Despite the headwinds posed by supply chain disruptions of 2020 and 2021, people are snapping up goods online today more than ever before. The internet allows e-commerce companies to reach their customers anywhere, anytime, and from any connected device, even as pandemic fears slow down global economies.
Mobile commerce has become especially convenient, as customers can make purchases quickly, whether they’re on the move or stuck at home. As a merchant, leveraging mobile apps can increase your sales even during a government lockdown. Here are the best apps recommended by some of the best sales training companies to boost sales during a pandemic.
Quick Facebook Chat
There’s a growing trend for social media platforms to take over the reins of customer support. Despite their rampant censorship and de-platforming, Facebook remains one of the most popular social networks. Worth considering is that most of your customers likely have a presence on the platform. With the Quick Facebook Chat app, your customer service team can easily reach your customers directly from their Facebook Messenger inbox.
You don’t need advanced sales training or app development knowledge to run successful campaigns. Anyone with some basic user experience on Facebook can run sales chats. To increase engagement, your customers can like your Facebook page right from the chat window. With Facebook’s app, you also avoid losing conversations with prospective buyers.
The app works on a freemium model. Merchants can join and set up for free but have to pay to access more in-depth features. The app easily integrates with most e-commerce websites. One benefit to taking advantage of is the Facebook autoresponders that kick in when you’re offline. Perfect for keeping the sales conversation going even beyond business hours. There are systems that allow your e-commerce website to improve the process of communicating with customers by being able to monitor multiple accounts on social networks (including Facebook) at once by keeping all the messages in one place.
Zoom Cloud Meetings
Video conferencing has become a critical tool for connecting with your company’s customers during lockdowns. With HD video, team chats, recording, and end-to-end meeting encryption, Zoom is the next best thing to face-to-face engagement.
Zoom’s pricing starts at free for the basic functions. The pro version costs $14.99 monthly per host. Both the business and enterprise versions cost $19.99 per host per month.
Part of Zoom’s popularity is that, unlike other video-conferencing tools, users don’t need to register an account. All your customers and sales team have to do is click on your invite link. The screen-sharing feature helps bring your sales presentations to life.
You can even record a customized video introduction to email out to your prospects. Zoom can also be leveraged to hold virtual training sessions to improve your team’s sales skills while they’re working from home.
Conversio
Email marketing is as powerful as ever, especially during lockdown periods. The conversion widget runs your company’s email marketing campaigns straight from your e-commerce platform. You can automate emails for cart abandonment, sales follow-ups, receipts, and newsletters.
In e-commerce, the more relevant your messaging, the higher your chances of increasing your sales. Email marketing with conversion can help connect with and maintain valuable relationships with customers.
With automation, your sales force can increase sales opportunities through the upselling and cross-selling of relevant products. Automation uses the customer’s past buying and browsing habits to suggest related products. Customers may also leave reviews and testimonials, improving your word-of-mouth marketing.
ReConvert
One way to increase the lifetime value of your customers is to implement upselling, cross-selling, and value selling. With ReConvert you can create a custom order confirmation page that turns your buyers into repeat customers.
The ReConvert app features a drag and drop builder that enables you to customize your landing page. With a quick tutorial, you can add various types of calls to action. For example:
- Reorder buttons to re-engage buyers who have completed their cart purchase.
- Post-purchase surveys for customer feedback and to increase customer satisfaction.
- Personalized recommendations based on a buyer’s past purchases.
- Countdown timers to create a sense of urgency on special offers and discounts.
Better Coupon Box
With more than 51% of e-commerce sales coming from mobile users, pop-ups can be the ultimate attention-grabber. Better Coupon Box uses discount coupons to attract target traffic to your landing pages.
Once you set up Better Coupon Box, potential customers stand to gain attractive discounts when they subscribe or follow.
You can create popups to capture visitors who are about to abandon their carts. The popups also appear when the app detects a user is about to leave your webstore. The app allows store owners to design their own templates to match the merchant store’s theme.
ScreenRec
Actually, ScreenRec is a great sales tool for the pandemic as people can record their cameras and their screens to create personalized product demos.
AfterShip
One of the most critical customer services during a pandemic is reliable and on-time shipping services. While your buyers may understand when there are delays, knowing they can track their purchases can greatly enhance their buying experience to encourage loyal purchasing.
AfterShip offers insightful tracking data in one convenient platform. Merchants can keep grabbing the attention of their buyers through post-purchase talks and also resolve any delivery delays faster. Merchants can also track returns to avoid in-transit losses. The app supports tracking of over 700 couriers including FedEx, UPS, DHL, USPS, and Australia Post.
SEO Manager
In times of lockdowns and isolation measures, it’s only natural that more people are setting their sights on online buying. Yet, if they can’t find your store or products on the web, your company misses out on potential sales. SEO Manager helps your store scale up on search engine rankings.
SEO manager is a top-rated paid app favoured by Shopify merchants. With this app, you don’t need to be a pro SEO specialist with lots of training to enhance your SEO performance. A little familiarization and you can get a handle on optimizing your merchant site on your own. The app optimizes your store by allowing you to:
- Simulate Google results.
- Scan for SEO issues.
- Review and implement SEO suggestions.
- Edit product titles and descriptions.
- Receive advanced meta settings.
- Test Google friendliness.
- Manage your sitemaps.
- Manage and repair website errors.
- Receive structured data for local business.
- See marketing analytics through Google Console.
If you’re using Magento instead of Shopify, a good alternative for SEO Manager is Magento 2 SEO extension by Mageplaza.
Sixads
With competition between online merchants ramping up during lockdowns, having an effective ad campaign could greatly boost your sales. Sixads makes it a breeze for merchants to create and run high-performing ads on Shopify. The app is easy to use, so users don’t need to spend too much time getting to grips with the ins and outs of Facebook ads, Instagram ads, or Google ads.
Within a few minutes, even a store owner with limited ad experience can post their products on the app. Sixads then shows your ad to targeted users on Instagram, Facebook, and Google.
With Sixads, you can choose from a number of paid plans or pick the free plan. In the free plan, Sixads publishes your ads in other Shopify stores selling related products. In exchange, other merchants can also post ads on your merchant site. Sixad connects to work with Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and Google ads.
Checkout Boost
Are you making the most out of each sale opportunity? Sales training advisors often caution that most internet stores end up leaking money. Sometimes it’s through cart abandonment, visitors who fail to convert, or lost opportunities to upsell. The Checkout Boost app is a top solution for companies who sell on the internet to plug those sales leaks and make the most of each sale.
To maximize the value of each of your site visitors, Checkout Boost can enable you to:
- Entice customize to buy more through special offers via their Sales Gamification feature.
- Upsell and cross-sell relevant items to buyers after checkout, and promote repeat purchases.
- Run exit-intent offers to bring back customers who are about to abandon their cart.
- Encourage buyers to share their cart to social media to receive more special discounts.