Standing out and building a community of loyal fans is hard, and it’s even harder after the surge online shopping had in 2020. The mammoth amount of competition out there is constantly fighting for even the tiniest slice of ecommerce action.

To gain a competitive edge, brands must put their customers first.

In fact, companies voted customer experience as the most exciting opportunity for businesses over the next year, and it makes sense. Why? It’s because the customer experience drives sales. Research shows that brands with a customer experience mindset drive revenue 4-8% higher than the rest.

When your customers have a bad experience, it can wreak havoc on a brand and dramatically affect the bottom line. The problem is, it can be tricky to improve, especially if you don’t know where to start or what your customers actually want. This is where those customer reviews come into play

Not only do they help bolster customer support best practices, but these powerful assets give you a deep understanding of your customers — something that DTC brands are leveraging to the max. Customer-centric brands like Born Primitive, Beardbrand, Bombas, Tuff Wraps, and WAG are nailing customer experience by tapping into reviews and using them to leverage the buyer journey.

Read on to learn how reviews and UGC are helping brands create a 5-star customer experience. 

Reduce the risk of returns 

A clothing brand isn’t going to know how a jacket sits on every single body type, and they’re certainly not going to include this information in their product descriptions. Unfortunately, this can be a sticking point, especially since online shoppers aren’t able to try on products before they buy. 

This unsurprisingly leads to more returns (while in-store returns are around 8%, online returns hover around 25%).  

There’s a solution though, by strategically using reviews and UGC, brands can provide online shoppers with in-depth insights to help customers get exactly what they’re looking for. This is particularly essential for brands that use reviews with additional product and customer attributes, like shopper size and product color or type. 

Born Primitive does exactly this, sharing customer attributes and photos alongside reviews to help buyers get an idea about how items might look on them. 

Improve products and procedures 

Your products are the crux of your business. 

Fail to get your products right, and you’ll struggle to grow a flourishing business. This is one of the most important customer support tips for Shopify merchants — know thy customer and give them what they want. 

 Brands can fuel product development and internal procedures with customer feedback to continue to optimize the customer experience, all you need to do is listen.

 Using real-life feedback from buyers to improve how they view and buy products, as well as the products themselves, ties into the customer-centric vision that successful DTC brands share. It also shows your customers that you’re an honest, and transparent brand working to give them the best product and best experience.

 Take LSKD, for example. They’re using customer reviews to improve their products and to better align with customer wants and needs. The brand uses Okendo to capture reviews, respond to them, and gather crucial customer feedback. 

In fact, the brand’s popular Rep Tights have been molded over the years by customer feedback to ensure they take on the attributes buyers are looking for. Through reviews, customers are able to share their thoughts on specific product points to fuel development. 

Involving customers in this part of the process creates a community around a brand, and ensures you’re giving customers what they want. 

And think about it: if a brand is giving customers everything you need, why would they go elsewhere? 

Provide personalized and efficient customer support 

Support and customer experience go hand-in-hand. If customer support is good, the customer experience tends to be good too. 

Creating a good customer support experience is all about streamlining responses and separating those easy-to-answer questions from more complex ones. Brands can use reviews to automate commonly asked questions and personalize support based on the type of review a customer has given. 

On a more basic level, reviews help retailers identify customers who might be experiencing problems with their order. This, in turn, allows brands to address and resolve issues by responding to customer reviews, turning the experience from bad to good in a matter of minutes. Which can end up saving a company from hitting a bit of a rough patch, or issue with further customer responses.

Tuff Wraps regularly replies to less-than-stellar reviews with extra information and an email address that customers can use to get in touch with support. This can help customers feel seen and heard and completely turn around what was initially a poor experience. Combining reviews and customer support in this two-pronged approach aligns with the common best practices for customer support on Shopify.  

 If you’re experiencing this issue with customers leaving negative reviews, we’ve got something that might help. With Gorgias’ integration with Okendo, you’re able to diagnose these problems and handle them seamlessly from a single dashboard. By leveraging this integration, merchants gain full visibility on customer reviews and their support history.

Use reviews to carve a better customer experience 

 As many of us know, reviews are key to creating a positive customer experience, especially when they form such a crucial part of the buying journey. Shoppers actively seek out peer reviews before they buy to get a better understanding of a product.

 This is where Okendo can come in again, since it encourages customers to leave reviews complete with visuals and helpful attribute information. You can then use the reviews that come rolling in to glean valuable insights into the customer experience and identify ways to improve your products and the overall experience for your buyers.

Signup to Gorgias and leverage reviews to create a 5-star customer experience.

The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated the move from offline to online in retail. This got us busier than ever supporting our merchants, new and old, to ensure we help them work towards providing exceptional customer service. 

The latest example of this is Black Friday and Cyber Monday, where Shopify saw an uptick of 75% GMV when compared to last year.

As a result of this huge ecommerce spike, 2020 has been a massive year for Gorgias.

At the beginning of the year, we had just 30 people on our team and now, we’re sitting at over 100 incredible people working each and every day to help serve 5,000+ merchants.

The reason our team grew so much this year is to support the growth of our merchants. 

Throughout the year, order volume has massively increased and therefore, lots of customers have been contacting businesses through customer service. We went from having 2 million support requests a month on Gorgias to 6 million during the holiday season. 

So today, we’re announcing a $25m series B lead by Rajeev Dham at Sapphire Ventures, with participation of Jason Lemkin (SaaStr), François Meteyer (Alven) and other historic investors. 

What’s our goal with this round?

We want to accelerate our progress towards our mission to transform support from painful to exceptional for merchants.

