many images. And ensure that all the images are optimized and compressed. 
  • Use fewer social media widgets on the web pages.
  • Do not clutter the pages with too much content. Use white space wherever possible.

If nothing is working, consider changing your web host or upgrading your existing hosting package. You can consider switching to Kartify, a highly scalable E-commerce platform that supports +1 million concurrent users without performance issues. Also, the platform helps in optimizing your storefront so that your page load speeds are always high. 

Impact Of Redirects On SEO

Redirects are instructions that inform web browsers and search engines to transfer users from one URL to another. This transfer could be due to website restructuring, moved or expired content, or simply to offer a better user experience. 301 is a popular permanent redirect that indicates that the original URL has permanently moved to another location. So whenever Google encounters a 301 redirect, it automatically updates its index and caches it to reflect the updated URL. This ensures that the SEO value of the old link is transferred to the new one. 

Now too many redirects are also not good for your SEO. For instance, excessive redirects can impact page load times, which will have a negative impact on the user experience and SEO rank. 

Also, if redirects are not properly implemented or maintained, your users may encounter “404 Not Found” errors that can result in lost traffic. 

Incorrect redirects can also cause canonicalization problems, where search engines may index the wrong version of a page. For instance, if you use a 302 (temporary) redirect instead of a 301, it may lead search engines to keep indexing the old URL, thus losing your link equity. 

Importance Of HTTPS

HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) is a protocol that encrypts the data transmitted between your website and its users. This makes it more secure against potential cyber threats and eavesdropping. Unsurprisingly, this has been a Google ranking factor as Google has always valued data security. 

You will know that your website has HTTPS if it has a ‘lock’ icon in the address bar. Here is an example – 

Example of HTTPS URL

Most modern E-commerce platforms offer HTTPS as the default protocol for your website. However, if you find that (for some reason) HTTP has been used instead, you need to fix it immediately. We recommend partnering with trusted E-commerce platforms like Kartify to make sure your online store is always secure. 

Make Your Site Mobile Responsive

With a major chunk of internet traffic coming from mobile devices these days, search engines like Google have started adopting mobile-first indexing. This means they primarily use the mobile version of your website for ranking and indexing. Make sure your website is mobile responsive which will not only improve your SEO rankings but also result in lower bounce rates and increased user engagement.

Here are some best practices to follow while making your website mobile responsive –

  • Test your website across a range of mobile devices and operating systems to ensure a consistent user experience
  • Optimize all your images by compressing them without compromising quality.
  • Streamline your E-commerce checkout process by eliminating unnecessary form fields and providing multiple payment options
  • Replace complex dropdown menus with simple, easily accessible navigation elements like hamburger menus.

Provide Good Internal linking

Interlinking helps search engines understand the organization of your E-commerce website and allows users to navigate with great ease. This greatly boosts the user experience and subsequently your SEO rank. 

The best way to implement internal linking is via breadcrumbs. These are navigational aids that highlight the user’s current location within the website hierarchy. Clicking on a breadcrumb will help users backtrack or switch between different categories. Here is an example of a breadcrumb:

Example of breadcrumbs

The other way to implement internal linking is via product recommendations. Implement a product section widget on all your product pages to encourage users to explore related products or complementary items. Besides being a good internal linking strategy, it also helps in improving the chances of cross-selling and upselling.

Provide interlinking to boost SEO

Source: Myntra 

Lastly, if your E-commerce website has a blog section, make sure to provide contextual interlinking to blog posts, relevant product pages, and category pages. For example, if you are writing a blog about the benefits of a product, link it to the respective product page where users can make a purchase. This not only enhances conversion rates but also strengthens the association between your content and products in the eyes of search engines.

Importance of Hreflang

Technically speaking, Hreflang is an HTML attribute that specifies the language and geographical targeting of a webpage. It is a crucial element of E-commerce SEO, particularly for online stores that cater to an international audience or offer content in multiple languages. 

It aids search engines in understanding the language of your web pages, thereby ensuring that the right content is always presented to the right users in search results. In simpler words, when you add hreflang tags to your website, you are clearly highlighting which version of your website is relevant to a particular location. 

Without this tag, search engines might index and display the wrong version of your website to users accessing it from another country. This can result in irrelevant search results and frustrating experiences for the users. 

Add Canonicals

Canonicals are tags that instruct Google on which version of a page to index and display in search results. The three important goals of canonicals are- 

  • To avoid potential duplicate content issues
  • To ensure that the right page receives proper SEO value
  • To consolidate link equity from all the duplicate pages of a particular E-commerce page

E-commerce websites often have multiple versions of the same product page, category page, and other pages. For instance, if a particular product has multiple variants, then multiple duplicate pages will be created for these variants. 

Without canonicals, Google might end up interpreting all these duplicate pages as separate entities, resulting in the dilution of SEO value for that particular product. It might even penalize you for having duplicate content across all these pages. To avoid such issues, you need to use canonicals. 

Include a site map

A sitemap is a file on your website that contains complete information about all your web pages and content. Search engines use this sitemap to crawl your website more efficiently. A good sitemap will not leave out any page be it a category page or a product page. Sitemaps use both XML and HTML, however, HTML sitemaps are generally considered to be more useful for users. You can create a sitemap either manually or by using various tools. Google’s Webmaster, Lucidchart Sitemap Generator, and Powermapper are some of the popular tools used for generating sitemaps. Here is a sample HTML sitemap:

HTML Sitemap example

Source: H&M Group 

Link Building Strategies For E-commerce Site

Link building is important for SEO as it improves the authority, visibility, and rankings of your website. When you build high-quality backlinks from reputable sources, you are essentially attracting high-quality organic traffic who are more likely to buy. Here are a few strategies you can adopt for link building: 

1. Resource Page Link Building

In a resource page link-building strategy, you get backlinks from webpages that curate and link out to useful resources within the industry. You, as a website owner, can suggest your webpage as one of these resources. The best part is you do not have to do too much convincing to get your webpage added because you are helping the resource page owner to keep their pages fresh and up-to-date. 

But your website must be relevant to the resource page, otherwise, your request will be rejected. Just search for all the relevant resource pages in your industry, vet these pages, reach out to the page owner, and suggest your website as a potential resource. 

2. Partnering With Influencers And Affiliates

It is not difficult to find major and micro-influencers in every industry. Partnering with these influencers and affiliates can expose your products to a wider audience, thereby attracting natural backlinks. This, then, has a positive impact on your SEO score. 

You can ask influencers to write product reviews, create unboxing videos, or even write sponsored content that highlights your brand and products. Many influencers have their own blogs or websites where they can publish in-depth content about your products, generating additional backlinks.

3. Broken Link Building

Broken links are amazing opportunities to gain backlinks to your website. Start by finding websites that have mentioned products like yours and linked them to the original website. Some of these links might be broken or inactive. 

If you find such links, reach out to the website owner and share your webpage as an alternative option. They will be happy to replace a broken link with a working one. You can use tools like Brokenlinkchecker to identify broken links in a particular URL. 

4. Stealing Competitor’s Links

Though this strategy might sound highly dubious, this is a legitimate and very common way to build backlinks. You need to first analyze your competitor’s backlink profile and identify high-quality backlinks that your competitors have earned over the years. Now, see if there’s a chance for you to obtain similar links.

Platforms like Ahrefs and SEMRush offer backlink analysis tools to help you identify opportunities in competitors’ links. While reaching out to websites that link to your competitors, be honest and showcase how your products or brand can add value to their audience beyond what your competitors offer. 

5. Guest Posting

Guest posting involves creating valuable content for other websites within your niche.  In exchange, you can get valuable backlinks to your E-commerce site. The key is to identify reputable websites that accept guest posts, have good domain authority, and have an audience that matches your target market. 

The good thing about guest posting is that it not only generates valuable backlinks to your website but also improves your brand visibility and showcases your brand as an authoritative name in the industry.

Keep Track Of E-commerce SEO Success

Your responsibility is not over once you have implemented all the above strategies and optimized your E-commerce store for search engines. It is equally important to understand the impact of your strategies so that you can identify areas for improvement and finetune your strategies to improve the outcomes. Let us now understand how to track your E-commerce SEO success. 

