The Rosewood team reviews all they accomplished in 2022

After a relaxing and celebratory holiday break, the Rosewood team are back and busy at our desks in our various offices today, and 2023 is proving to be as exciting as its predecessor. We’re excited for all the amazing projects this new year is bringing and anxious to get started, but first, we’re taking an opportunity to review and reflect on the incredible year and successes the Rosewood team and our clients have shared in 2022. 

Rosewood Grew in Team Members and in Service Offerings

Overall, 2022 proved a productive and fruitful year for us and our clients. Rosewood saw growth in all divisions of our company and reached some fantastic milestones. We grew to over 120 active clients and white-labeled for 5 other agencies. We also started a new nonprofit fundraising platform in collaboration with Graf-Martin Communications. Our Canada-wide team even met up this Fall and spent some quality time together for a photoshoot and day of fun.

Rosewood Rebranded to Serve Our Clients Better

Rosewood saw some exciting changes and developments alongside our growth in 2022. In November we celebrated our seventh anniversary. It’s astonishing how much Rosewood has grown and changed over the years. To match our development, in August of this past year we launched our rebrand with Rosewood 2.0. Our loyal peacock departed for a new logo look and feel. To match the growth of our services over those years, we also took the opportunity to clarify our company core values, mission and vision. Along with that new look, we implemented a new target audience and social media strategy. We’re still growing and changing and will soon be launching a whole new website that better reflects Rosewood’s path forward. 

Rosewood Welcomed a New Account Coordinator

2022 was certainly a year of news for Rosewood. To better organize our wide swath of projects, we implemented a new project management system through Monday.com. That was spearheaded by another new at Rosewood. We brought on our newest team member Paige as an Account Coordinator to our clients and to support Rosewood internally. Paige has been an incredible addition to our team. Her passion and enthusiasm are contagious, and her penchant for planning has been vital for customizing Monday.com’s setup for each division and their specific needs to ensure the utmost streamlining for everyone.

Speaking of our divisions, they also have plenty to boast about for their 2022s. 

Here are just a select few of their wins from 2022:

Websites:

  • Designed and launched more than 25 new websites
  • Completed over 640 updates and requests
  • 18 new clients signed on for maintenance for regular updates, optimal functionality, and high-quality content from our expert web team
  • Developed a new fundraising platform for nonprofits in collaboration with Graf-Martin Communications

Ads:

  • Our advertising team produced a nearly 20x return on advertising spend (ROAS) which also produced a customer acquisition of up to 6x for some of our clients
  • Ads team was able to generate over 7,300 visits to just one of our client’s websites
  • One client’s ads reached nearly 71,000 people, and another was seen a staggering 312,646 times

Digital Media:

  • Created and published well over 1100 posts 
  • Numerous new clients signed up for our social media services to improve their business’ discoverability, reach, and authenticity
  • Successfully increased clients’ reach through social media to develop high-profile partnerships, including two from the ground up

Catch the Ace:

  • Helped nonprofits raise over $500,000 to support community programs

Misc.:

  • We successfully put our heads together to solve an escape room during our team building day
  • Our Director of Digital Media, Georgie, became a proud mother to the first Rosewood Baby (and she’s adorable)

It proved to be an eventful and accomplished year, but we’re even more eager to continue our work and growth into 2023. We have some new services that we’re excited to announce soon. Keep an eye on our social channels for updates. For now, we hope you all are also having a good start to the new year. Thank you all for being a part of this past year, and we’re looking forward to sharing in success this year.

A customer using their laptop hooked in to check out

Social media, email marketing, and online advertising all help drive traffic to your business’ website, but the ultimate goal is converting that traffic to purchasing your products or services. From the moment a user accesses your website, there could be numerous moments that encourage or discourage them from making a purchase. You want to minimize the latter and maximize the prior. Your website needs to make that process easy, straightforward, and even encouraging. It needs to hook customers in, so they check out. Seamless and streamlined should be at the heart of your website’s shopping experience. Here are some essential tips to make sure your webstore is providing that smooth shopping experience.

Make Check Out and Booking Easy

A cumbersome checkout or appointment making process is an easy place to lose customers. For this reason, nearly 70% of carts are abandoned. The checkout process should be straightforward and easy to complete. To start, you can provide autofill, such as for addresses, to simplify the process. You can streamline the rest of process with express checkout through digital wallets like GooglePayApplePayShopPayPayPal as payment methods. All these load a user’s previously entered information for a seamless and immediate checkout. Another huge help is to make the promo code area clearly visible. You can even ensure promotions are automatically added. 