We asked our merchants and learned that they have the following needs: first they want their support to be fast and high quality, then they want to optimize their cost, and once they’ve done that, they are willing to shift the way they think about support to make it a profit center. 

In 2021, we want to focus on the top questions our merchants are getting, which account for 60% of the support volume. By empowering support agents to respond faster to these frequent questions, we’re aiming at reducing first response time for our merchants and at increasing the quality of their support. This will free up agents time so that they can focus more on the more complex questions their customers are asking. 

How are we going to do this? 

• We’re building a help center so customers can self serve and find immediate answers to their most common questions
• We’re going to work on becoming a platform so that third party developers can integrate with Gorgias and provide more value to agents
• We’re improving our macro suggestions so that agents spend less time typing repetitive text and more time on custom responses
• We’re also adding new channels, including Instagram DMs, Whatsapp, phone and others

You can learn more about our next quarter roadmap here. 

Looking further ahead into the future, our goal is to change the role of support from responding to customers’ issues to helping the business grow.

2021 is going to be a new chapter for us. With this round, we’re going to double our team to 200 people across all our hubs, in San Francisco, Belgrade, Paris, Charlotte, Toronto and Sydney. 

If you’d like to join the adventure and help us improve the daily lives of 3 million support agents in the US (and more worldwide), we’re hiring aggressively in all these locations. 

I want to thank our amazing team for helping build a company that has an impact on 60 million customers yearly, and the 5000 merchants who’ve decided to use our product every day. 

The adventure continues, we’re more excited than ever! 

Alex & Romain

TL;DR:

• An ecommerce business plan is your roadmap for launching and scaling an online store
• Include seven core sections: executive summary, company overview, market analysis, products/platform/operations, go-to-market strategy, financial projections, and goals
• Use the plan to validate your business idea, secure funding, and guide day-to-day decisions
• Download our free template to streamline the process
• Real examples show how brands structure their plans to attract investors and drive growth

What is an ecommerce business plan?

An ecommerce business plan is a detailed document that outlines your online store's goals, strategies, and operational details, including market analysis, target customers, products, marketing, and financial projections.

Think of it as both an internal roadmap and an external document for investors.

It guides your day-to-day decisions. It also shows potential partners or lenders where your business is headed and how you'll get there.

What makes an ecommerce business plan different from a traditional retail plan? The emphasis on digital infrastructure. Your plan must address your ecommerce platform, online fulfillment, and digital marketing. You also need to explain how you'll create a seamless online customer experience.

The document typically covers your business model, unique selling points, go-to-market strategy, revenue model, and competitive advantage.

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Why you need an ecommerce business plan

The business world can be harsh and unforgiving. About 45% of businesses fail in the first five years and only 25% of them are still operating after 10 years. A solid business plan helps you beat those odds.

Here's why creating one matters:

• Validate your business idea and identify potential problems
• Secure funding: Investors and lenders require a comprehensive plan that demonstrates your understanding of the market and your path to profitability
• Guide strategic decisions: Your plan serves as a reference point when you face tough choices about product development, marketing spend, or hiring
• Align your team: A clear plan ensures everyone understands the company's vision, goals, and their role in achieving them
• Identify risks: The planning process helps you conduct risk assessment, gather customer insights, and develop contingency plans for various scenarios

According to research from Wiley Online Library, startups with a business plan grow 30% faster. A separate Harvard Business Review study found they are also 16% more likely to succeed.

source: toptotal.com

Executive summary

The executive summary is the last part you'll write, but the first section that anyone reading your business plan will see. It's essentially a one-page synopsis that captures the most important details from every other section.

Your goal is to grab your reader's attention and convince them it's worth their time to read the entire document. Think of it as your elevator pitch in written form.

Keep your executive summary to one or two pages maximum and include:

• Your mission statement and what makes your business unique
• Your target market and the opportunity you're addressing
• Your competitive advantage and how you differentiate from alternatives
• Key financial highlights and revenue model
• Funding requirements and how you'll use the capital
• Major milestones and go-to-market strategy

Value proposition and goals

Your value proposition answers a fundamental question: Why should customers choose you? Start by clearly articulating the problem your store solves. Are you making sustainable products more accessible? Offering faster delivery than competitors? Providing expert curation in a crowded category?

Next, define your unique selling proposition (USP) — the specific differentiation that sets you apart.

Then outline your goals using SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound):

• Short-term goals (first year): Launch your store, reach a specific revenue target, acquire your first thousand customers, achieve a target conversion rate
• Long-term vision (three to five years): Expand product lines, enter new markets, reach profitability, build a sustainable competitive advantage

Company overview

Your company overview provides vital details about your ecommerce business structure and team. It typically appears as the second section, right after the executive summary.

Include these essential elements:

• Business name and brand identity: Your legal business name and the story behind your brand
• Legal structure: Whether you're operating as an LLC, S Corporation, sole proprietorship, or partnership
• Mission statement and core values: Why your business exists and the principles that guide your decisions
• Ownership structure: Who owns the company and what percentage each owner holds
• Management team: Key players and their roles, along with an organizational chart showing reporting relationships
• Company history: If applicable, how your business started and major milestones you've achieved

Mission, team, and legal structure

A compelling mission statement serves as an existential justification for why your business exists. In a few sentences, explain your purpose and what you strive to accomplish. The best mission statements are clear, memorable, and inspiring—both for external readers and as an internal reminder of your company's values.

When highlighting your team, focus on the key roles that matter most to investors: founder, executives, advisors, and any team members with particularly relevant expertise. Paint a picture that showcases their professionalism and finest skills.