Key Metrics To Track For E-commerce SEO Success 

  • Conversion Rate: It is the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action on your website. In an E-commerce environment, the action is usually making a purchase. A high conversion rate indicates that the keywords you are targeting in your SEO strategy are highly relevant to your target audience.
  • Bounce Rate: It is the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate indicates that the products or your website’s content may not be meeting the search intent of the users. In other words, you need to tweak your keyword selection. 
  • Click-through Rate: It is the percentage of visitors you are attracting to your E-commerce website after they see your page in the search engine results pages. A high CTR indicates that your title tag, meta description, and content are appealing and are capable of attracting clicks from search engine users.
  • Core Web Vitals: These are specific website performance metrics that measure different aspects of user experience. It predominantly includes Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). These metrics help assess website loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability respectively. 
  • Keyword Ranking Changes: The changes in positions of specific keywords that you are targeting in search engine results pages over time. If a keyword improves its ranking, it indicates that your SEO efforts for that keyword are bearing fruits. On the other hand, if a keyword’s ranking drops, you may need to investigate the possible reasons, such as algorithm updates, changes to your website, or increased competition.
  • Non-branded Keywords: Non-branded keywords are generic keywords that do not include any specific brand names. By analyzing these keywords, you can identify new market opportunities and potential product categories that might be in demand. This can help in fine-tuning your SEO strategies to capitalize on emerging trends.

How to Track Your SEO Success?

The easiest and most effective way to track your SEO success is by using tools like Google Analytics, SEMRush, and Ahrefs. For instance, Google Analytics offers comprehensive insights into your website’s performance and captures metrics such as organic traffic, user behavior, conversions, and bounce rates. And it is quite easy to set up Google Analytics on most E-commerce platforms. 

Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush also help in keyword analysis. For instance, they can track the rankings of your target keywords in search engine results and even highlight how your rankings have changed over time. They can even track your performance against competitors.

Choose The Right E-commerce Platform For The Best SEO

As we wrap up our blog, you would have realized that the strategies you use to optimize your website’s SEO impacts your online success. The intricacies of search engine optimization can’t be underestimated, and your chosen platform plays a pivotal role in how well your website ranks and performs. 

Kartify – E-commerce Platform is the best choice for most businesses because it is the only platform you would need to handle the entire lifecycle of an E-commerce order. Right from inventory tracking to payment processing, Kartify takes care of everything you need to manage your store.

Some of the key features of Kartify include:

  • Search-engine-optimized product listings
  • Advanced analytics covering sales, traffic, and products
  • Native integrations with 80+ relevant platforms 
  • Site speed optimization with super-fast smart search capability 
  • Optimized checkouts to reduce cart abandonment 
  • Seamless selling across platforms with Omni-enabled capabilities

To know more about Kartify and how it can help in driving organic traffic to your online store, contact us now. 

How To Run A Sales Event For Your E-commerce Brand?

4 million first-time customers

35 million app downloads

These are the record-breaking sales numbers of Flipkart during their previous Big Billion sales event. As you can see from these numbers, customers keenly look forward to such events when the price of their favorite products drops considerably.

However, despite the popularity, many E-commerce owners shy away from organizing such events. Many of them assume that such sales events are only reserved for the Flipkarts and Amazons of the world. This is not true. 

With the right planning and strategies in place, anyone can successfully run a sales event for their online store and increase their customer base and revenue.

In this post, we will walk you through the steps involved in running a successful sales event for your E-commerce brand.

How To Run A Successful Sales Event?

Running a successful sales event requires strategic planning and meticulous execution. There are certain steps that you must follow diligently to ensure the success of your sales event. Here are they – 

Step 1: Get The Blueprint For The Sales Event Ready

Start by creating a detailed blueprint for your sales event. This is important because it will provide you with a clear roadmap on how to organize and wrap up your sales event without any issues. The blueprint must ideally comprise your objectives, products for sale, and the specific date and duration of the sale. 

First and foremost, define the specific goals for your event. It could be improved sales, increased brand visibility, or even a surge in footfall. Whatever the goal, outline them clearly on the blueprint so that you can develop a focused marketing strategy around those goals.

Next, plan the products that you will put up on sale. The idea is to pick products that will be profitable, even at a reduced price. You must also consider factors like stagnant inventory, current demand, waning trends, and overhead expenses while selecting them. But remember – in an attempt to maximize sales and profitability, avoid the temptation to liquidate inventory at a loss.

Lastly, set a fixed date and duration for your sales event. This will help you in the proper execution of the event and you will be able to better organize your affairs, manage inventory, and ensure sufficient staff coverage during the sale hours. 

Step 2: Begin spreading the word (on Social Media + PR)

Even if you are offering the best discounts on your products, it won’t be fruitful unless your potential customers know about the sale in the first place. You need to start spreading the word on different platforms to let these people know you are running a sale for them.

Social media is a great space for this. But it is important to pick the platforms where your potential customers are most active. Focus all your efforts on these platforms to maximize your reach. Create engaging content such as infographics, GIFs and videos that highlight the key details of your sales event. Exposure is the key to the success of your event, so send out as much relevant information as possible through content.

Take the case of Nykaa, the popular cosmetics brand. They have been creating constant buzz around their recent HotPinkSale on Instagram and Facebook. Here is one such post from them.

Use Social Media to create buzz around your Ecommerce sales

You could also write compelling press releases that highlight the unique aspects of your sales event. You can distribute it to relevant media outlets, both online and offline, so that it reaches everyone you wish to target. 

Step 3: Focus On Pre-Event Marketing 

Next, you can start your other pre-event marketing activities. You could collaborate with influencers who align with your brand and have a significant following among your potential customers. You can easily leverage their credibility to promote your sales event. For instance, you can ask them to share exclusive discount codes with their followers and encourage them to participate in your sales event. 

The other option is to invest in advertising campaigns across various platforms such as search engines and social media. Most of these platforms also enable you to target a precise set of users by setting different parameters like demographics, interests, and location.

If you have a restricted budget, you can simply post engaging content on social media that showcases your upcoming event. You could include countdowns, sneak peeks, and behind-the-scenes previews of the event. 

Step 4: Partner With Complementary Brands To Spread The Word

This is another great way to expose your sales event to relevant audiences. You need to partner with brands that share a similar target audience or are from a related niche. This will enable you to tap into their customer base and mutually benefit from cross-promotion. 

Start by identifying related brands that are not your direct competitors. Reach out to them and propose collaborative opportunities for promoting each other’s sales events. You could cross-promote on social media and share each other’s posts or even co-create content. 

Bonus if you could create exclusive bundled offerings with this complementary brand and include them as part of your sale offering. End result – better sales for both parties. 

Step 5: Showcase Your Sales Event On Your Website

This is a given. Just like how retail stores set the table for specific sales items, you need to create a dedicated landing page for the sales event on your website. For starters, this will enable your customers to share the URL of the event directly with their friends and family. The new visitors need not navigate through all the pages of your website to reach the sale landing page. 

Place attention-grabbing banners on your website’s homepage and at relevant sections, announcing the sales event. Add striking visuals, engaging copies, and clear CTAs directing the visitors to the sales landing page. Here is Firstcry, the renowned baby care brand in India, effectively using the home page banner area to highlight all their sale events.

Show the various sales events you are running on your website

Highlight a selection of key products that will be on sale and display them prominently on the homepage. Add enticing descriptions, images, and discounted prices to capture visitors’ interest and drive them to explore further.

To create a sense of urgency, you can even incorporate countdown timers on the website. It should display the remaining time left for the sales event, which will encourage the visitors to take immediate action. 

Step 6: Highlight Your Brand Or Keep Your Brand At The Center Of The Sales Event

While running your sales event, it’s important to keep the focus on your brand identity. You must highlight your brand’s USP and message throughout the event. Why? Because your ultimate goal is to drive more customers to your store even after the sale ends. By focusing on your brand and its story, you will build better brand recall for a longer duration.

Ensure that all your marketing materials for the sales event align with your brand’s visual identity. You must use consistent colors, fonts, and logos on all your marketing collaterals to create a cohesive and recognizable brand presence across all communication channels. You must also use the sales event to reinforce your brand’s key values, mission, and positioning. 

Step 7: Engage with customers throughout the sales event

This will help in building lasting relationships with them. By spontaneously addressing their inquiries, you can enhance their satisfaction and increase the likelihood of repeat business even after the event ends

Keep a close eye on your social media handles during this time. Respond promptly to customer comments, messages, and mentions. Address any concerns, answer questions, and express gratitude for their participation and support.