If your business is service based, make it easy for customers to contact you and/or arrange appointments. Only 33% of customers prefer scheduling appointments on the phone, meaning you should provide an online booking system for the more than two-thirds of customers that prefer it. For those who prefer direct communication, you should still provide linked contact information so that an email or phone call is only a click/tap away. Alternatively, you can present a fillable online contact form. Remember to keep it simple, so that users only need to provide essentials.

Getting Their Attention

Browsing and searching for just the right thing can sometimes be a fun treasure hunt, but it can also feel like sifting through dirt. The average user’s attention span for a single webpage is only 8 seconds. If customers do not see that right product or service quickly, they are more likely to leave. On the other hand, when customers immediately see products or services they are interested in, they are more likely to stay and browse. 

There are numerous ways to seize people’s attention. Banners on your home page that show a range of popular and new products or services can initially pique people’s interest. Testimonials and reviews can also help secure that attention. If customers come from an ad, email, or social media post featuring a product or service, it should take them to that specific page. Relying on them to find it themselves could leave them confused or frustrated.

Keeping Their Attention – Make Browsing Effective

Once you have gotten their attention, customers can be inclined to browse. However, the browsing experience still needs to be smooth and simple. Users should be able to easily find and move through products or services that interest them. To start, categories on each page will help customers immediately filter down to their interests. A search with filters is a simple way to help customers find their specific quarry. Showing similar items/services or those purchased together by other customers provides a curated browsing experience. Popups about product stock or deals can also guide and motivate customers to purchase. If they are repeating customers or clients, you can also use plugins to provide them with tailored recommendations based on their purchase history.

A Guiding Hand

At no point do you want a user to become lost while using your site. That can lead to confusion, frustration, and them leaving your website. Provide clear directions for customers to move through their shopping or booking experience. A clearly visible checkout or booking button on the top of every page on your website ensures customers are always only one click away from when they decide to move onto that next crucial step. After customers add an item to their cart, present an unobtrusive popup that confirms the addition and prompts them to check out or continue shopping. Keep call to actions like these as subtle nudges. Large popups or forced redirects can be overwhelming or confusing. 

Getting Their Attention Back

Although many carts are abandoned, that doesn’t mean people have lost interest. Sometimes life gets in the way. One of the best ways to get users back is abandoned cart emails. These automated emails remind customers about the products they have left sitting in their cart.  Personalized automations, like cart abandonment and product recommendations, are extremely effective for regaining a customer’s attention. Their average open rate is over 41% with a click rate of 26%, giving you another chance to hook them in for that checkout.

The Essential Information

Customers and clients will want to know certain things about a product or service. Leaving them to contact you or search for the information on another site will drastically increase the likelihood of them abandoning their cart or booking. Provide the essential details they should know. Measurements, size charts for clothing, shipping lengths, service timelines, and other specifications are all important details customers will want to know. 

If customers approach your business regularly with a question about a product, take that as a cue to add that information to the product or service page. A set of questions you commonly receive about your business or service, such as shipping, should prompt the creation of a frequently asked question (FAQ) section. 

Similarly, reviews are a valuable resource. You don’t want customers to go to another site to find them. Shopify provides plugins that add your own or connect Google reviews. These testimonials tell customers other essential information not provided in specifications, while increasing brand trust and authenticity.

Testing

You shop plenty online yourself. Test your website or have an associate try. User experience (UX) testing is one of the most valuable ways to ensure your online store’s functionality. If something is missing or not immediately apparent in your own run-throughs, that suggests a space for improvement. Similarly, listen to customers’ questions. Some might contact you about an issue with their user experience. That information is extremely valuable for streamlining and simplifying other users’ experience.

There’s Always Room for Improvement

Every moment they leave your site increases the likelihood of an abandoned cart or booking. Providing that optimal experience to help your customers check out requires constant monitoring. Keep your eyes and ears open. If you’re hoping to improve your website’s checkout rate, Rosewood’s web design team knows all the best practices. Our marketing team will make sure your ads are giving users a proper welcome and can also help you set up those personalized email automations that keep them returning.