Choosing the right legal structure affects your taxes, liability, and paperwork requirements. Here are the most common options:

• Sole proprietorship: Simplest structure but offers no personal liability protection
• LLC (Limited Liability Company): Protects personal assets while offering tax flexibility
• S Corporation: Allows you to avoid double taxation while still protecting personal assets
• Partnership: Two or more owners sharing profits, losses, and responsibilities

Consider consulting the Small Business Administration's guide to entity selection for detailed guidance on permits, licenses, and obtaining your Employer Identification Number (EIN).

Market analysis

This section demonstrates both your expertise and provides a thorough analysis of your market opportunity. You need to show that you deeply understand who operates in your space—both in terms of competition and consumers.

Your market analysis should cover:

• Industry overview: Current trends, growth rate, and future outlook for your category
• Target market definition: Demographics, psychographics, and behaviors of your ideal customers
• Market sizing: Total addressable market (TAM), serviceable addressable market (SAM), and serviceable obtainable market (SOM)
• Buyer personas: Detailed profiles of your ideal customer segments
• Competitive landscape: Who your competitors are and how you'll differentiate
• SWOT analysis: Your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

Target market

Never assume that everyone will want to buy your products. The most successful ecommerce businesses have a crystal-clear understanding of their target market.

Define your ideal customer using segmentation across three dimensions:

• Demographics: Age, location, income level, education, gender, occupation, and family status. For example, "Women aged 25-40, living in urban areas, with household incomes above $75,000."
• Psychographics: Values, interests, lifestyle preferences, and pain points. What keeps them up at night? What do they care about? What problems are they trying to solve?
• Buying behaviors: How frequently do they purchase? What channels do they prefer? What triggers a purchase decision? How much research do they do before buying?

Use this research to create two to three detailed buyer personas that represent your ideal customer segments. Give each persona a name, photo, and backstory. The more specific you can be, the better you'll be able to tailor your marketing and product development.

Competitive landscape (including SWOT)

You need to know who's thriving in your niche and why. Identify both direct competitors (businesses selling similar products to the same audience) and indirect competitors (alternative solutions to the same problem).

For each major competitor, analyze:

• Their strengths and weaknesses
• Pricing strategy and positioning
• Marketing channels and messaging
• Customer reviews and complaints
• Market share and growth trajectory

The more you know about your competition, the better you'll be able to identify your competitive advantage and position yourself to stand out.

Next, conduct a SWOT analysis for your own business:

• Strengths: Internal advantages (unique technology, experienced team, exclusive partnerships, superior product quality)
• Weaknesses: Internal limitations (limited capital, small team, lack of brand recognition, supply chain constraints)
• Opportunities: External factors you can capitalize on (growing market, emerging trends, underserved segments, new technologies)
• Threats: External challenges (new competitors, changing regulations, economic downturns, shifting consumer preferences)

This framework helps you understand your market positioning and identify barriers to entry that protect your business from new competitors.

Products, platform, and operations

This section brings together three critical elements of your ecommerce business: what you're selling, how you're selling it, and how you'll deliver it to customers. These components need to work seamlessly together for your business to succeed.

Product-market fit is essential—your products need to address real customer needs in a way that's meaningfully different from existing alternatives. But even the best product will fail without the right platform and operational infrastructure to support it.

Products and pricing

Start by clearly describing what you're selling. Are you offering physical goods, digital products, services, or a combination? Explain the key benefits and features of each product line.

Your products need to address a need that customers have or opportunities in the market. Show how they differ from competitors' products and highlight why potential customers will choose yours over other options.

Consider any intellectual property considerations—do you have patents, trademarks, or proprietary processes that protect your competitive advantage?

Your pricing strategy directly impacts your unit economics and profit margins. Here are the most common approaches:

• Cost-plus pricing: Calculate your cost of goods sold (COGS) and add a markup percentage
• Competitive pricing: Set prices based on what competitors charge for similar products
• Value-based pricing: Price according to the perceived value customers receive, not just your costs
• Tiered pricing: Offer multiple price points for different product versions or bundles

Calculate your gross margin (revenue minus COGS) for each product to ensure you're building a sustainable business model. Factor in all costs including materials, manufacturing, packaging, and shipping.

Ecommerce platform and website

Your ecommerce platform is the foundation of your online store. The right choice depends on your technical expertise, budget, and growth plans.

Popular platform options include:

• Shopify: User-friendly, hosted solution with extensive app ecosystem
• BigCommerce: Robust features for scaling businesses with complex catalogs
• WooCommerce: WordPress plugin offering maximum customization for technical users
• Custom build: Complete control but requires significant development resources

Beyond platform selection, your plan should address:

• Website design and user experience: How you'll create an intuitive, mobile-responsive storefront
• Checkout optimization: Strategies to reduce cart abandonment and increase conversion rates
• Payment gateways: Which payment processors you'll use and how you'll ensure secure transactions with SSL certificates
• SEO and performance: How you'll optimize your site for search engines and fast loading times

Logistics and fulfillment

Operational excellence can make or break an ecommerce business. Your plan needs to demonstrate that you understand the process it takes to source, store, and deliver products.

Supplier relationships: Will you manufacture your own products, work with wholesalers, use private label manufacturers, or operate a dropshipping model? Explain your sourcing strategy and any key partnerships.

Inventory management: How much inventory will you keep on hand? What's your approach to tracking stock keeping units (SKUs), managing inventory turnover, and planning for lead times? Consider implementing an order management system as you scale.

Fulfillment models:

• In-house fulfillment: You handle warehousing, packing, and shipping from your own location
• Third-party logistics (3PL): Outsource fulfillment to a specialized provider
• Dropshipping: Suppliers ship directly to customers without you holding inventory

Shipping strategy: Which carriers will you use? Will you offer free shipping, flat-rate, or calculated rates? How will you handle last-mile delivery? What about international customers?

