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In the current digital era, it is essential for eCommerce companies to give consumers individualized and personalized shopping experiences.
One of the most efficient methods of doing this is with WhatsApp, which has grown to be one of the most widely used messaging services worldwide.
With all its features, WhatsApp can enable brands to address the entire buyer journey of a consumer - no matter where and where they start from.
In this article, we will be looking into ways in which your eCommerce business can use WhatsApp to personalize a pre-purchase journey of a buyer.
This is when a consumer may have stumbled upon a click to WhatsApp ad you are running or a WhatsApp link you promoted on social media, peaking their interest in the products or the deals you have to offer.
Ways to Personalize Pre-Purchase Customer Journey on WhatsApp
Remember, the pre-purchase customer journey may look different for different brands; feel free to use our suggestions as a base framework.
1. Understand Their Needs
Understanding the needs of the consumer is the first step in personalizing the customer journey, be it in the beginning or at any other stage. This entails learning about the tastes, passions, and problems of the client.
Only by clearly knowing their interests and requirements can you strategically work on personalizing the customer’s pre-purchase stage experience.
You can strike up a two-way conversation by using WhatsApp list messages and cleverly gain an understanding of the customers. This is also a great way to get a wider understanding of the general trends and customer preferences when it comes to your pre-purchase stage audiences.
Understanding their requirements will enable you to personalize your product recommendations and shopping support to meet their unique demands.
2. Personalize product recommendations
Taking up from the last line, the next ideal move after gaining enough insight into the customer is to utilize this customer input to send out personalized product recommendations.
You can do this in two ways. First is to send out information on the product they have shown interest in through the WhatsApp catalog or via a detailed message with a video, PDF or lookbook attached. This should detail out the product description, cost and other aspects that can help them make a purchase decision.
Second is to use their interest and intent to start offering personalized product recommendations.
Product recommendations that align with the buyer’s needs can play a major part in converting pre-purchase stage customers into buying customers. If someone has approached your brand just to browse, unsure of finding the right product, your personalized recommendations can make a difference and nudge them towards buying - think about how someone walks into a store to buy a pair of jeans, but when one fit does not suit them, the salesperson immediately recommends another from a different collection.
3. Offer Shopping Assistance
Many consumers can have queries or worries regarding the products they are thinking about buying. Provide shopping assistance over WhatsApp to give customers a tailored shopping experience.
Out of the recommendations that you send out if the customers like something and want to move forward, provide them assistance in choosing the right size, colors, fit etc.
This can also be accomplished by responding to their inquiries, making suggestions, and taking care of any issues they may have regarding refunds, returns or exchanges that you can offer. This exhibits your concern for their requirements while also assisting them in making a more informed choice.
Your brand can convey that your customers mean something to your brand and work at building a good customer relationship right from the outset.
4. Send Cart Reminders
Even though you get leads that are interested in purchasing from you, there is still a high chance that they might not complete the purchase. Customers frequently add things to their shopping carts and then disregard them. And you don’t want to lose your hard-earned leads just like that.
Send cart reminders to consumers who have left things in their cart but have not completed their purchase to boost the likelihood of conversion. You can reach out by reminding them how the product that you have helped them choose is still available, or that they are still in the shopping cart.
To sweeten the deal, you can also automate a follow-up going back to offering shopping assistance to them.
5. Offer Personalized Discounts
When dealing with abandoned carts, there are a lot of paths you can take.
But when using WhatsApp Business API for Shopify, you can utilize personalization to craft tempting discounts to get your buyers back to their carts. You can utilize the data you received about the customer in the initial stages to do this.
Understand why they have abandoned their carts with the help of WhatsApp list messages, and use the data and the info you have on them to personalize a good discount or offer that is relevant and irresistible.
Your offer can be an additional discount on top of any ongoing discount on the product, or it could be a benefit like offering them cheaper or free shipping. With personalization, these discounts will be more in line with what the buyer wants from you.
6. Ask Them about Their Preferred Payment
During the final stages before the customer buys from you, you need to personalize the options and methods they will have, to ensure a smoother experience for them later on.
A lot of shoppers don’t make the purchase when they don’t see the available payment methods that suit them, up front. This is why you should enquire about this early on when the customer has decided on a particular product.
Have a chat with your customer through your WhatsApp eCommerce platform and understand which channel they would prefer to make the payment for the product they have in mind.
7. Send Checkout Link
Spreading out the purchase journey on multiple platforms will seem like a huge task and will throw off customers.
For a smoother WhatsApp eCommerce customer journey till the point of purchase, simplify the process instead of taking them to your website. This can be done by sharing a checkout link on WhatsApp itself to take the order, rather than going through a complicated process.
This will significantly smoothen the customer’s pre-purchase experience. Not having to go through a dreary action of switching between different platforms, customers are more likely to make the purchase directly from WhatsApp.
Personalize Customer Shopping Experience with WhatsApp Business API for Shopify
Without the right approach, it is hard to tailor a good WhatsApp eCommerce customer journey.
In order to enable personalization in customer shopping experiences at the stage before someone makes a purchase, and to do this at scale, you will need to leverage customer data and smart automation.
This is where you need a WhatsApp Business API solution provider like QuickReply.ai. With QuickReply.ai you can personalize different stages of your customer’s shopping experience and automate your WhatsApp marketing efforts effectively.
Book a demo of QuickReply.ai today!
Here we looked at how you can personalize the customer’s pre-purchase journey.
In the next article, we will move to the next stage of the customer journey. We will be looking at ways in which you can use WhatsApp to personalize the experience of a customer during the purchase, i.e., right after they have made the purchase but before the order is delivered to them.
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