Deanna busy at her desk.

At Rosewood Marketing, we use the e-commerce platform Shopify to build beautiful and effective online stores. Shopify has a robust toolset that allows it to create stores for businesses of various sizes and types. For small and large businesses, it supports online product sales, brick and mortar locations, service-based businesses, and even subscription models. Shopify also has a wide suite of plugins called apps, that increase your online store’s functionality even further. Most of these apps are free to start and include scaling subscription fees for extended functionality. There are tons to choose from, so to help you find the best, here are our favourite Shopify apps and why you should love them too.

Frequently Bought Together

Upselling is one of the simplest ways to boost sales. We love Frequently Bought Together because it provides immediate and smart product recommendations to those shopping for products on your store. It’s simple in concept yet powerful in practice. It has a wide set of customization tools, comprehensive stat trackers, and you can even create bundled discounts. All of these make this app an easy favourite .

Klaviyo

Klaviyo has swiftly become one of digital marketing bests. It provides an advanced suite for email and SMS marketing that is hooked directly into your Shopify store. Klaviyo provides a wide set of templates that allow for beautiful, branded communications with advanced HTML features. That comes along with a wide set of email and SMS automations that connect directly into your Shopify store. These allow for audience segmentations, abandoned cart reminders, product recommendations, and win-back campaigns that help drive sales.

Privy

Privy is an all-in-one app for your store’s digital marketing. This ecommerce omni-tool provides your online store with on-site popups, email marketing, and SMS messaging. Privy’s email and SMS messaging has similar functionality to Klaviyo, but with limited functionality and support for fewer contacts. It’s better suited to smaller scale communication. It also integrates directly with MailChimp. However, its on-site popup functions are where Privy particularly excels and earns our love. Popups can motivate users to sign up to your newsletter, click on cross-sells, or spin a contest wheel. 

Sales Popup 

Popups help drive conversions by making online shopping more convenient. Sales Popup excels at social proof and creating urgency. It can inform users about a product’s recent sales and amount sold as proof of wider interest. It can also notify a user about limited stock or show a sale to motivate purchases. Just be sure not to overwhelm your shoppers with too many popups. This will make shopping on your online store stressful or agitating, rather than exciting or thrilling.

Zipify Pages

Just like in a physical store, you want to welcome customers when they arrive to your online one. Zipify Pages is perfect for creating elegant landing pages that greet and guide your customers. Along with an easy builder, Zipify allows you to A/B split test different landing pages, create call-to-action sticky buttons, display product carousels, and highlight cross sells. All of these features help a user know they’ve come to the right place.

Smile

Loyalty programs are effective for customer retention. 84% of consumers say they are more likely to stick with a brand or business that offers a loyalty program. We love Smile as the perfect Shopify app for adding a loyalty program to you online store. After an easy setup, Smile can add loyalty points, referral rewards, a VIP program, and more to boost brand loyalty. All of this helps with customer acquisition and retention.

Google Customer Reviews

Customer testimony is important for helping build consumer trust and your brand’s authenticity. 89% of users read online reviews before purchasing a product or service, and 59% of buyers use Google reviewsGoogle Customer Reviews is a Shopify app that adds Google review functionality to your store. It can add a seller rating badge to your website, display product and store ratings on Google shopping listings, and automatically request and collect customer reviews. This specific app doesn’t have a subscription fee. Instead, it only costs a one-time $25 dollar charge to add to your store.

Product Reviews

Shopify also offers their own Product Reviews app. This app adds a review system directly into your store so customers can easily view and leave purchase reviews on items and services in your store. It also includes tools to easily review, publish, or hide reviews. They can even be exported into a spreadsheet. Plus, as a bonus, since this app is developed by Shopify, it’s completely free to add to your Shopify store.

Just the Start

These apps will provide a wide slew of features to your online store that increase its potential to drive sales. You don’t need to start adding all of them now. Consider what features are most essential and beneficial for the moment. Build those up before you find your store loaded with partial features.

There are even more great apps to consider. Shopify’s wide feature set and these powerful apps make it perfect for every kind of business. If you’re Interested in developing a Shopify store, want some help picking your perfect apps, or taking your ecommerce to its highest functionality, contact Rosewood’s web design team. If you need help with Klaviyo or another email service, our marketing team can provide you with stunning email communications.