One of the biggest challenges many online stores face is their inability to strike a chord with their customers.

The reason behind this is not far-fetched.

Most businesses do not have an effective customer strategy when marketing their products on the internet. This can be frustrating for both buyers and sellers. You need an excellent digital experience if you want your business to thrive in today’s world of e-commerce.

Websites are not well designed

A well-designed website is a crucial part of the online shopping experience. It should be simple, clean, and easy to navigate. Responsive across all platforms – desktop, laptop, and mobile device

This will make it easier for customers to find what they need on your site.

Product content is not good enough

Content is the heart of your online store. It’s what will make you stand out in the sea of competitors. To convince customers to buy from you and helps you rank better in search engines.

According to Shopify’s State of Ecommerce Report,

• 86 per cent of consumers take action after reading a company blog post or article
• 69 per cent of consumers report that they visit an online store because they were referred by another website or article

This means that if you want your store to be found on any search engine, you need good product content!

No focus on the customer buying experience

It’s not enough to create a good website. You need to build a great customer experience. Focus on making it easy for your customers to find what they want and feel like they are being listened to.

If you don’t take the time and effort right now, you will lose out in the long run.

Also Read: How e-commerce merchants can capture growth in international markets

Here are some key areas where you can improve:

Make your site mobile friendly

According to Statista, mobile internet usage stood at 4.32 billion in 2021!

So, if your site isn’t already optimised for this trend (i.e. doesn’t look good on mobile devices), then it’s falling behind the competition already.

Be open with your customers

Win over consumers’ hearts by being open about their products before and during purchase. Share details about shipping times or return policies. Do not let customers wonder what will happen next after placing their orders. Build trust levels.

Online stores do not use social media marketing strategically

You might be wondering how the heck social media marketing can help your online store. Well, it’s a relatively simple concept: Social media is an opportunity to reach a wider audience and build your brand.

Social media marketing can also help you share your company’s story with people who have already bought from you, in addition to introducing new customers to what makes you unique.

To start making the most out of social media for your business, consider these five tips:

• Know your audience
• Determine what you want out of your social media marketing
• Set goals for each platform
• Strategise a content plan (and stick to it!)
• Don’t forget about customer support

Email marketing is under-utilised

Build your list and grow your audience through email marketing. Use it to bring customers back to your store, which will increase traffic, resulting in having them buy more from you.

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways for people to receive information about products and services they may be interested in purchasing.

Yet, many online retailers do not take advantage of this powerful tool because they do not know how or where to start their campaigns.

Online stores do not have a unified communication strategy

A unified communication strategy is crucial for any business that wants to communicate internally and externally. This involves the integration of all forms of communication channels.

Emails, social media, live chats, voice & video calls, screen sharing, smart and instant messaging, and video conferencing.

When these pieces are properly orchestrated, you can create a seamless experience for your customers and employees.

Provide a truly omnichannel experience enabling customers to interact with your store using their favourite channels.

Do you know your customer?

This is a crucial first step in any online marketing campaign. It gives you the ability to understand what they’re interested in and what would appeal to most of them.

Understanding your customer base can help improve customer experience, increase sales conversions, and create content that resonates with the target audience.

Also Read: Big wins for small businesses: Supercharging growth with online content

To gather information about your customers, look at their interests and preferences based on their shopping history.

You could use third-party data sources like Google Analytics or Facebook Insights, which provide valuable information on demographics such as age range and gender. It could also tell more about how best to reach them using digital channels such as social media.

There is no conversation with the customer

Customer service is the single most important aspect of running an online store. Simply put, if you don’t have good customer service, no one will buy from you.

But there are many ways to define good customer service. For example:

• It’s not just about answering questions. It’s also about listening to the customer and solving problems promptly.
• Customer support should be proactive. Reach out to start helping them with their issues.

The digital experience is not personalised

Personalisation is a customer service that is very important to customers. Customers want to feel like they are being listened to and cared for.

It’s no surprise that personalisation has become an important part of the online customer experience.

Customers want personalised experiences – from being greeted on every visit or receiving relevant offers based on what they have bought in the past to having access to live chat or 24/7 availability if they have any questions about your order.

Improve your online marketing strategy by following these methods

• Focus on the customer buying experience.
• Provide a live chat feature (web widget).
• Keep building your email list. Do this by using pop-ups, exit intent pages, or other forms of digital marketing methods to sign up.
• Unify communication channels. It’s important to understand where your customers are and what device they use to ensure that you send them relevant information — on desktop, mobile, or tablet.

