How to Make Your Ecommerce Store Appeal to Millennial Shoppers
Millennials (born between the 1980s and 2000s) are not only a tech-savvy demographic that enjoys shopping online, but also the largest generation in the world. In the US alone, they’re around 80 million who spend about $600 billion each year according to Accenture. This is a number that’s hard to ignore. What’s more, even if they’ve less disposable income than the baby boomers, they’re willing to spend on the latest tech products and fashion. In other words, millennials are trendy. Bet you now can’t wait to know how you can make your ecommerce store appeal to millennial shoppers. Well then, let’s get down to it. Want to appeal to the tech-savvy nature of millennials? Click here to download Debutify, an attractive theme with powerful features, completely free! Optimize your ecommerce store for mobile Since millennials mostly use their smartphones to shop online, you must ensure that your site is mobile-friendly. Test it to see whether your content – be it images, videos or text – is not only readable, but also looks great on the phone. It should have no overlaps and missing content. It should also load fast within 3 seconds to avoid high bounce rates. If your site fails the test, tweak it until it is mobile friendly. You can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool to assess your site. Provide a personalized shopping experience This makes millennial shoppers feel special as well as respected since they like to be treated as individuals. You can personalize millennials’ experience by showing them only items that they’re interested in. But how can you determine this? By basing on the previous actions they undertook on your site – viewed products and purchased ones. So when you’re recommending other items they might be interested in or showing them popular items on your site, all of these should be relevant.
Offer discounts, coupons and giveaways
Millennials are cautious shoppers who always look for a bargain before buying any product. You must therefore use discounts, coupons and giveaways if you want to draw them to your ecommerce store. Offer discounts on expensive products, coupons to new users as well as buyers who spend above a certain amount, and giveaways on special occasions like your brand anniversary. For example, by offering a $3 coupon to new customers, AliExpress lures shoppers to sign up and use the coupon. The site doesn’t stop there. It also goes on to offer discounts, and coupons on all purchases even if you need to buy products above a certain price to redeem them. Follow AliExpress’ example and you’ll surely appeal to millennial shoppers. Include user-generated content (UGC) Millennials mostly trust their peers’ opinions over brand claims as compared to the Generation X and the baby boomers. This is because they not only find their peers to be genuine, but also relatable. They’ll therefore buy products from brands that their friends and peers recommend. So display customer reviews and ratings together with customer submitted photos and videos to hook them. This in turn will encourage engagement on your site, and get buyers to spend more time on your site viewing the UGC. Also, by publishing their testimonial content on your ecommerce store, you’ll be assured of free marketing as they will share it far and wide. Price your products competitively Millennial shoppers love a good deal. They always first research the price of the products they want to buy across different sites before they make a purchase. The store that offers the best price is the one they will often buy from. However, it doesn’t mean you should price your items too cheaply because you’ll instead make buyers view them suspiciously. Instead bundle up items if your theme has this feature so that millennials feel that they’re getting value for money. For instance, you can decide to sell a phone along with a phone case.
If your theme, however, doesn’t support upselling like this, you should upgrade to one that does, such as Debutify – the highest converting Shopify theme. Download Debutify today, it’s completely free!. Offer a fast delivery time Convenience, convenience, convenience! That’s what millennials are interested in when they opt to shop online. Fast delivery time influences their shopping decisions, a lot. You may not be able to offer same day deliveries to distant places-something millennials shoppers can understand. But they won’t be that understanding if the product takes more than 5 days to get delivered. When it comes to offering free delivery, though, offer it only to customers who buy products above $100 otherwise it won’t be profitable for your store. Support a worthy cause Genuinely support a cause you’re passionate about. We can’t emphasize enough how much you should be honest about this. Millennials prefer to support businesses that give back to the community, and the world as a whole. Show your support for a meaningful cause, like climate change, helping the homeless or Black Lives Matter on your ecommerce store. Millennials will rush to support you because they want to see their money do more than just make profits. Use diverse and age appropriate photos Many millennials care about social justice and fairness. Therefore, they will only support sites that convey their values. To ensure your store does so, use photos that represent people from different cultures (or races) in the world. Moreover, the photos you decide to use should be age appropriate so that they can relate to them. Use photos with models in the same age bracket as the millennial shoppers. Or go for photos that zero in on the product without showing the models if they fall outside the millennial group. Display high quality product images and descriptions On top of using the aforementioned photos, you also need excellent photos for your ecommerce store. This is because first impressions matter just like you’ve always been told. A high-resolution picture that impresses a customer can influence them to buy the product more than the price and product description. Poor images, on the other hand, will discourage millennials from buying, and also lower their opinion of your site – they’ll think you offer low quality products. Similarly, since presentation matters, you should use Debutify-a Shopify theme with a beautiful design to display your high quality photos and descriptions. Download the Debutify theme for free now! Include engaging videos and augmented reality (AR) Much as images display the product, videos and augmented reality take it a step further. To show how the products really work or how exactly they will look on the potential buyer if it’s clothes they’re buying. This is important because it alleviates millennial shoppers’ fear of buying since they can’t try or test the product they’re buying.
Offer multiple payment options Don’t limit this tech savvy generation to just one or two payment options. This Generation Y (another name for millennials) enjoys having the choice of different payment options that you should support on your ecommerce store. These include credit cards, Visa, Paypal, Google Pay and Apple Pay. Show your trustworthiness Clearly and truthfully state how your business operates in your terms and conditions. Explain what your return and refund policy is, how shoppers can make claims, and offer money back guarantees so that you break down shoppers’ resistance to buying from you. Also, add security badges such as the SSL-Secure Socket Layer Certificate badges above the different payment method logos on your checkout page. To reassure millennials that it’s safe to provide their payment information on your site since they’re fearful of providing their credit card details online. Fortunately, great Shopify themes like Debutify offer a trust badge plugin and help to improve your conversion rates. You can download the Debutify theme here, completely free. Offer a free and flexible return policy Millennials desire a free return policy because they know it isn’t their fault if you deliver a damaged or faulty product. However, if you can’t offer free shipping, offer an affordable return policy so that they don’t feel cheated. More so, the return policies should be flexible enough that shoppers don’t feel like you’re trying to discourage them from returning products. In other words, the policy should offer enough time for buyers to return products. Offer great customer service experience
Millennials demand for the customer experience that they would’ve enjoyed in a brick-and-mortar. Therefore, you need to offer a seamless customer experience when they visit your ecommerce store. Or else they’ll bounce.
Offer live chat so that they can get quick responses to their queries. Also, provide a detailed FAQ explaining everything they should expect from your customer team. Even more importantly, automate your entire site for quick service delivery whereby the site automatically credits coupons and offers a smooth checkout process. Beyond that, since millennials are active social media users, they may prefer to leave their queries on your social media accounts. So your customer team should often check these accounts in order to quickly respond to these inquiries. By doing this, you’ll show that you value your customers, and as a result, appeal to other buyers to support you. Conclusion Optimizing your ecommerce store to appeal to millennial shoppers can help you boost sales. Millennials offer repeat sales to brands that win their loyalty. The above mentioned ways are some of best ways to ensure this. However, all the tips will be useless if you don’t have a high-converting store that you can fine tune to suit your needs. Click here to get Debutify, the highest converting free Shopify theme.