It’s also worthwhile to implement a live chat feature on your website to offer real-time assistance to customers. Ensure that knowledgeable representatives are operating behind the scenes who can provide quick responses to inquiries, offer product recommendations, and resolve any issues that may arise during the event.

Most importantly, tailor each and every communication to individual customers wherever possible. Use their names in messages to create a more personalized experience. Referencing specific purchases or preferences can also show that you value their unique needs.

Step 8: Get Ready To Ship And Manage Orders

If you have completed all the above steps successfully, you are bound to attract huge volumes of visitors during the sale. But this poses a unique challenge – How to ship and manage thousands of orders without delays and errors?

To overcome this, you must clearly communicate the shipping timelines, return policies, and any potential delays to customers during the sales event. Some brands have a separate shipping timeline and return policies during the sales event due to the huge influx of orders. There is nothing wrong with this. Ultimately, the goal is to reduce frustration and improve the overall order experience for customers. 

You must also constantly update your inventory levels to prevent overselling or running out of stock once the orders are placed. This is quite common during a sales event. Implement real-time inventory tracking to ensure adequate product availability throughout the sales event. Consider using inventory management software to streamline this process. 

Bonus: Make Sure Your Website Is Able To Handle The Traffic

You must make sure that your site is able to handle the increased load during the sales event. The last thing you want is your server crashing and your loyal customers leaving negative reviews all over the internet about their experience.  

You must ensure that you have a reliable hosting provider with expansive bandwidth so that your website is completely scalable when it comes to the number of users. Also, try improving your website’s loading speed by optimizing and compressing files and images. On the technical front, you can embrace various caching techniques to minimize server load and leverage browser caching to store static resources locally on users’ devices.

You could also conduct load testing to simulate high-traffic conditions and identify potential bottlenecks or performance issues. There are many tools like Apache JMeter or LoadRunner that can help you achieve this.

But the easiest and most effective way to handle high website traffic to your site is to build your online store on a reliable E-commerce platform. Robust E-commerce platforms employ techniques like load balancing and caching mechanisms to distribute the load across multiple servers and ensure smooth performance even under heavy traffic. One such powerful platform is Kartify. Thanks to its robust architecture, Kartify can easily handle over 1 million concurrent users. This makes this the perfect choice for your sale events as you can continue to attract as many users as you want without worrying about performance issues. 

Different Types Of E-commerce Sales

There are different types of E-commerce sales you can run. Here are the top 4 – 

Pre-launch

A pre-launch is a type of sale that is employed just before a product is officially released. The goal of this sale is to generate buzz, build anticipation, and incentivize early purchases of such products. Businesses offer special discounts and exclusive access to pre-launch customers, creating a sense of exclusivity and rewarding loyal customers. Such a type of sale is usually employed by E-commerce businesses handling electronic items.

Pre-launch sales example

Limited Time Offer (LTO)

A limited-time offer is a type of sale that runs for a fixed duration. The timelines could range from a few hours to a few weeks. In this, you create a sense of urgency, which encourages customers to make quick purchase decisions by taking advantage of the discounted price or exclusive offer. Flash sales, seasonal promotions, and holiday deals are classic examples of LTO. But remember, it is important to communicate the limited availability or duration of the sale to customers effectively.

Limited time offer sales example

BOGO Sale

A Buy-One-Get-One (BOGO) sale is a type of sale where customers receive an additional product for free when they purchase a specific item. This type of sale is often used to increase sales volume and move stagnated inventory. BOGO sale typically triggers the customers’ desire for more value, which, in turn, encourages those who were in two minds about purchasing a product.

Buy one get one sales example

Tiered Discount

A tiered discount sale is a kind of sale that offers different levels of discounts based on the customer’s total order value. This type of sale encourages customers to increase their order value to unlock higher discounts. For example, a tiered discount promotion might offer 10% off for orders above ₹500, 20% off for orders above ₹1000, and 30% off for orders above ₹1500.

Tired discount example

 

Best Practices To Follow While Running A Sales Event

  • Continuously monitor the performance of your sales event by tracking key metrics such as sales volume, website traffic, conversion rates, and customer feedback. Analyze the collected data to identify areas of improvement and make adjustments for the next sales event.
  • Once the sales event is over, follow up with customers to express appreciation for their participation and purchases. Consider offering post-sale incentives and exclusive loyalty rewards to encourage ongoing engagement with customers.
  • Encourage existing customers to refer their friends or family members to your sales event by providing attractive referral incentives such as additional discounts or rewards for both parties. This helps drive new customer acquisition during the event.
  • Keep an eye on your competitors’ sales events. Most of the time, they may be running a sales event during the same time as yours. So stay agile and be ready to adjust your offers or prices if necessary to stay competitive.

Conclusion: Get Ready To Boost Revenue With Online Sales

Before running a sales event, you must make sure that you don’t leave anything to the last minute. As long as you have followed the above steps and are prepared to handle the huge influx of fresh orders, you should be able to run a successful E-commerce sales event and reap benefits such as improved sales and better profitability. 

If you need further help in running a successful sales event or even managing other aspects of your E-commerce store, you can partner with ANS Commerce. A Flipkart group company, ANS Commerce is India’s leading E-commerce service provider that offers end-to-end solutions to streamline your daily E-commerce operations. To know more about us and how we can help, book a demo now.

What Is A Flash Sale And How To Do Them Right?

The one thing that we all love about online shopping is flash sales.

Flash sales are a strategy used by brands to drive customers into buying the products RIGHT NOW before the offer expires. They are an important part of the E-commerce toolkit, which can be run by any online store. These sales encourage impulse buying, increase customer loyalty and drive sales. However, a poorly executed flash sale can hurt brand image, erode customers and cause a loss of sales.

In this blog, we will cover everything about flash sales, including free templates to make your job easier. 

What Is A Flash Sale?

A flash sale is a promotional technique where E-commerce stores offer a steep discount on their products for a short period. It usually lasts no longer than 48 hours with deals like 50%-60% off the regular price. 

A flash sale differs from regular sales in the following ways:

  • Higher discounts than every day
  • Short buying period
  • Limited product choices

The purpose of these sales is to tap into the customer’s impulse buying behavior by kicking off their FOMO (fear of missing out) through enticing deals. Brands can use their sales to increase their customer base, remove excess inventory or enhance short-term sales. 

When Should You Run A Flash Sale Campaign?

All E-commerce experts will agree that there is no “best time” for running a flash sale. It depends on the type of products you are intending to sell and the customers’ buying patterns. Therefore, we recommend looking at your historical order data to determine the best time to run a flash sale.

We understand that running a flash sale can be daunting. Thus, here are some of the best times to flash them out. 

Before The Holiday Season

During the holiday season, also known as “peak season”, E-commerce businesses bombard customers with sales and information, resulting in sales fatigue. Brands flood their inboxes with newsletters and promotional emails, which can cause customers to ignore them.

However, if you run the flash sale before the holiday season (around October), you will be presented with an opportunity to get ahead of your competitors and attract new customers. Coordinate the sale with carefully planned digital ads to double your success throughout the season. 

After The Holiday Season

As E-commerce stores see a peak in sales during holidays, they also see a spike in returns after the holiday season. Customers start to return the unwanted gifts that were bought. 

However, this shouldn’t discourage you. You can offset the influx of returns by running a flash sale after the holiday season. It will also help you compensate for the loss due to returns and retain customer loyalty. 

Once In A While

Constantly running a flash sale can hamper your brand image. Timing is essential with these promotions and, therefore, you should run them every few months. 

Tip: You can tie your flash sales with holidays like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or Valentine’s Day, as online shoppers are often seeking deals. 

Is A Flash Sale Right For Your Business?

Are you wondering if a flash sale is the right path for your business? Here are some advantages and disadvantages to help you make a decision. 

The Pros Of A Flash Sale

A successful flash sale has the following benefits:

  1. Increase brand visibility: Flash sale triggers an urgency within the customers, which converts casual visitors into buyers. These customers also share your brand and sales information with their family and friends, leading to word-of-mouth promotion and boosting brand awareness.
  1. Improve revenue: A flash sale is a fast way to increase revenue and profits. These sales create urgency among the customers, motivating them to buy products and spend more than usual. 
  1. Sell excess inventory: Flash sales can help you sell out-of-season products or items that are not in demand anymore at a lower price. It will help you gain revenue out of these products, while making room in your inventory for new, in-demand items. 
  1. Attract new and loyal customers: Flash sales are a great way to attract new customers to your website. They serve as a low-stakes method for them to try on your products. If they are happy with it, they are more likely to return to your store to shop again.  

