How to Connect With Millennial Shoppers

If you don’t spend every ounce of your energy to capture millennial customers, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Why? The millennial demographic (born between 1980 and 2000) has a lot of offer:

• Their annual spending power is over $600 billion
• There are more than 83.1 million of them in the US (25 percent of the population)
• By the end of 2020, they’ll account for 30% of all retail sales

That makes them the perfect target for ecommerce success. However, to win this new breed of plugged-in, networked savants, you need to understand what makes them tick and how their shopping habits differ from those of other generations.

Don’t stress—you're just a quick scroll away from learning how to target millennial customers so they start to shell out buckets of cash.

Offer A State-Of-The-Art Mobile Experience

Let’s be blunt: you need to provide a superior mobile experience on your ecommerce site if you want millennials to shop from you. Why? 50% of millennials use mobile devices to research products, check reviews, and shop. Fail to catch up with the mobile game, and those young buyers will drop your ecommerce site like a stone and switch to a competitor.

The good news is that there are three core ecommerce optimization techniques you can use to close more sales.

Propel Loading Speed

Here comes another earth-shattering statistic: a delay in page response of one second will slash conversion rates by 7%, so it’s important to make every second count. Here’s how:

• Run a speed test via Google PageSpeed Insights to see how your ecommerce site performs and get actionable suggestions for improvement
• Pinpoint and compress heavy images on your site (if you’re a WP user, you can use the WPSmush plugin for it without sacrificing image quality)
• Improve the server response time
• Fix 301 redirects
• Optimize CSS and JS files

Go Local With Shopping and Shipping

Millennials want a personalized shopping experience. To provide this, start to ask users for permission to access their geographic location—it’ll help you better understand the buying behavior and experiences users want. For instance, once you’ve got the location information, you’ll be able to present the shipping duration based on the person’s locality.

Use a Crystal-Clear Call to Action (CTA)

Did you ever run into a site where finding a CTA felt a lot like a scavenger hunt? You’re not alone. That’s why to draw millennials to your store, your mobile CTAs must be top-notch:

• Use actionable and straightforward language to guide the user
• Make use of white space to make CTAs stand out
• Get creative with color and design without going overboard
• Place one CTA above the fold to avoid confusion

Easier said than done, huh? To take a deeper dive into how to craft CTAs for smartphone visitors, check this Growcode guide.

Create Social Proof

We’ve all heard it: millennials don’t trust online ads when shopping for a product. In fact, two out of three US millennials use ad blockers to avoid them. However, as Roger Maftean, Product Owner at Zety, puts it: "Millennials place a great deal of their trust in recommendations from family, friends, peers, and product reviews left by others."

Need proof? A recent study found that product feedback and reviews have a massive impact on the shopping behavior of millennials. Another survey by Collective Bias found that 70% of millennials prefer endorsements by their peers.

So if you're looking to gain the loyalty of millennial customers, you need to social proof your ecommerce site. Here are five rapid-fire tips:

• Use celebrity endorsements. While you probably can’t afford Jay-Z or Selena Gomez, you can reach out to micro influences with 10k-50k followers on platforms like Instagram and YouTube to endorse your products.
• Streamline your review request process. Ask customers to leave reviews (e.g., on your Facebook page)—preferably with photos—after every delivery via email.
• Display customer testimonials. Request one or two of your happy customers to write you a testimonial and place it next to a contact form/call-to-action button/order form for maximum impact.
• Drop trust seals and certifications. Trust icons help customers feel safe about shopping from you. Consider adding a money-back guarantee or credit card logos.
• Engage with customers on social media. Respond to customers’ questions on platforms like Facebook and Instagram to show the human side of your brand.

Shower Millennials With Coupons

According to Bond Brand Loyalty, 68% of millennial customers said they'd change where they shopped if it meant getting more rewards. That's because this generation is more price-sensitive than others—they love targeted promotions, loyalty programs, and coupons.

Seize the opportunity by introducing an incentive in the form of a loyalty program to increase your sales 11x with millennials.  Below are five quick tips to help you start:

• Know the success factors. Make sure your loyalty program is (1) easy to use and understand, and (2) gives tangible discounts to customers.
• Put the offer front and center. Make sure your loyalty program gets all the exposure it can.
• Spell out the benefits. Millennials want to know what’s in it for them.
• Make redemption of points as easy as ABC. Otherwise, your loyalty program will have the same impact on your revenue streams as a fly on a windshield.
• Integrate rewards during checkout. Make your program work seamlessly with the natural user journey.

Want real-life examples of how major brands leverage loyalty programs? Check this Divante guide.

How do you get millennials to shop from you? Can you recommend a millennial-winning strategy for ecommerce site owners? Drop me a line in the comments—let’s chat!

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