Key to a successful online store

Find your niche. The more specific you can be, the more focused you will be on your audience, and the easier it will be for them to find what they’re looking for.

The best thing about online stores is that they are there 24/7, so people can shop whenever they want! As much as it’s important to have a brilliant website store, it’s highly recommended to provide them with an outstanding personalised service.

Today’s customers have high expectations for digital experiences online. Bridge them with communication tools that create amazing customer experiences, not only for the customer but for your team.

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Pascale Wautelet, Avery Dennison’s VP for Global Research & Development and Sustainability, discusses the need to nurture startup companies and communities to expedite progress and see frontier innovations thrive.

In 1949, the patent for the barcode was filed by Joe Woodland. It wasn’t until 1974 in Troy, Ohio, that the first item at Marsh Supermarket was passed through the scanner and that now-familiar beep was heard. It eventually came to pass because IBM had invested in the innovation and the prototype process. Sadly, despite working for IBM at the time, Woodland wasn’t credited with the final UPC concept.

While the original intention was to speed up the checkout process in America’s grocery stores, the outcome was to revolutionise the supply chain. IBM’s support of innovation illustrates how groundbreaking ideas can languish for decades if they don’t have the necessary financial support or infrastructure required to bring innovation to life. In the case of the barcode, they also needed a succession of inventions — from infrared to improved printing practices — in order to support the outcome.

Also read: Gen Z is redefining global consumption. Can companies keep up?

More recently — 30 years ago actually — we saw the advent of Bluetooth technology as a result of collaboration between Dutch engineer Jaap Haartsen and Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson. Again, the concept of spread-spectrum radio technology had existed since the late 1930s when Austrian-born actress Hedy Lamarr found time between Hollywood movie shoots to develop the technology that would fail to evolve until a corporate enterprise saw its potential some 50 years later. 

Fast-forward to present day: in such a fast-paced evolution of new technology and highly dynamic market needs, the power of collaborating with external organisations is invaluable for businesses. Open Innovation has become a necessity today, and I see many advantages to making it part of your company’s Innovation Engine.

Supporting groundbreaking innovation

At Avery Dennison, we have established multiple paths within our innovation framework, and our AD Stretch accelerator programme, running alongside our Open Innovation Studio, is one of those. When we think about exploring new opportunities that are further from our core, we need to accept that we cannot be the master of everything. Partnering outside your company gives you access to a much broader pool of insights, ideas, and solutions from different sources that enables you to transform your business faster as you nurture and support innovative talents and ideas.

Also read: Going the extra mile in digital innovation for Singapore’s commuter experience

Another key aspect of open innovation and external collaboration is the ability to boost employee engagement. When organisations are collectively involved in solving the most challenging problems and implementing the best ideas, it fosters strong engagement and ownership and a stake in the company’s goals. Employees feel more connected to the strategy and invested in contributing to company success. Ultimately it is a win-win.

Helping innovators flourish alongside their ideas

As we saw with the barcode, a larger organisation investing in innovation is nothing new — it’s how we’ve progressed through successive industrial evolutions and into the Digital Age. Whereby innovations of old progressed yet the innovators themselves were left behind, today, we want to ensure that not only do the ideas flourish, but so do the ideators.

Also read: 25 years in Singapore: This industry veteran discusses innovation

And now more than ever, we need to come together to solve problems collectively. As history has demonstrated, inviting talented people to the table and supporting their concepts is one of the quickest ways to delivering solutions at scale and solving some of our industry’s most urgent challenges.

To know more about Avery Dennison’s accelerator program, visit ADStretch.com

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by Avery Dennison.

We can share your story at e27, too. Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. Visit us at e27.co/advertise to get started.

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Southeast Asia is a melting pot of various ethnicities — Chinese, Indian, indigenous and western bubbling over four decades.  

However, the outside world doesn’t fully understand the region. People outside the region see SEA simply as a westerner (foreigner) or a local. Worse, most Southeast Asians only know their own country very well but very little about other countries.

The region needs to have a rich view of what’s happening inside to effectively influence policy to communicate outside Southeast Asia. 

A group of venture capitalists and former policymakers felt the need to have a foundational understanding and a shared understanding of the region’s prospects that go well beyond the investing community. 

With this goal in mind, they joined hands to launch a new non-profit.

Called the Angsana Council, the non-profit is committed to increasing the growth and prosperity of the societies and economies in the region. 