The Cons Of A Flash Sale

An unsuccessful flash sale can cause the following issues:

  1. Lower profits: A flash sale discount usually offers customers 50%-60% off the original price. Thus, this can lead to reduced profits, especially if you already have thin margins. 
  1. Damage the reputation: Some companies are not able to effectively manage flash sales and run a risk of hurting their reputation. The mishandled campaigns can cause problems like slower website loading, shipping failure, poor customer service, or inventory mismanagement. Make sure your website is ready to handle the influx of customers; choosing the right E-commerce platform like Kartify is the key here. With Kartify, you can easily manage 1 Million concurrent users. 
  1. Attract wrong customers: A flash sale is often an appeal to one-time buyers, who will purchase from your website once during the sale and then disappear. You need to build customer loyalty strategies to ensure that they keep returning to purchase from your website. 

How To Run A Successful Flash Sale

How can you make sure that flash sales have a positive and long-term impact on your business? Here are 8 tips that can help you.

Decide On The Goal Of Your Sale

The key to a successful flash sale is knowing your purpose for it. Are you looking to clear out inventory? Or are you looking to gain more revenue?

Here are some goals that can be achieved through flash sales:

  • Clearing out old inventory 
  • Attracting new customers 
  • Increasing customer loyalty 
  • Winning back inactive customers 

Your goals can certainly overlap. But prioritising them during the flash sale will help with product selection, customer targeting, timing and marketing strategy. 

Choose The Right Flash Sale Products

Once the goal has been discussed and decided on, you need to decide on the product(s) that will be included in the sale. The products will vary depending on the customers you wish to target.

If your goal is to attract new customers, look at the products that are popular with your competitors and offer them at a temporary discount. 

However, if you want to boost brand awareness of your signature product, consider flash-selling only that particular item. In an ideal scenario, customers will likely come back again to repurchase the same product at the original price. 

Lastly, if you are looking to increase loyalty among existing customers, look for products that have low conversions despite high page views. This means that customers are liking the product but not buying probably due to the high price. The flash sale will help you get rid of excess inventory of these products. 

Prepare Your Shipping Strategy In Advance

Do you know what customers love more than a flash sale? Free shipping! It is a great incentive bonus for customers to ensure that they place their orders. Some customers prefer overnight shipping, while others expect their orders to arrive between 1-3 days. 

Irrespective of your shipping strategy, it is vital to keep your customers’ expectations realistic for shipping, as the difference between a successful and unsuccessful flash sale largely depends on the shipping. 

Thus, spend extra time ensuring you:

  • Communicate up-front and in advance the shipping time
  • Hire extra help to get your orders out of your warehouse
  • Pre-pack the orders to reduce turn-around time

Must read: How to create shipping policy? (+ready to use shipping policy template)

Time Your Flash Sale (Shorter Is Better)

Time is an important part of flash sales, as you can’t have a long exposure sale. Therefore, the shorter the flash sale, the greater the urgency to act and purchase quickly. Ideally, it should run between two to 24 hours. 

When should you run your flash sale? Look at your analytics and patterns to answer the following questions:

  • What day of the week do people purchase on your website?
  • What time of the day do people purchase your products?
  • When are your highest email opening rates?

Promote Your Sale Ahead Of Time

A carefully planned flash sale can increase the chances of its success. Promoting your sale early will keep people on the lookout and interested in it. It will also help with increased traction. 

Use or grow your existing SMS and email list and create a countdown message that leads up to the sale. Alternatively, you can also publish posts and stories on your social media account to motivate people to share them with their friends and family. 

Use Urgency To Build Hype For Your Flash Sale

How do you spread the message about your flash sales and ensure customers buy your products? Use the urgency tactic to build hype around your flash sale. 

You need to change the customer sentiment from “I can buy it later” to “I can’t buy it later”. Here are some ways to do that:

  • Use social media to engage with your customers regarding the flash sale.
  • Remind your customers regarding the sale with statements like “Only 15 minutes left before the sale is over.”
  • Nothing builds urgency than seeing a clock. Use it on your social media pages and flash sale landing pages. 

Keep A Close Eye On The Inventory

In a successful flash sale, inventory items sell out faster than anticipated. Imagine how excited your customer will be seeing the sale, only to find out that the product has been sold out. They will be disappointed and lead to a bad customer experience. This problem can increase two-fold if you are intending to attract new customers to your website. Use order management systems like Unicommerce and Zoho Inventory.

Must Read: 20 Best Ecommerce Tools & Apps To Manage Online Store

Prepare For Shipping & Delivery

After a customer hits checkout, this is the start of the customer service experience. Prepare your shipping and delivery strategy in advance to ensure a seamless process. Notify your logistics and fulfilment partner about the sale in advance and the expected influx of orders, thus guaranteeing that every person is ready when the time arrives. 

Flash Sale Examples

Gadgets Now

Flash sale displayed on Website

Credit: Gadgets Now Website

Gadgets now runs a flash sale every day on one product, which is displayed on their website.

What we love: Gadgets Now uses a timer, which builds up an urgency for the customers to buy the product before the clock runs out. 

Nykaa Beauty

Flash sale promotion example

Credit: Nykaa Beauty IGPage

Nykaa uploaded a reel to promote their buy one get one free sale, which they were running for only 3 hours on their website. Due to the short duration, Nykaa opted to use social media marketing to gain traction and was successful with their 1,100+ likes.  

What we love: The reel showed all the different products that are available on sale. Additionally, the short and catchy caption instantly brings our attention to the sale.

Aachho

Flash sales ads example

Credit: Aachho Facebook Ads

Aachho used Facebook Ads to promote their flash sale, informing customers that the sale has been extended for more time.

What we love: The ad clearly states the products available on sale, including the price of the product, and a sale end date.

How To Write Flash Sale Email + Free Template To Use

We recommend sending out three flash sale emails in each of the three different phases to ensure maximum reach.

Notice Phase

This is the stage where your first email informing about the sale is sent out to the target customers. It includes details like the date, duration, the product(s) on sale, and the discount that will be offered. Ideally, it should be sent two days before the sale starts.

Launch Phase

In this stage, an email notifying the customer that the sale has kicked off. The message is short and enticing enough to get the customers to participate in the sale. It includes promotions, product(s) on sale, and duration.

Last Call Phase

This flash sale email is aimed at creating a sense of urgency among the customers and kicking off their impulse buying behavior. The email informs them that the sale is ending in a few hours and, thus, is sent 4 to 6 hours before the close of the sale. The email should contain promotions, the sale closing date/time and the products on sale, and a link to purchase.  

Here are some free templates for you to use in your flash sales. 

Flash Sales Email Template #1: Notice Phase

Subject: Flash Sale Alert | 50% off selected items

Headline: Free shipping on orders above [insert amount]

Body:

FLASH SALE

50% OFF*

Snag your favorite [insert item names like clothes]. 

The sale kicks off at [insert time and date] for only a day.

[Any other information like an exchange, returns, code, etc.]

[Button that says “Shop Sale”]

*On selected items only

Flash Sales Email Template #2: Launch Phase

Subject: WE ARE LIVE | FLASH SALE

Headline: Free shipping on orders above [insert amount]

Body:

WE ARE LIVE!

FLASH SALE

50% OFF*

[Picture of product]

Get your hands on your favorite items before they run out.

Sale ends in [insert last date/hour of sale]

[Button that says “Shop Sale NOW”]

[Any other information like an exchange, returns, code, etc.]

*On selected items only

Flash Sales Email Template #3: Last Call Phase

Subject: Clock is Ticking | Extra 10% off

Headline: Free shipping on orders above [insert amount]

Body:

Extra 10% OF*

Flash Sale

[Picture of product]

With only 4 hours to go, let’s make things interesting. 

Offering 10% off on top of 50% off.

[Any other information like an exchange, returns, code, etc.]

[Button that says “Shop Sale NOW”]

*On selected items only

Best Practices Of Flash Sales

1. Use Popups to Attract More Customers

Social media and email marketing are excellent and proven ways to increase visibility about flash sales. However, it is also essential to convert your existing E-commerce website traffic into flash deal customers. 