Returns and exchanges: Outline your process for handling returns, including who pays for return shipping and how quickly you'll process refunds or exchanges.

Go-to-market and financial plan

This section brings together your marketing, sales, and financial strategies into a cohesive plan. These elements are deeply interconnected—your marketing strategy drives customer acquisition, which generates revenue, which needs to exceed your costs for the business to succeed.

Your go-to-market approach will determine whether your business experiences massive growth or stagnates. You need to identify how you'll promote your products, attract leads, retain customers, and ultimately achieve profitability.

Marketing channels

Start with your positioning and brand messaging. How will you communicate your value proposition across different channels? What makes your brand memorable and distinct?

Then outline your acquisition channels and how you'll use each one:

• Paid advertising: Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram ads, TikTok, display advertising
• Search engine optimization (SEO): Organic visibility through content production, keyword targeting, and link building
• Content marketing: Blog posts, videos, podcasts, and other educational content
• Social media: Organic and paid social across platforms where your audience spends time
• Email marketing: Segmented campaigns to nurture leads and drive repeat purchases
• Influencer marketing: Partnerships with creators who reach your target audience
• Affiliate marketing: Commission-based partnerships with publishers and content creators

For each channel, define your customer acquisition cost (CAC) targets and lifetime value (LTV) goals, along with customer service metrics that impact retention. A healthy ecommerce business typically aims for an LTV to CAC ratio of at least three to one.

Identify the marketing tools and technology you'll need, from email platforms to attribution software. Plan to track key metrics like conversion rate, click-through rate, and engagement across all channels.

Consider implementing a customer loyalty program to retain customers and increase repeat purchase rates. Options include point-based systems, tiered programs, paid memberships, or progress-based rewards.

Sales plan and launch

Your sales strategy outlines how you'll convert interest into revenue. Will you focus exclusively on direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales through your website, or will you also sell through marketplaces like Amazon, or pursue wholesale partnerships with retailers?

Map out your sales process from a shopper's first interaction to their final purchase. How will you generate leads? What touchpoints will customers experience before buying? How will you nurture prospects who aren't ready to purchase immediately?

Create a detailed launch timeline with specific milestones:

• Website development and testing completion
• Inventory arrival and quality control
• Marketing campaign preparation
• Soft launch to test systems
• Official launch and promotional activities
• Post-launch optimization and iteration

If you're building a sales team, outline the structure and roles. What customer relationship management (CRM) tools and sales enablement resources will they need? How will you set quotas and measure win rates?

Costs, revenue model, and projections

This is where you translate all the components of your business into numbers.

This is often the least favorite section to write. However, its inclusion is essential to prove your business can be profitable.

Startup costs: Calculate one-time expenses to launch your business, including inventory, website development, legal fees, initial marketing budget, equipment, and any deposits or licenses required.

Operating expenses: Estimate your monthly costs including COGS, fulfillment and shipping, software subscriptions, labor, rent (if applicable), marketing spend, and other recurring expenses.

Revenue model: Explain how you'll generate income. Will you rely on one-time purchases, subscriptions, or a combination? What are your pricing tiers? Include your anticipated average order value and purchase frequency.

Financial projections: Create three-year forecasts for your profit and loss statement (P&L), cash flow, and balance sheet. If you're still in the planning stages and haven't launched yet, you can model your projections from similar businesses operating in your industry.

A basic P&L structure includes:

Revenue: Gross sales minus returns and discounts

COGS: Direct costs to produce or acquire products

Gross profit: Revenue minus COGS

Operating expenses: Marketing, salaries, software, rent, etc.

Net profit: Gross profit minus operating expenses

Break-even analysis: Calculate how much you need to sell before you cover all your expenses. This shows the sales level your store requires to avoid financial loss and helps make your case for a business loan.

Cash flow forecasting: Project the cash coming in and going out, typically month by month. When your company has more cash coming in than going out, this is positive cash flow. If expenses exceed revenue, that's negative cash flow.

Forecasting cash flow allows you to prepare for various circumstances, such as seasonal fluctuations, and demonstrate how you'll adapt your strategy accordingly. Include your burn rate (how quickly you're spending cash) and runway (how long until you run out of money at your current burn rate).

Funding requirements: If you're seeking investment or loans, clearly state how much capital you need and exactly how you'll use it. Break down the allocation across inventory, marketing, hiring, technology, and working capital.

How to use your ecommerce business plan

Writing your business plan is just the beginning. The real value comes from actively using it to guide your business decisions and communicate your vision.

Here's how to put your plan to work:

• Share with investors and lenders: Your plan is essential for securing funding, whether from venture capital, angel investors, or bank loans
• Guide internal decision-making: Reference your plan when evaluating new opportunities, setting priorities, or allocating resources
• Onboard team members and partners: Use it to help new hires and collaborators quickly understand your business strategy and goals, supported by proper team training
• Review and update quarterly: Schedule regular reviews to track progress against your projections and adjust your strategy based on what you're learning
• Track progress against goals: Use your plan's milestones as benchmarks to measure success and identify areas that need attention

Remember that your business plan is a living document, not something you write once and forget. The most successful businesses revisit and refine their plans as they learn more about their market and customers.

Ready to create your own plan? Download our free ecommerce business plan template to streamline the process and ensure you cover all essential sections.