Built on strong personal and professional ties, the Angsana Council members have worked extensively in various government, business, education and community service spheres. Its founding members are Charles Ormiston (Founding Partner, Southeast Asia, Bain & Company), Peng T. Ong (Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Monk’s Hill Ventures), Gita Wirjawan (ex-Minister of Trade of the Republic of Indonesia, educator and entrepreneur), and George Yeo (ex-Singapore cabinet minister and visiting scholar at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and the National University of Singapore). 

Also Read: A stroll through Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in Dubai

“The council is the coming together of a group of people that are excited about the growth prospects for Southeast Asia but don’t necessarily feel the world understands,” according to Ormiston, who stepped out of the equity world to be part of the council.

This group of changemakers advocate that technology-enabled disruption will be a vital contributor to the future of the thriving region. Each shares the same passion for the region and resonates strongly with the mission of getting the world to understand Southeast Asia.

 “We at Monk’s Hill thought it is a worthwhile mission to sponsor,” said Ong.

The council does not aim to be a prominent think tank but instead a cosy focus group that has open and transparent conversations about the policy about technology to foster growth in the SEA economy. 

“We expect to reach six or seven more people over the next year to join the council. We will look for people in Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand with similar backgrounds, such that they have been involved in problem-solving but are also intellectually accepted,” said Ormiston.

Understanding the region

Since the 1998-99 financial crisis, the world’s attention shifted to India and China. SEA as a region was sidelined, even though it houses 25 per cent of Asia’s population. Only recently have people started paying attention to the region thanks to tech innovation.

As the council members dug deep to gather data and information for their first report, they realised that not many spoke exclusively about the region. There were specific reports for certain sectors, but none looked at the region and explored its investment potential. 

So the Angsana Council’s first major work is a report. The report — Southeast Asia’s Pursuit of the Emerging Markets Growth Crown: How four factors could step up Southeast Asian growth — highlights the growth potential in SEA despite global economic headwinds.

According to Ormiston, the report attempts to share a data-driven understanding of the region to contribute to its growth.

With this report, the council decodes the question: Why Southeast Asia? Will it talk about different types of technology and how it impacts various parts of the region?

Also Read: The thesis for cross-border e-commerce in Southeast Asia

It is a concrete analysis to showcase why Southeast Asia has been one of the world’s most stable places to invest in the last 25 years. Backed with data and meticulously fact-checked, the report gives fund managers, investors, and VCs worldwide a solid understanding of the region. 

As the council also has former policymakers as members, the report hopes to bag the attention of the government that could enable tech to move faster in Southeast Asia. The report and the council’s work are a starting point for a dialogue between technology-enabled disruptors, tech startups and governments to see how they can collaboratively increase the region’s productivity.

The report forecasts the SEA economy to grow by four to five per cent annually over the next ten years, with Vietnam leading the charge at a projected growth of five to seven per cent. The report’s optimism is centred around two critical sources of additional growth: 

• The growing impact of tech-enabled entrepreneurs (TEDs) on investment, productivity and economic inclusion
• That SEA’s largest trading relationships are with China, and SEA grows as China grows

The report provides deeper insights into factors such as pro-growth policies, stable macroeconomics, vibrant demographics of SEA, the impact of TEDs driving growth and the benefits of remaining neutral amidst geopolitical headwinds.

The council aims to tackle one topic every quarter and dig deep into discussions with experts and research to map out the potential of SEA. Innovation stories of Air Asia and what it did to the aviation sectors of ASEAN countries and local players like Shopee superseding Amazon and Grab are testimony that the region can employ deep tech and novel business models based on a thorough understanding of the people.

“And those are the stories we want to understand and help the world understand better. So that they look at Southeast Asia differently and see the opportunities to invest in this in what we call Tetra Tech-enabled disruptors,” said Ormiston.

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We live in a world of overlayed realities and times. Being pursued by the past, we are striving for the future. The physical world is not the only world where our mind exists and evolves. And what I mean has nothing to do with esoterism or meditation. 

Modern minds simultaneously exist in virtual reality and live a second life there. While parents try to limit their kids’ time on laptops and mobiles, the inevitable reality is that humankind is being “digitized” more with each generation. 

The birth of the metaverse is the natural continuation of the modern world and the technology that addresses the emerging demands of our society. It’s a virtual environment where travel to different epochs and destinations is not a big issue. It’s a world of mixed realities and times, bypassing many limitations of the existing communication tech, online interactions, and business. 

But seriously, what does the metaverse mean? Are we entering the times described in The Matrix movie? It seems that Bill Gates has been heading there for many years.