Use promotional pop-ups on your website to announce your flash sale campaign, which will direct your existing customers to your sales page. It will create visibility and drive better sales. We recommend using a countdown timer to build urgency or words like “limited-time, hurry, limited stocks, etc. 

2. Segment Potential Buyers

There are a wide range of customers you can target with online sales. However, in flash sales, you should segment and target your potential customers in the below two categories:

Targeting your loyal customers with a flash sale

  • Offer exclusive flash sales to your loyal customers only, to appreciate their association with your brand.
  • Broadcast emails do not work well for flash sales targeted toward loyal customers. Use different communication styles and personalise them for the customers. 
  • Identify your inactive customers and run flash sale campaigns to make them purchase your product(s). 
  • You can also convert your customers who abandon their carts with flash sale emails to ensure they click the checkout button.  

Targeting new customers with a flash sale

  • Display Inventory countdown on products that are under sale. Showcasing the number of products left nudges the customers’ buying impulse and influences their decision to have the product right away.
  • Run Google and Meta Ads for your flash sales. Use the exact keywords related to your flash sale products to trigger limited-time ads for selected customers. 

3. Highlight The Difference From Regular Sales

Why should your customers buy a product(s) from you now rather than at a future sale? It is important to highlight the difference between a flash sale and a regular sale. You can use bigger discounts or limited stocks as a pulling out to establish urgency among your target customers. 

How Your E-commerce Platform Plays A Key Role In Flash Sales

The most dreaded and, unfortunately, common flash sale failure is when your E-commerce website crashes. It will bring your sale to a complete halt when customers cannot visit your site to purchase or view your products. This problem is not limited to only small-scale businesses, as it can happen to large brands too. 

What is the solution? First, generate a forecast on the traffic expected using the behavior response to the marketing campaigns. Once these expectations are set, you can take the necessary steps to meet the increased demand and prevent crashes. 

Some of the steps you can take are:

  • Load testing your website
  • Evaluating Extra server capacity
  • Adding an ability to scale up on demand

In some cases, you might also consider switching your E-commerce platform. We recommend Kartify, a highly-scalable and conversion-optimised E-commerce platform that caters to businesses of all sizes. 

Essentials such as website building, product listing, sales and inventory tracking, payment processing, marketing & analytics are built into the Kartify platform. It means you don’t have to juggle multiple platforms to manage your store and can handle it all with one centralised hub. 

Want to know more about Kartify, contact our E-commerce experts today!

Conclusion: Turn Your Flash Sale Strategy Into A Revenue Engine

A flash sale can turn into a huge success with increased customers, brand awareness, and revenue. Or it can turn unsuccessful, causing customer disappointment and a decrease in profits. But you can make it successful with strategic pre-planning, preparations, marketing, and flawless execution.

Want to run a successful flash sale? We can help. A Flipkart group company, ANS Commerce is a full-stack E-commerce growth partner that can help you plan and run your flash sales, from marketing campaigns and inventory to customer service. 
To know more, book a free consulting session with us today!

E-commerce Product Photography: A Complete Guide

Are you an online business looking for ways to improve your product presentation? Look no further than this product photography blog! With the right tools and techniques, taking compelling product photos is well within your reach. Here, we share everything about E-commerce product photography – from different types of product photography, to where to look to hire a professional photographer, to tips and tricks to create stunning product photos! Read along. 

Different Types Of Product Photography 

Product photos are an essential part of any successful E-commerce store and can vary in style and purpose. Let’s explore the different types of product photography, from classic everyday shots to more creative and unique ones and how having a consistent look across your product pictures, or tastefully combining different styles can have a stronger visual impact.

Individual shots 

The individual shot is basically a shot of an individual item or product. Here, the photographer will typically try to capture the product in all its glory – from texture, colour and design to shape and size. Product shots can be really exciting for buyers when they’re trying to decide if they want to buy something or not! 

An excellent example is from BoAt in which they have shot the product on a grey background, giving it a clean and elegant look. 

Example of Individual shots in product photography

Credit: BoAt Website 

Group shots 

As the name suggests, a group photo displays a group of items, such as a set of books or clothes. By displaying different ranges and styles within one image, you’re showing buyers that there’s something for everyone in your product lineup!

Here we share an example of how Dermafique displays its different range of skin care products in a single group shot – from cleansing lotion to face serum. 

Example of group shots in product photography

 Credit: Dermafique Website

Lifestyle shots 

Lifestyle shots are a type of photography where products are featured in action with a model. This style allows businesses to tell their customers the story behind their products and show how they can be used in everyday life.

See how Farida Gupta – an online clothing brand uses lifestyle shots for the branding of its handcrafted men and women apparel.

Example of lifestyle shots

Credit: Farida Gupta Website 

Packaging shots  

Packaging shots are pictures of products in their branded packaging. These images give customers a taste of what to expect when they purchase the product. 

For example, Juicy Chemistry provides beautiful images of its products alongside its packaging boxes to give potential customers an idea of the overall look and feel. Packaging shots can be a powerful tool to showcase your product’s unique branding strategy and make it stand out from the competition.

Example of packaging shots

Credit: Juicy Chemistry Website 

Detailed shots 

Detailed shots are a form of photography that helps capture the tiny intricacies that might otherwise go unnoticed in traditional photography. These shots require specific lighting and camera settings, such as a macro lens, to magnify those details and make them more visible. 

For instance, see how Anita Dongre showcases her jewellery designs on a white background so that you can easily spot the vibrant hues and intricate patterns of each piece.

Example of detailed shots

Credit: Anita Dongre Website 

Essential Equipment for Product Photography

For product photography there are a few essential items you’ll need:

  1. Shooting Table – If you’re looking to capture the perfect shot of your product, you’ll need a sturdy surface. A shooting table provides a level, smooth surface and can be used in combination with different surfaces, backdrops and lights to create the perfect photograph. There are a variety of shooting tables available on various marketplaces.
  1. Camera – Professional cameras are great for product photography because they offer high-quality images with accurate colour reproduction. However, you don’t need the most expensive camera out there; any good DSLR will do the job just fine. Furthermore, if you have a good smartphone like an iPhone, then also you are good to go.
  1. Pro Tripod or stand – A professional tripod ensures your photos stay steady and give you the perfect shot. You can use different types of tripods for different purposes, such as light stands and ball heads that let you adjust the camera angle easily if needed.
  1. Lighting equipment (reflectors, diffusers, etc.) – A good light setup can really make or break an image. A simple white background will give your images a natural look, but if you want to add extra drama or impact you’ll need to invest in more specialized lighting equipment such as reflectors, diffusers, etc.
  1. Backgrounds, backdrops, and props – You can use backdrops such as light tents. A light tent, also known as a lightbox, is an inexpensive backdrop that photographers can use to take stunning and professional images. 

Process To Take Professional Photos 

Set up your table 

Once you have gathered all the equipment, set up your table or lightbox to create the perfect shooting area! If you have a shooting table, make sure you choose a white background for better product photos. Ensure that you are close to the window so that shadows don’t invade your frame. A tip is to turn off all other lights as they might ruin the delicate balance of natural light entering through your window.

When you’ve chosen a spot, rotate the set around for different styles–try a 90-degree angle or go for 45. Either way, releasing the power of light is sure to bring striking results and provide you with stunning shots.

How to set up a table for product photography

Adjust your camera 

As mentioned earlier, having a professional camera is critical to successful photography. If you have a DSLR, here we share some suggested camera settings: 

  1. First, adjust the white balance of your camera. You can either set it to auto or to the same Kelvin temperature as that of your studio lighting
  2. Then, depending on what kind of photo you’re taking, choose either a wide or small aperture to capture just the right depth of field
  3. Turn off your flash as you should have already adjusted for either natural or artificial light in advance
  4. Set your camera to use all available pixels so it can create an image with unrivalled quality – select both Large size and Superfine quality settings before getting ready to click away
  5. Set your ISO to 100 for maximum clarity and minimal noise. The ISO of your camera is like the sensitivity sensor – if you crank it high, you get an eye-watering amount of grain in your shots and when you keep it low, you get clean, professional imagery
  6. Lastly, check the exposure settings. If your camera has an exposure compensation dial, go ahead and give it +1 or +1½ for the perfect shot. But if all you have is running man photos to select from, go with ‘Sunset’ – that should do the trick!
Important parts of DSLR camera

Frame your product correctly

Capturing your product at the perfect angle and in the best light can take some time. Make sure your product is perfectly presented by arranging it front and centre on a sturdy surface like a table or lightbox. If it’s an item with labels or intricate design, you may need to make slight adjustments until everything looks just right.