Common mistakes to avoid

Even experienced entrepreneurs make mistakes when writing business plans. Here are the most common pitfalls and how to avoid them:

• Overly optimistic financial projections: Be realistic about your revenue ramp and customer acquisition costs. Investors have seen countless hockey-stick projections that never materialize
• Ignoring competition: Every business has competitors, even if they're indirect. Claiming you have no competition signals that you haven't done thorough research
• Vague target market definition: "Everyone who shops online" is not a target market. The more specific you can be about your ideal customer, the more credible your plan
• Skipping the executive summary: This is the most important section because it's often the only part that gets read. Never skip it or treat it as an afterthought
• Failing to update the plan regularly: Your business plan should evolve as you learn more about your market and customers. Set up quarterly reviews and update accordingly
• Focusing on features instead of benefits: Investors care about the problems you solve and the value you create, not just the features of your products
• Underestimating costs: Most businesses spend more than they initially project. Build in contingency planning and buffer for unexpected expenses

Start building your ecommerce business plan today

The business plan you write exists not just for attracting investors, but for helping you overcome common obstacles ecommerce businesses face while launching and scaling. By planning ahead, you increase your chances of success and help ensure your business will enjoy a continued fruitful future.

Remember that planning is iterative. Your first draft doesn't need to be perfect. Start with the template, fill in what you know, and refine your plan as you conduct more research and test your assumptions.

By taking into account everything we've discussed in this post, you have the resources and tools needed to write a comprehensive business plan that will guide your ecommerce venture from launch to sustainable growth.

Ready to launch your online store? Book a demo to see how Gorgias helps ecommerce brands deliver exceptional customer experiences from day one.

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By doing quality assurance on the support side, you’re able to see what’s working, what triggers customers and how to train your team to improve. It’s also a great tool for your team’s personal development as a support agent.

Since it’s time consuming though, everyone wants to find a way to streamline. 

The good news?‍

Klaus can do it, and there’s officially an integration that you can use with your Gorgias account to streamline it. Klaus is a quality review tool that helps you create a perfect customer experience for buyers and potential buyers

So, how does this help with the issues you may be facing with customer support quality assurance?

Let’s dive in.

It’s A Time Saver

As we just talked about earlier, customer assurance can be a time sucker. You may be manually looking at transcripts and organizing everything yourself, but there’s no need to do it this way. You know at Gorgias how much we love saving you time, so here’s how to reduce that with our new Klaus integration.

By pulling conversations automatically from your helpdesk, you can get instant review samples with erases the manually part of copy and pasting transcripts. Using Klaus, there’s also manual filtering options to help you quickly, and seamlessly, find specific cases or keywords you’re looking for.

For example, say you were curious about those tickets that took several responses to solve, or ones that received negative ratings from customers, you can easily pull those up in an instant

Notifications are also automatic when it comes to using Slack or email. By setting up these notifications, you’re able to ensure that none of your support agents misses a piece of their feedback. Thus saving you time, and constant reminders, to ensure that they receive these reviews. 

It’s Efficient

You all know how we love having all our data and information in one place, and Klaus is the same as Gorgias. Their dashboard which allows you to track you team’s performance over time, see the aspects of their communication they may be struggling with and looking into their quality scores (which will get into), really makes things easy. 

This full overview makes things efficient for you to see the overall health of your customer support team for your ecommerce business.

On top of that, reporting efficiencies are really easy. Reporting, no matter the department, tends to take up a lot of time. With Klaus, you can have all your efforts easily viewable in the dashboard. 

Chris Lavoie, Tech Partner Manager
It’s Personalized

No matter the size of your ecommerce business or support team, you’re always going to want to know how each of your members are doing. Using customizable scorecards with Klaus you can create these to add in a rating criteria for a number of different situations (an unlimited about by the way!). 

This is helpful when it comes to working with multiple teams or support channels since it allows you to efficiently track quality in as much detail as you need based on what you’d set the customizable scorecards for.

Klaus also lets you choose between different rating scales. For example, a binary thumbs up/down suit some people, while others would rather use the 3 or 5 point scoring system -- you choose what you prefer!

At Gorgias, we’re continuing to work on partnerships that will make your life easier, and Klaus is one of those that will make the difference in a critical part of your strategy. Haven’t tried Gorgias out yet? Give it a try for 7-days free and see how it can make your life more efficient and simple when it comes to your ecommerce store and customer support.

Your online store, mixed with the e-commerce helpdesk Gorgias, and topped with the quality review tool Klaus - that’s how you cook purr-fect customer experiences for your buyers. 

You don’t even have to write this recipe down because we’re excited to announce that we’ve just released the native Gorgias and Klaus integration! You can now pull your customer conversations from Gorgias seamlessly into Klaus for internal support QA and provide consistent feedback to your agents. 

There’s a number of reasons why Gorgias can be the best solution for your online store. And there’s a lot of sense in using it together with Klaus if you want to provide your customers with top-notch customer care.

Let’s look into the magic that you can unleash with the Gorgias and Klaus integration.

Gorgias for extraordinary e-commerce experiences

If you’re running an online store then you probably already know that e-commerce customer service is not just about helping your users. It’s about converting customers, increasing sales, and growing your business. 

To reap the benefits of having a revenue-driving e-commerce support team, set your team up for success with the right tools. A regular helpdesk may be enough to give timely answers to your online visitors’ questions, but it might not reveal the full potential of each of your customer interactions.

That’s why dedicated ‘e-commerce helpdesks’ are a thing now, and why Gorgias has become so successful in this category. Here’s what sets Gorgias apart from other more generic helpdesk solutions:

• Focus on converting visitors into customers: Give your customers the same kind of personalized service that you would when visiting a physical store. Chat with customers to give recommendations, feedback, and special offers.
• Engage with people before they visit your store: Gorgias allows your agents to respond to people’s questions and comments on your social media ads and posts. Increase your ad effectiveness and sales results in one go.
• Track your support team’s sales results: See which support interactions - in text messages, social media answers, and live chat conversations on your website - lead to sales. Build your sales and support strategies to maximize the results. 

