How to make every customer touch point shoppable

Retailers have done a tremendous job optimizing their marketing channels to drive sales. From shoppable social media posts to live video shopping, brands are making it easier for customers to add items to their cart and proceed to checkout.

But what happens after the transaction is complete? Most shoppers (53% according to our research) feel that the post-purchase stage is the most emotional part of the shopping journey. In fact, the touchpoints involved during this stage — i.e., shipping notifications, order tracking portals — have some of the highest open rates, click-throughs, and engagement.

The post-purchase phase gives brands a lot of opportunities to cultivate stronger shopper relationships and drive even more sales. Failing to optimize these touchpoints means you’re leaving money on the table.

To prevent that, here are 3 ways to make these customer interactions more shoppable.

Use your post-purchase customer comms to drive web traffic

Post-purchase messages like order confirmations and dispatch notifications are some of the most highly-anticipated emails for your customers. With click-through rates as high as 70%, you can bet that most of your shoppers open and read these messages.

Use them to your advantage by encouraging people to visit your website. Rather than sending a generic, plain text email containing the customer’s order information, adopt a branded design. This gives shoppers the opportunity to check out your other products.

For example, 11teamsports. The brand’s post-purchase emails contain links to key pages on 11teamsports’ website. So, shoppers can easily check out what’s on sale, get access to vouchers, or view the latest company updates.

This effort has a noticeable lift on 11teamsports’ sales. The company saw a 19% revenue increase, an 8% increase in basket size, as well as a 3.5% boost in repeat purchases.

Make relevant product recommendations in your order tracking messages

Another approach that can increase post-purchase engagement is making your order tracking messages more shoppable.

This is exactly what Fashionette is doing in its emails. In addition, Fashionette adds related content or products to its messages in order to prolong engagement.

The company also has a rating tool to generate customer feedback. This helped Fashionette increase web traffic and positive reviews. Furthermore, since implementing parcelLab’s solution, the brand has seen a 75% growth in customer web traffic along with a 45% increase in reviews.

Implement a branded order tracking portal

It’s very common for customers to visit order tracking portals multiple times. Industry shows that 81% of shoppers track their orders two or more times throughout the fulfillment process. These pages clearly present a great opportunity to connect with customers. Yet most fashion brands are quick to hand off the order tracking experience to third party carriers and solution providers.

When we analyzed the fulfillment and delivery practices of leading fashion retailers, we found that only 19% offer an immersive, embedded tracking experience. Most retailers (59%) rely on third-party websites. Meanwhile, 22% send customers to a carrier tracking page. ​

Additionally, to drive engagement, choose to host order tracking details on your own site. This helps you to promote a consistent brand experience, while driving more traffic to your webstore at the same time.

Watches of Switzerland recently teamed up with parcelLab to do just that. The company intends to launch a branded order status page to keep customers informed of the whereabouts of their orders, while providing more opportunities for engagement.

How does your post-purchase strategy measure up compared to other fashion brands?

Thriving in today’s modern e-commerce landscape isn’t just about securing those initial sales. You also have to make sure you’re making each customer touchpoint more shoppable, even after the sale is complete.

If you’re curious about how other fashion retailers are handling the post-purchase stage of the shopping journey, parcelLab’s report, Why style your post-purchase experience?​ can tell you everything you need to know.

We studied the delivery and returns experiences offered by the biggest online apparel retailers in the market, and documented the results. ​This free resource summarizes our top findings and sheds light on practical steps you can take to level up your post-purchase strategy.