Adjust your lighting 

For quality product photos, good lighting is absolutely essential! Whether you choose natural or artificial illumination, carefully modulating both its strength and direction ensures that you capture stunning images with minimal editing required afterwards. 

If you’re shooting a sunny-day lifestyle photoshoot, take advantage of the natural light that Nature offers! The sun at its peak is when you can get really beautiful, optimal light that’ll make your model or product shine like never before. 

If you desire to shoot during random times of the day, artificial light could be the ideal solution for your needs. Utilizing reflector cards or diffusers that help fill in the shadows could give you perfect shots. 

Click and evaluate 

Now, put your product photography skills to the test! Make sure you get a variety of shots by taking pictures from different distances, angles, and positions. Remember that practice makes perfect—you might need a few tries before you’re really satisfied with your results. Once you’ve taken as many photos as needed, upload them to your computer so that you can view them in full quality. You can use Adobe Lightroom or a similar program if necessary for organizing and refining the images

Use software and editing tools if needed – 

As the last step in your product photography process, use some sort of editing tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Pixlr, or Canva to turn those average shots into images that will exude professionalism. 

With editing or retouching, you can ensure all product images across your website have consistent quality and positioning. You can do colour corrections, remove unwanted objects, and lighting adjustments easily and in no time with this editing software. 

Optimize images for website/online store  

Time is paramount, and every second counts for shoppers who don’t have the patience to wait for a site that won’t load quickly. That’s why it’s essential to optimize images so they look great, but also ensure page loading times are speedy. Big images might look stunning – but can really slow down your website loading time and impact the site SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Also, make sure all your product photos are clearly labelled with relevant metadata and keywords as it helps in improving search visibility!

When To Consider Hiring a Professional Photographer?

Investing in professional product photography could be a game-changer for your business! Not only will the high-quality photos boost your appeal and professionalism, but they’ll also amplify your marketing potential. Here, we share some reasons for hiring a professional photographer: 

Get professional quality images 

Most companies don’t have access to the best equipment and software, which are typically in the hands of experienced professionals. A talented photographer with top-notch equipment is a guaranteed formula for spectacular product photos that will surely wow visitors to your website.

Consistency matters 

With a professional product photographer on your side, they will ensure you get stunning results every single time. Working in unity with you to create a unified brand look across images; the same backgrounds, colours and logo use – which ultimately leads to consistency in branding! You’ll know that no matter what photos are produced, the quality will always be top-notch.

Maximize ROI

You can maximize your return on investment with professional photographers. By investing in quality product shots to create an original portfolio, you can stand out from the crowd and last longer over time. Professional photographers ensure that your photos look as good as they should – so you can get maximum return from every penny spent on your marketing campaigns!

Where To Look For To Hire a Professional Photographer?

Finding an expert photographer within our budget is no easy task. Here are some amazing product photography services that can help you in your search for the right photographer: 

  1. Picnara – This site will help you find the perfect professional product photographer, providing an overview of their past assignments, their portfolio, skills, the cities they are available to serve in and even the languages they speak. You can call or WhatsApp them directly via the contact number given on the site. 
  1. Creative pool – You just need to enter “product photography/photographer” in the search bar on the homepage and it will show profiles of different photographers with some personal information about them, their experience in different sectors, their clients, along with their location and languages were known. 
  1. Upwork – Upwork is a great option for finding expert product photographers. The website displays its extensive listing of talented individuals with ratings, the number of hires and a portfolio to show off each person’s unique style. 

A Few More Tips For Photographing Products Successfully

  1. Write great product descriptions – Product photography shouldn’t be the only thing your customers see when they browse through your product page! Great descriptions can help to draw in potential buyers and entice them to check out more details about the product
  2. Utilize natural lighting whenever possible – It makes the photos authentic and warm 
  3. Experiment with different backgrounds – Adding texture or pattern to an empty background can add depth and quality to your photos 
  4. Test different camera settings to get the best image quality – Altering the angle of light, placement of lamps or reflectors, or changing the white balance on your camera can all produce different results in how your photo looks

Get As Creative As You Want! 

That is everything about product photography! 

Achieving remarkable product photos isn’t something that happens overnight – it’s part of an ongoing process, and you may need to experiment a bit until you get the perfect shot! 

Good photos are a critical part of your overall creative strategy. Whether it is an Instagram post or conversion focussed social ads – you need beautiful product photos everywhere. 

Want to know what kind of creative strategy will give you the best ROAS? We can help. Get a free performance marketing strategy session with our experts and get actionable insights to scale your E-commerce business.

About ANS Commerce 

A Flipkart group company, ANS Commerce, is India’s #1 Full Stack E-commerce Enabler trusted by 200+ Brands! 

From creating your online store, running profitable performance marketing campaigns, managing marketplaces to order fulfillment & warehousing – we do it all to supercharge your brand’s growth!

10 Common Pricing Strategies For DTC Brands

When it comes to making purchase decisions, price is often the deciding factor. Several studies have shown that pricing is critical and relevant to consumer buying behavior. With so many options available in the world of DTC, getting your pricing strategy right can be a make-or-break moment for your business.

In this article, we’ll dive into 10 common pricing strategies that DTC brands can use along with examples of each. Keep reading to learn more!

What Is A Pricing Strategy?

Setting the best price for goods or services is a process known as pricing strategy. This method helps to level prices and margins according to market demand in order to boost profits and enhance shareholder value. 

There are several things that need consideration when selecting your pricing strategies such as marketing aims, business revenue aspirations, target audience, brand placement, and consumer demand. An effective pricing technique will reduce expenses while creating value for your customers; thus assisting with the expansion of your venture.

A Few Things To Check Before You Choose Your DTC Pricing Strategy 

  1. Know the total cost of your product 

Before you set your prices, be sure to know the total cost of your product. If you order products, add up their cost per unit — that’s your cost of goods sold. When crafting each piece yourself, consider the bundle of raw materials you need and how much time it takes to create one item for sale. You can also take into account the following costs, so that your business turn out to be profitable:

  • Production Cost 
  • Marketing Cost  
  • Shipment and Handling Cost
  • Business Cost
  1. Identify your ideal customer profile 

It’s important to note that your hard work won’t amount to anything if you don’t have any buyers. 

It pays to think about your customer’s disposable funds. Some may search for the best bargain, while others have no qualms with parting ways with a few extra dollars if it means getting something of quality. Understanding these preferences will give you a better footing in gauging what prices to offer in order to maximize customer satisfaction!

Thus, it follows that you must calculate a value-driven profit margin, so your product is attractive to the desired target market and makes financial sense for you as well.

  1. Find your USP/value proposition 

What sets your business apart? Finding the perfect pricing strategy is key to highlighting the unique value you’re offering to consumers. Take the story of Tuft & Needle for example: they carved out a special place in the mattress market with their affordable prices and exceptional quality. Similarly, find what sets you apart, and let it guide your pricing decisions to make sure no one has any trouble recognizing how unique your business is!

10 Common Pricing Strategies Used By DTC Brands

Competition-based pricing strategy 

As the name suggests, competition-based or competitive pricing strategy is based on understanding competitors’ prices and using them as a benchmark. Customers often compare prices when making their purchase decisions, making small price differences crucial for success in this type of market.

You can opt to go a few cents lower of the price your competitor is offering, offer the same as your competition, or exceed the prices of your competition to be in the game.

For instance, D2C brand Dollar Shave Club launched the first subscription-based business that sends fresh razors and other grooming products to your doorstep via email.

Yes, a D2C startup came onto the scene, took on a global brand like Gillette, and won with a quality product and a competitive pricing strategy. In fact, Dollar Shave Club eschewed the traditionally high margins on razors and delivered them at a competitive price.

Cost-plus pricing strategy 

A cost-plus pricing or also known as the markup pricing strategy involves charging customers a price that is higher than the cost of producing the good or service.

Cost-plus pricing can be effective when there are high fixed costs associated with production, such as manufacturing materials and labor. By charging customers more than these costs, businesses can increase revenue while limiting their exposure to price risk and market fluctuations.