Gorgias also delivers information about the customers’ previous orders and other nifty functionalities that help you turn your customer service team into a sales department - and, as a matter of fact, a very successful one.

But how can you make sure that your customer service agents actually nail every sales opportunity hiding in your support interactions? That’s where Klaus comes in.

Klaus for consistent customer care quality

Klaus is a conversation review and support QA tool dedicated to helping your agents make the most out of every support interaction. It’s a platform for having a systematic insight into your customer conversations, providing consistent feedback to your agents, and gaining control over support performance. 

You can’t improve your support quality if you don’t measure it. And Internal Quality Score - the metric of conversation reviews - does just that. It makes the quality of your customer service quantifiable and allows you to track and compare your team’s performance over time. 

While some smaller teams prefer to manage their internal quality reviews in spreadsheets, companies like Automattic, Wistia, PandaDoc, and Geckoboard, have trusted the manual work behind support QA to Klaus. Here’s why:

• Instant review samples: Klaus pulls conversations automatically in from your helpdesk. That means no manual copy-pasting of ticket data and saves you a good few hours every week.
• Advanced filtering options help you find the specific cases you’re looking for - e.g., those that took several responses to solve, or those that received a negative rating from your customers. 
• Customizable scorecards: Create as many scorecards as you’d like. If you’re working with multiple teams or support channels, you can create a separate rubric for each. Add the rating criteria that makes sense to each particular situation, and track the quality in as much detail as necessary.
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• Klaus also allows you to choose between different rating scales: a binary thumbs up/down suit some teams, while others prefer the 3- or 5-point scoring. The choice is yours. 
• Quality metrics dashboard: Track your team’s performance over time, see which aspect of their communication they are struggling with the most, and zoom into specific agents’ quality scores. You’ve got a full overview of how your team performs against your quality standards.
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• Klaus’ quality dashboard makes reporting ridiculously easy, too. All the efforts you put into training and coaching can now easily be seen reflected in your team’s performance. 
• Automatic notifications: Slack and email notifications make sure that none of your agents ever miss a single piece of their feedback. Learning about their areas of improvement is the only way your team can become better at what they do, so make sure your agents get the feedback they need.

Klaus is a very dynamic and customizable tool and that’s why it works well with all customer service teams. If you want to boost your online store sales results through your support team, make sure you create the respective rating categories, measure your agents’ performance in them, and give regular feedback on how to score higher. 

We’re firm believers of support-driven growth and we’ve written more about building customer loyalty through customer service here. Go forth and prosper!

Gorgias + Klaus join forces

Your e-commerce customer service is running on Gorgias and now you want to start improving your customer service quality and drive more sales with Klaus? Can be done easily. 

Connecting your Gorgias account with Klaus is easy as one-two-three with our native integration seamlessly connecting these software solutions. To set up the connection:

1. Sign in to your Klaus account or create one if you don’t have it already (comes with a 14-day free trial, no strings attached).
2. Connect your Gorgias account with Klaus with the help of your Gorgias’ subdomain (yourcompanyname.gorgias.com) and API key.
3. Create your quality scorecard: define your quality criteria in rating categories and accompany it with a suitable rating scale.
4. Invite your team members to the Klaus party. We’ve already pulled the list of your team members over from your Gorgias account, all you have to do is decide who gets to be the reviewers, agents, and admins of your account.
5. Review your first conversation (and the second, and the third - we know, it’s addictive). Track your team’s progress in the quality dashboard.

There you go, you’ve built yourself a scalable way of assessing your support team’s performance and providing individual feedback to your agents with no unnecessary hassle. 

The Gorgias and Klaus integration can give your customer service such an advantage that it almost sounds unfair. Poor competitors of yours!

Getting control over your support interactions and turning them into your sales reps is an art that not everyone can master. Working with the right tools is a quick shortcut to success.

We’re excited to welcome Gorgias into our extended family connected through our native integrations. Which other integrations would you like to see on our list? Share your thoughts in our online CX community The Quality Tribe.

Eli Weiss, OLIPOP’s CX team. OLIPOP is a drink that is a healthier alternative to soda and has taken the beverage industry by a storm. It has achieved great accomplishments such as generating $10,000 of sales, without any discounts, in less than 15 minutes and has over 2,500 subscribers, making up 35% of their business. Working at the frontlines of customer experience, Weiss emphasizes that a good customer service team is the key to a successful business and he imparts two important takeaways in the podcast. Subscribe to Hello Gorgias on Apple, or listen below.

It's also worth nothing that we're able to get results like these, because of our integration with Postscript for SMS marketing.

Want to try Gorgias? Use Eli's special link, and we'll send you a free case of OLIPOP.

As a special bonus, anyone who listen's to Eli's podcast episode and does a trial of Gorgias using his special link will receive a free 12 pack variety case of OLIPOP.

‍Leverage Your Customers as A Marketing Channel

Customers want to feel like they are an important part of a brand – that they are helping to build the company and that they are not just going through a revolving door. They want to know that they are cared for and not just seen as a walking and talking wallet. By adding a little bit of individuality in each message, even by doing something as simple as referring to them by their first name in an email, it shows the care and consideration that the customer service team has for their clients. Although problems such as shipping estimates and an unsatisfactory drink flavour are out of the team’s control, the customer’s satisfaction is. After all, it is five to ten times easier and cheaper to retain an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one, so it is essential to keep the client base happy.