A buzzword with many definitions

In the broadest terms, the metaverse is an integrated network of 3D virtual worlds that are always on and co-exist in one environment. It’s a virtual space where people can meet, work, shop, club, and do other things they would do in a physical world but with much broader opportunities.

It has three common elements – avatars, a VR interface, and digital ownership, but none of them is essential to the main idea.

Also Read: Will your next dentist appointment be in the metaverse?

There is another definition that explains the significance of the metaverse. Instead of the future, it looks into the past and everyday technologies like mobile phones and the Internet.

The venture capitalist Matthew Ball describes the metaverse as “a sort of successor state to the mobile internet,” assuming that the metaverse will replace smartphones and other means of communication, as we will be able to socialise in a much more exciting reality.

Just like smartphones dozens of years ago, the metaverse is poised to revolutionise our social interactions, economy, and even lifestyles.

The metaverse is not as new as you may think

Is the metaverse new? Briefly, no. Most say that the concept has fallen out of the pages of the cyberpunk novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson where he used the term to describe the imagined future world far back in 1992. 

As the unnamed theory of the future, the metaverse has existed in the corporate visions of many companies. In the ’90s, U.K. grocery chain Sainsbury’s created a VR shopping demo that is very similar to a video released by Walmart in 2017. Besides marketing pieces, several metaverse-like projects were created quite some time ago. 

The first and closest to the metaverse project is an online multimedia platform, “Second Life”, launched in 2003. It’s a virtual world with its own in-game economy and currency that can be traded for real money.

Users are presented by their avatars there. It’s the virtual space where people enjoy immersive real-world experiences, produce their own content, create and trade services, and more. Many call Second Life a “textbook to the metaverse” since this game reflects all the main ideas of the metaverse.

Who does rule the metaverse?

Even though metaverses are mostly built as anarchic, community-driven environments that operate on the principle of civility, there is a place for the law aimed to eliminate risks coming from malefactors. Just like in any other world, there is the good, the bad, and the law that regulates it.  

At the given moment, the creator of every single metaverse controls it and states its own laws in terms of service you must read and accept before entering the space. Besides standard law applied to the entire metaverse, there can be specific rules developed for each virtual district, and it’s the user’s responsibility to explore them and follow them.

Since the industry is very new, there is no unified law for all metaverses. However, it’s definitely on the way. The metaverse lawyer will become one of the most prestigious professions soon. The more people will buy a virtual property and integrate their businesses into a new virtual world, the greater will be the demand for legal regulations.

The expansion of life

Real estate

Hanging out with avatars and playing in virtual spaces is not the only reason this development is so interesting.

The digital hills of the metaverse have gold ‘bonanza’ veins.

Also Read: Fostering emotional companionship in the metaverse

Right now, we’re amid a virtual land grab. Thousands of people are buying and building virtual parcels. Some of them are just holding them to trade them to the highest bidder later. This is what speculators will be banking on. 

Business

More entrepreneurs are becoming interested in expanding their businesses to the metaverse, as it opens endless opportunities for reaching broader audiences, immersive marketing/shopping experiences, and eliminating geolocation restrictions. 

Furthermore, the metaverse is a versatile space offering extra monetisation opportunities for many businesses and industries.

In January 2022, Samsung launched its first metaverse store in Decentraland. Coca-Cola launched a collection of branded NFTs that can be used across the universe for avatars, and that was won at the bidding amount of over US$575,000. We will see many more examples soon. 

Personalisation

Another speculative market is personalisation which refers to everything related to users’ avatars and their neighbourhoods, starting from clothes, interior design, and animations to digital art and more.

Users will spend on it as much as they care about what others think of them in the metaverse. And the significance of self-expression in the metaverse will surely grow, starting from wealthier and tech-savvier social classes and expanding further, becoming more accessible for everyone over time. 

Socialisation

The way we socialise has changed a lot after the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns. Skype birthdays and FaceTime drinks have become the norm. Kids are being brought up on apps like TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram.

Virtual socialisation has become very common, and it’s another aspect the metaverse is revolutionising too. In this new techno-utopian world, you can feel like an individual and an organic part of an impressive environment simultaneously. There is no judgement for your self-expression and free speech, as you can remain anonymous. 

Whether you are attending virtual concerts with favourite celebrities, NFT exhibitions of famous artists, escape rooms, or even group meditations – the metaverse empowers us to socialise and acquire new experiences that have been previously impossible. 

Music, entertainment, finance, fashion, travel, e-commerce, and other industries are moving toward the metaverse to collaboratively build a more inclusive and democratic environment that will allow average users to interact, shop, and learn at a whole new level. They are building a second Life.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

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