For example, let’s say you started an online shoes business and want to calculate the selling price of one shoe:

  • Material Cost: $50
  • Labour Cost: $200
  • Shipping Cost: $10

So now, the cost of your product will be $260. Now, you can add a 45% markup of the total cost of the product to have a profitable business. The formula, then, for the total price of the product would be: 

Total production cost ($260) * Markup (260*45/100) = Selling Price of your product ($377)

Value-based pricing strategy 

Value-based pricing strategy is when the price of a product or service is based on its value to the customer, rather than on the costs incurred to produce it. Businesses show the product is premium and exclusive for buyers. 

In a value-based pricing strategy, price is set high enough to cover costs (including variable costs and overhead), but competitive enough so that customers feel they are getting a good deal. This approach may be more effective in competitive markets where customers can switch providers easily.

For instance, fashion lifestyle brand Ralph Lauren often follows a value-based pricing approach. 

Price skimming strategy 

This E-commerce strategy refers to the business tactic of starting off at a high price in order to satisfy consumers who don’t mind paying extra for its products. As other businesses start to join the market, then reduce their prices in order to entice a new, more budget-conscious customer base. 

For instance, Apple is a brand that uses a price skimming strategy, especially during the launch of its latest iphone. It starts off at high prices and slowly lowered prices over time to attract budget-conscious consumers.

A skimming pricing strategy can be a great way to make a lasting profit from your products, but it can also backfire. If you lower the prices too much, consumers who paid full price may get irked and competitors will sense an opportunity to swoop in and imitate your ‘fake’ margins.

Penetration pricing strategy

Contrast to skimming price strategy, the penetration pricing strategy is when the company sets a low price for its new product or service to gain customers’ attention and raise awareness.

It is also known as the discount pricing strategy and works best for price-sensitive customers but is not sustainable in the long run for businesses. This strategy is usually best for brands that are new in the market and want to attract customers. However, there is always a risk of losing those customers once the business increases its prices back to normal. 

Pro-tip: To truly make an impact with your product, emphasize its value instead of the price tag. 

Netflix pulled off one of the greatest feats in pricing strategy history with their ‘penetration pricing’ model: charging a low fee for access to their instant streaming service with subscriptions, they boosted their customer base exponentially and gained an unbeatable market share. In doing so, Netflix managed to establish a monopoly over the industry. 

Psychological pricing strategy 

This marketing strategy has been used by businesses across various industries to optimize pricing and boost sales. It does exactly what the name suggests – targets human psychology to increase sales. 

Take example of the 9-digit effect. Customers see a product worth $99.99 as attractive and a good bargain even though the price is almost the same as $100. The “9” makes all the difference in perception.  

Apart from this, a BOGO offer or changing the colors and fonts of the pricing tag have also proven, in various stances, to be effective.  

For instance see how Indian D2C brand BoAt uses the psychological pricing strategy to up its sales:

Example of psychological pricing strategy

Credit: Boat Website 

Keystone pricing strategy 

Keystone Pricing is an approach that involves setting a price for a product or service that is double the cost of production (or the wholesale price). This method can help businesses maximize their profits while also keeping prices competitive and attractive to customers. It is usually used by retailers. 

Here’s an example to help illustrate the concept. Let’s say a company produces a product with a cost of production at $100. Using keystone pricing, they would price that product at $200 – effectively doubling their investment with a 50 percent markup!

Bundle pricing strategy 

A bundle pricing strategy involves selling multiple products or services together at a discounted price (than the total amount of all the products individually). This allows the business to increase their revenue by selling more products per unit than if each product was sold on its own.

Let’s understand this with an example – a combo meal from Mc Donald’s. The combo includes small fries, a small drink, and a burger. If the customer only wanted the small fries they would have to pay some extra for it separately. However, if the customer buys the combo meal consisting of all 3 items, then they can keep all 3 items for a discounted price. 

Example of bundling pricing strategy

Credit: Mcdonalds 

This strategy is effective because customers value having multiple products in one package more than paying extra for each product individually.

Anchor pricing strategy 

Anchor pricing is a product pricing strategy that businesses use to create a favorable comparison between their discounted prices and the original prices. This way, consumers can quickly and easily see the savings they’ll get when they make their purchase. The comparison can also be between the price of your and your competitor’s product. 

One way businesses show this is by cutting the anchor price prominently and displaying the discounted price near it! You can find this strategy being used by many businesses, in the malls, and on online marketplace such as Amazon. 

Example of Anchor Pricing Strategy

Credit: Ring Alarm

Economy pricing strategy 

An economy pricing strategy is an approach that involves pricing your products low and gaining more revenue through higher sales volume. This type of pricing works particularly well for commodity goods like groceries, drugs and medications, etc. where there isn’t a lot of brand recognition. 

This business model relies on regularly introducing new customers to the product in order to generate the desired revenue.

Again, Dollar Shave Club is the perfect example of a D2C brand utilizing economy pricing, as they outrun Gillette and their pricey razor blades. 

Find The Right Pricing Strategy For Your Business 

There is not one single way of establishing a successful pricing strategy; what works for one D2C business may not be ideal for another. Therefore, doing a thorough research and figuring out which method is right for your product, marketing plan, and buyers is essential.

With the knowledge gained from this article, you can make sound decisions and find the optimal pricing to provide customers with an enjoyable shopping experience.

About ANS Commerce 

A FlipKart group company, ANS Commerce, is India’s #1 Full Stack E-commerce Growth Partner trusted by 200+ Brands! 

From creating your online store, running profitable performance marketing campaigns, managing marketplaces to order fulfillment & warehousing – we do it all to supercharge your brand’s growth!

Want to know how we can scale your E-commerce business? Book a free consulting session with our experts today!

Social Justice Day 2021 | 6 Corporate Social Responsibility Activities Every Online Business Must Indulge In!

Social Justice is not just a responsibility but a path every individual should walk on. Moreover, it’s the duty of each organization to follow norms along with indulging in social activities while helping society as a whole. To communicate the importance of Social Justice, February 20th every year is celebrated as Social Justice Day. 

During the last decade, there has been a constant expansion in digital technology, resulting in an increase in the digital and online businesses. Especially after the pandemic, the dependence in this fast-paced industry has increased. But this has also worsened the growing digital divide in terms of the access of the internet, affordability, and availability of skills. 

“To address this issue of digital divide, the United Nations (UN) has come up with the 2021 Theme: A Call for Social Justice in the Digital Economy.” 

The theme outlines the efforts by the international community to look for solutions to bring about sustainable development, the promotion of full employment and good working conditions, universal social protection, gender equality and justice for all! 

The advent of the internet has brought great vitality to the development of e-commerce. Many small and established e-commerce brands are taking social initiatives to build a sense of honesty in their work culture. 

“Integrating social responsibility to your organization not only helps the society but also fuels your business as it gives better brand recognition, ensures growth, and increases sales!”

To celebrate and embrace Social Justice Day 2021, we have come up with the 6 best CSR activities you should swear by.

6 CSR activities every e-commerce business should swear by!

“Corporate social responsibility is the concept of management, focusing on social and environmental concerns of companies in their business operations.”

1. Protecting the environment against pollution

The environment is the most important part of our lives. All our core life functions depend on the environment. After the inception of e-commerce, we have experienced both the positive and negative impacts of technology on the environment. On one hand, it has initiated the idea of paperless billing but on the other hand, the packaging of products for home delivery demands more paper and plastic usage. 

If you are willing to do something for nature, you must start doing a few changes in your operations. Instead of using plastic in the packaging, go for biodegradable packaging. It will cost you higher, but you can compensate for the cost by manufacturing products with reusable and recycled raw materials. It will cost you less and will be more feasible to carry out your business operations.

Quick Tip: To communicate the same, you can start with social media campaigns, reflecting on the need to save the environment and how you are selling products with reusable raw materials. Nowadays, consumers are looking for more sustainable and eco-friendly products.

2. Joining hands with an NGO

Corporate Social Responsibility is all about companies playing their part in society and giving back, making an effort to associate for a good cause. To support a communal cause, you can also tie up with an NGO/NPO. Consumers love to engage with brands that support a social cause. By launching corporate social responsibility campaigns, you can grab the attention of your users. Cause marketing events make your organization look more credible and reliable. Check your brand’s mission statement and find what you as an organization genuinely care about. Share it with your community. It creates a sense of trust in the minds of the user, persuading them to swear by your products.