Asides from making them feel like they are an important part of the company, it is also essential to develop a long-term relationship with them and SMS is a perfect tool to do so. A lot of brands have started to abuse SMS, sending out marketing messages so frequently and without any personal touch that it pushes interested parties away. SMS is an intimate tool, allowing companies to jump into a person’s cellphone, so when it is taken for granted, customers tend to leave. Brands should not always think about the fastest way to make money and bring in customers because, in the end, it can do the exact opposite. By growing at a slower but steady pace, people will begin to follow. They will appreciate the freedom and flexibility and remember this in the long-term.

Create A Solid, But Flexible, Macro for Your Customers

At the end of the day, everyone is human – especially the customers. They may seem like just another order or a small percentage of the total revenue, but no one wants to be viewed as a ticket number or a computer. It is important to view everyone as an individual and by making each message personal and different for each customer, it demonstrates exactly that. Rather than sending an email that simply says, “here is your refund”, make it unique by acknowledging that the customer is heard and felt. Therefore, while it is good to have a solid macro, it is also important to make it flexible for the team to adjust it.

This also applies to macros for negative experiences. Just as it is important to keep the customers happy, the CX team needs to be content as well. When employees are not valued, they become burnt out, exhausted, and contribute to a high turnover rate. They will not interact with the customers in the way that the company needs so having a macro that they can refer to, it allows for interactions to flow the way they are supposed to. Furthermore, it saves their mental health by letting them take a step back.

The Overall Lesson Of Human Support

Customer service is built on empathy and integrity. A long-term relationship with a client base is impossible if they are not treated properly, but it is also impossible if the customer service team does not get the proper support that they need.  Just as marketing needs a large budget for the brand to be successful, customer service needs one as well to thrive. Weiss has seen this experience first-hand and cannot emphasize enough how important it is to remember that everyone behind a computer screen is still a human being.

To speak to Weiss and hear about his enthusiasm for his customers and Gorgias, he can be reached via Twitter at @eliweisss.

No matter what product or service you sell, customer support is always one of the highest priorities. If you don’t give your customers the best support and experience possible, a few things can happen:

1. You can lose customers… fast
2. Receive poor reviews
3. Stress out your own internal team
4. And much more.

The good news is, if you’re here you’re already thinking in the right way -- you want to enhance your support so that it’s seamless for both the customer, and your team. 

That’s why all BigCommerce store owners can now integrate with Gorgias to deliver an outstanding customer support experience to consumers. 

Gorgias is all about the customer-first model and this aligned vision with BigCommerce stores can bring your business to the next level.

But Why Does It Matter?

We touched on that a little bit already, but let’s dive in more on why support actually matters. 

Countless business owners view the support side as a cost centre, but when you look at it as more than that, this is when you really start seeing success. By improving satisfaction overall, you’re able to maintain loyal customers, which is key to growing your store. On top of that, you can increase engagement on-site and also across social channels because when people have a good experience with a brand, they love to share the story.

Of course, at the end of the day, it also heavily contributes to sales. Using live chat and other means of customer support channels you can advise people quickly on what the best product for them is. When you create those loyal customers, word of mouth can be one of your strongest driving forces.

How To Actually Give Customers World-Class Experiences

Nowadays your audience and customers are everywhere. On top of that, they want the same experience across all channels which can sound very overwhelming. That being said, it is possible to make everything from social media to live chat, phone and beyond (we’ll talk about that in a little bit) work together seamlessly. By making all these channels easier to check on and respond on, it’ll help immensely with organization and responsiveness.

We all know that the faster you respond the happier the customer will be. The issue is, countless stores have a low response time, and this offers a big opportunity for those who can do better. Not only does it lead to higher customer satisfaction, but it can lead to more sales too.. For instance, if someone is asking your support team about a particular product, there’s a good chance they have other stores open in other tabs, and if you can answer that customer first they may be more likely to go with your product over another.

Lastly, don’t forget that sounding robotic isn’t cool and customers can usually read right through it. By being human, you’re able to have a more personal relationship with customers as opposed to something strictly transactional. By personalizing answers, your customer will truly feel like you care and know them, making it far more likely that they’ll purchase from your store again.

How can Gorgias help BigCommerce brands?

Well, let’s start with a couple words from Iris Schiefer, Sr. Strategic Partnerships Manager, EMEA at BigCommerce. She knows what Gorgias can do to help shop owners out, saying that it “allowsBigCommerce merchants to offer an exceptional support experience and deepen relationships with customers.”

This is fairly broad, and that’s because there’s lots of ways Gorgias can benefit your BigCommerce store. By using Gorgias, you can actually cut your customer support first response times and ticket resolution time without losing that precious human touch element. 

Gorgias allows BigCommerce merchants to offer an exceptional support experience and deepen relationships with their customers. We are strongly aligned in terms of both our values and dedication to providing best-of-breed solutions to our merchants - We couldn't be happier to have Gorgias on board as a BigCommerce partner.‍

- Iris Schiefer, Sr. Strategic Partnerships Manager, EMEA at BigCommerce

We understand, it sounds too good to be true, but it is possible. So, let’s dive into a few things you’ll be able to do if you integrate Gorgias into your BigCommerce store.

One place for customer support

You can connect BigCommerce along with all your communication channels including email, social media, phone, live chat and more to Gorgias. This centralizes everything into one platform so that it's all in one place. This allows you to not miss any requests, and handle responses much faster.

With Gorgias, you can view your customer’s order history easily from the BigCommerce backend. This way, you can ensure speed and accuracy in responses as opposed to switching between tabs or cutting and pasting.

Personalization becomes easy and far less time consuming as well. With Gorgias, you can integrate data provided by BigCommerce like first name, shipping address and much more. This gives you the opportunity to send automatic and accurate messages for a personalized customer experience.

