We’ve all been there before. We’ve found ourselves browsing the internet and come across a great-looking online store we simply couldn’t resist. We clicked around, browsed products, read descriptions and reviews, confidently added items to our cart and checked out. We smiled in satisfaction upon receiving an instant confirmation that our new purchase was being prepped for shipment right to our door. Throughout this whole process, we never stopped to take note of the intuitive and intelligent design that made our shopping experience so easy and delightful.
News
Appliance standards are a hot issue in our current energy efficiency landscape. According to the 2018 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), states have historically led the way in establishing standards for appliances and other equipment.
When you sell goods in an online store, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. But Google Shopping Ads have been growing in popularity and effectiveness because they can help utilities identify good leads for online stores or marketplaces.
A potential buyer who clicks a Google Shopping Ad has already proven his or herself to be an interested customer because they've sought out the product by typing in a related search term. At the top of the Google results page, Google Shopping Ads serve up images and prices of relevant items. With the low instant rebate pricing in utility-based online stores, products get special placement, and ads can be controlled so they're only shown to shoppers in your service territory. Since only the most relevant and motivated shoppers see these ads, they’re extremely effective at driving online purchase conversions. Even if customers don’t buy immediately, they are more likely to return at a later time after seeing a Google Shopping Ad, especially if you pair them with Google Display Ads tied to remarketing code on your online store.
In urban and suburban areas, utility customers have multiple ways they can conserve power and save on their energy bills. They have a median energy burden of 3.3%. But this is not the case in rural areas. Americans in rural, low-income areas spend a higher percentage of their incomes on their energy bills, with a median energy burden of 4.4%, a number nearly three times higher than their urban counterparts.
It makes sense that an online store that sells clothing, furniture or other highly visual consumer goods needs photos of those items to engage customers. But online stores that market energy-efficiency products also need high-quality images.
A picture is worth a thousand words. This is particularly true in today’s world of smartphones, Instagram and online marketing.
AM Conservation Group's director of marketing strategy, Danielle Marquis, will be presenting at the upcoming ACEEE Summer Study about an interesting pilot program aimed at meeting aggressive energy savings goals for a hard-to-reach sector, small business customers. This pilot program provides an opportunity for even the smallest businesses, or those in remote areas, to participate in an energy efficiency program.
To turn more website visitors into customers, it’s best to follow industry-recognized best practices for your online store product pages. Mastering these should increase your conversion rates.
“If you build it, they will come,” may be true for baseball—but not for your online store. In the competitive and constantly changing world of e-commerce, overlooking new technologies and trends means your store will likely get more strike-outs than hits with customers.
E-commerce specialist BigCommerce talked with 31 e-commerce experts about what they’re focusing on in 2018. In some of these areas, utilities are already ahead of the game because they know who their customers are and how to reach them. But in other aspects, utilities could learn from online retailers in other fields.
Marketing plays a crucial role in the success of your online store. Without it, sales dwindle and growth stagnates. It doesn’t take long for online store owners to realize that they need to keep marketing if they want to keep their sales up.
The good news is, there are a ton of ways to market your online store. The bad news? Most of them are time-consuming. From being active on social media to running promotions—it can feel like a never-ending job. All it takes is a small lull in your marketing for sales to drop.