Our take: To support the communal cause, ANS Commerce is associated with an NGO called The Earth Saviors Foundation, donating clothes and sponsoring meals to old-age and intellectually disabled people. This initiative not only gives us a sense of satisfaction but also brings a smile to our faces when we see those people getting cared for. 

3. Giving jobs to marginal workers and artisans

Unemployment is one of the major social issues, making people do unethical things such as burglary. As an organization, you can definitely bring a change by giving jobs to small artisans and marginalized labourers. For instance, if you are a fashion and clothing brand dealing especially with ethnic wear, you can hire small artisans for handicrafts. This will give a sense of authenticity to your products both in terms of the quality and the cause behind them. With this amazing idea, you can put a smile on both – marginalized workers’ and consumers’ faces.  

4. Engaging employees in CSR

If you want to practice social responsibility in your organization, you should first pass on the practice to your internal stakeholders. To engage your employees so they feel an emotional attachment towards their work, it’s important to organize fun office activities while promoting a work-life balance. You can also start with buddy programs to welcome new employees to the organization. Furthermore, you can also plan employee recognition programs wherein you can award the best employee of the month basis their overall performance.

Our take: To prioritize the mental health of employees, ANS Commerce introduced one monthly mandatory leave policy to promote work-life balance! 

5. Protecting Customers’ Privacy

With the rapid expansion of e-commerce, privacy has become a major concern of customers as it is almost impossible to complete a transaction without giving your personal information. So it is imperative that your e-commerce platform is secure and provides customers reassurance regarding their data, especially during transactions. Also, after the pandemic, people are preferring cashless transactions over COD. This has raised the need for data privacy even more! 

“Protecting customer privacy is not just a law but a moral and social obligation to treat our customers’ private information safely and fairly.”

Quick Tip: Kartify puts forward multiple layers of security for all the brandstores it hosts. Having come with cloud armour, Kartify enables security audits with regular backup and version control. Request your free DEMO now! 

6. Focusing on Educational Programmes for underprivileged students

Education is not just a necessity but a mandatory thing to improve the quality of life. We see many underprivileged students who are eager to study but are unable to because of their family’s financial instability. To bring a little change, you can support the children by providing educational programs while motivating them to give the best of their potential. Additionally, you can also start with donation campaigns on your brandstore. To communicate the idea, add an option for the donation during the checkout time, making it easier for customers to support the cause.  

Quick tip: You can give free textbooks to the children. You can also hold online webinars and workshops covering social concepts helping them to get an idea of society and its values.

There are many ways to make your business socially responsible. Be sincere and transparent about the information you share. The CSR concept should be natural for every e-commerce company and should focus on CSR activities. 

Now that you know all about CSR, when are you integrating it into your organizational structure? 

Festive Season 2020 Trends: ANS Commerce facilitates 2.5X more festive sales at 25-30% lower cost for its partner brands

In inclusion with sentiments and happiness, the festive season comes with deals and offers for buyers to swear by. But with the COVID-19 still being the reason for the forbiddance of offline purchase, usage of e-commerce websites and marketplaces have increased.

Undoubtedly, the Indian e-commerce industry has surged, especially after the onset of this pandemic. Not only has established e-retailers boosted their businesses over this time, but we can see many Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands entering the market and earning profits. To showcase the same, the Indian festive month has solely witnessed a huge difference in terms of sales figures that e-retailers have acquired.

Covering and comparing all the e-commerce festive trends, ANS Commerce’s report throws light on the sales volume along with new marketing ideas and warehousing trends, its partner brands have followed this festive season. Right from the difference in the sales volume from that of the last year, to new marketing trends including digital products, to segment-wise changes, we have curated a whole bunch of trends for you. So let’s dive deeper and take a look at the festive season sales insights!

Increased Adoption Of Online! How and Why? 

Comparing offline sales and online sales, many rational minds are opting for the latter than the former. To count a few reasons, no contact delivery is the major intention for people to go online. Not only can you get your products on time, but can also avoid the transmission of the virus. This notion has gotten said popularity from online retail brands, especially amid the Diwali season. 

Hoarding clothes and other items was a trend amidst Diwali, but this year, there is an upsurge in the trend, especially on e-commerce websites including both marketplaces and independent brandstores. There is seen 2.5X more sales at 20% – 30% reduced cost with the assistance of marketing optimization, multi-city logistics, and lower order return.

Decoding the Sales: Thousands of offers, millions of sales, and countless excitement!

Let’s unpack the sales volume exhibited amid the festive season. The sales have turned out to be a megahit this year as our partner brands reported to have done sales of ~34 Cr. Gross Merchandise Value (GMV). Enumerating the volume of items shipped this year, brands have pegged shipment volume of ~5.7 lakhs of products this year. The upsurge unravels how new-age digital channels such as D2C and omnichannel have become a necessity for e-commerce businesses.

How was this festive season different from last year?

No one can forget the first four months of this year when there was an absolute fear of the pandemic, resulting in a lower number of sales. But did we ever imagine that this Diwali will bring light and prosperity to e-retailers? 

To add in the facts there is a clear-cut difference between 2019 and 2020. The report counts in the average order size with an increase of ~20% from that of last year’s. From this. you can absolutely sense how individual customers have spread the hype of online purchases this year. 

The major upside to online sales during this pandemic is the non-COD payment option. In fact, there are many brandstores that are declining the option of cash on delivery as cash transfers can potentially become a carrier of infection. This has resulted in a rise of ~58% of the share of pre-paid (non-COD) payments.

“The proportion of orders from non-metropolitan cities have solely increased by ~11%, making a contribution of more than 50% to the festive sales. With metropolitan cities such as Delhi and Mumbai contributing to only 35% sales.”

Warehousing and fulfillment also play an eminent role when it comes to e-commerce sales. With an almost ~155% increase in the GMV as compared to the year 2019 for the same set of brands, it’s quite obvious that warehousing and supply must have played an incredible role to execute the operations. So, talking about the trends, the Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) on brandstore has increased by 20% – 25%, resulting in better depth and breadth of inventory.

Along with the drift, the preference of brands has also seemed to change with the rising number of stock-keeping. To enable simple, fast, and reliable delivery, brands are seen to get fascinated by multi-city warehouses and omnichannel delivery options.

New Marketing trends observed with a special focus on D2C segments!

With sales and warehousing, there’s another aspect to e-commerce that’s been transitioning amid the festive season. Marketers around the nation have come up with seasonal marketing ideas to change the digital attire of their brandstore. Offers and discounts sound like traditional concepts when it comes to incorporating them into marketing ideas, especially in 2020. Each year brands perform something new in terms of marketing, but this year the creativity seemed to go a step further. And, the result has been fruitful as the share of new shoppers has increased.

To head towards victory, marketers, and e-retailers have introduced many digital products to encourage their prospects. This year, there is an upsurge in E-gift cards and warranties. 

The main focus remained on customer-loyalty plans, the brands have chosen to use loyalty programs and payment offers to lower customer acquisition costs. 

Loyalty programs are a great way to engage your customers with you. Click here to know more about it among other ideas to get customers reviews and ratings!

Diwali is the season where you can come up with new offerings as it’s the peak time of the year when people look for new and creative options to gift their loved ones. Keeping that in mind, many new and established brands have expanded their product portfolio and introduced a varied combination of product mix for their customers.

“Brands also witnessed a boost in the sales of gift packs and combos, especially in the dry fruits and beauty & personal care segment.”

Sectors in specific that saw major sales!


We are well aware of festive traditions – buying new clothes is one of them. Like each year, this year also Fashion & Lifestyle continued to win the race as it is the major contributor in sales.  

Health has been a major concern this year especially for new mothers and infants, leading to a spike in the Mom & Baby Care category with 14X.

“Beauty and Personal Care segment contribution has increased by 2.2X as compared to last year, making it the fastest-growing category.”

In the current scenario of washing and sanitizing each item, there is a surge in the hygiene and germ control category itself. The brands under this segment have forced people with their aggressive marketing campaigns to stockpile products such as vegetable wash, surface disinfectants, and sanitizers.

This indicates the fact that this year has been full of prosperity and happiness for e-commerce brands. ANS Commerce has supported its brand partners with brandstore tech, warehouse & fulfillment, performance marketing, and marketplace management. 

If you’re planning to claim your stake in e-commerce real-estate and want to be one step ahead of your competitors, then request your free DEMO now!