Repetitive questions can get frustrating, but Gorgias also has a function to get to these quickly and easily. You can automate answers to common questions to save valuable time for your team, that way they can focus on new customers and those with more complicated requests.

When you integrate Gorgias, you’re also using advanced machine learning to detect the intent, along with sentiment of each and every message. This means that by learning about tracking updates, return policies and urgency, Gorgias helps set priorities and categorize tickets based on what they’re all about.

Just like every other area of your business, tracking customer support performance is essential. Using Gorgias you can track KPIs to ensure you and your team are on track to delivering incredible support.

How does the Gorgias + BigCommerce integration work?

By integrating Gorgias, you’ll be able to also integrate with some of the biggest Apps in the BigCommerce Marketplace including Klaviyo, Omnisend, Smile.io and many more. 

Now, how do you get started? It’s easier than you might think:

1. Sign up for Gorgias (if you haven’t already).
2. Go to your BigCommerce account and Install the Gorgias App.
3. You’ll receive a request to access your store from Gorgias then click Confirm, then Connect.
4. From there, you just add in your Gorgias authentication credentials, which is simply just your Gorgias helpdesk name.
5. After hitting save, you can now sync your BigCommerce customers who haven’t placed an order by selecting “sync customers who haven’t placed an order.” Then select the order cut off and hit Save.
6. Now, you’ll see an active green icon and this means you’re good to go! 

You can find a more detailed step by step guide here.

Are you building out your ecommerce tech stack and seeking more app recommendations for BigCommerce? Check out our lists of:

• Best live chat apps for BigCommerce
• Best overall BigCommerce apps
• 150+ top ecommerce tools

By the way, if you haven’t already signed up for Gorgias, you can start off by getting a free, 7-day trial to test it out on your BigCommerce store!

The fact is that content marketing can help an eCommerce brand immensely, given that content is a foundational element for visibility in the SERPs, social media engagement, the cultivation of thought leadership and industry authority, lead generation, customer self-service, and other vital business activities.

But the reality is that most blogs fail, and for a variety of different reasons. One of the most prevailing is that it doesn’t generate immediate results, ultimately discouraging future content creation.

However, there are various tactics that merchants can use to cultivate traffic to blogs and boost conversions as a result of those visits.

For merchants who want to take advantage of the benefits that content marketing has to offer, here are seven ways to boost conversions with eCommerce blog content.

Focus on User Intent

One of the best ways to gain more site visitors who turn into paying customers is to create content that targets the intent of the user.

Of course, “user intent” is the reason behind the individual’s Google search. It is the outcome they aim to achieve.

For instance, if a consumer searches "best Bluetooth headphones," the intent behind the user's search is to obtain information that will narrow down their purchase options to just a couple of products.

When looking at how people search, there are three main types of user intents, often referred to as “Do, Know, Go.” Those intents are:

• Transactional (Do): Here, a consumer is aiming to make a purchase or some other form of transaction.
• Informational (Know): With this type of search, people are looking to learn, as in the aforementioned headphones example.
• Navigational (Go): When conducting such a search, users are trying to get to a specific website or location. These can often be branded searches.

When creating content for a blog, merchants will likely be targeting information queries. These types of searches will result in a consumer finding high-ranking materials that relate to their search for knowledge.

Alternatively, a transactional search will often lead shoppers directly to product pages.

However, this isn’t to say that sellers shouldn’t link to their item listings within information blogs, assuming that the product is relevant to the piece. This can actually be a great way to pull a shopper from the top of the funnel down to deeper stages. More on this momentarily.

The sales funnel model is something that marketers use to delineate the path to purchase that consumers take. While there are numerous iterations of this model, the basics are that:

• Consumers become aware of a product
• Prospects then begin to consider the product, research and compare their options
• Consumers make a decision and purchase a product or service

The job of site owners is to get consumers to move through the entirety of the brand’s sales funnel. Since awareness and research are highly dependent on the content offerings available to shoppers, merchants must craft quality content that targets top-of-funnel prospects.

Optimizing top-of-funnel content relies on uncovering and integrating long-tail keywords into various pieces. Since long-tail phrases are highly-specific and generate less search volume (and more conversions) than broad-head keywords, these phrases are a must.

Fortunately, a variety of tools such as Answer the Public, Keyword Tool, Ubersuggest and many others are geared specifically towards this task.

While all of these tools are extremely useful, Answer the Public is a favorite as it provides long-tail keywords questions that consumers are searching, thereby cluing in retailers even further as to what precisely potential buyers want to know.

In addition to these tools, sellers can also mine incredibly useful information about consumer queries from sites like Quora, Reddit and similar boards.

Speaking of answering questions, we also recommend you host an FAQ page on your website to help customers. Check out our free FAQ template to get started.

Optimize for SEO

While this idea was touched upon slightly with targeting long-tail terms and phrases, there is a lot more to optimizing content for conversions than just plugging in a few keywords.

For retailers to get the visibility required to earn clicks and conversions, it is necessary to optimize blog posts according to Google’s SEO ranking factors. Some tactics that merchants will want to utilize include:

• Optimizing for the targeted keyword
• Employing keyword variations
• Adding images and optimizing alt tags
• Linking to authoritative, relevant external pages
• Including related links to internal destinations
• Ensuring content is readable/scannable
• Creating a proper meta title

Additionally, while meta descriptions have no bearing on SEO performance, they do influence clicks, which does impact rankings. Therefore, crafting a concise, alluring and accurate meta description is also a necessity.

Link to a Relevant Product

Linking to a product within a piece of content is a simple yet effective tactic for driving clicks to product pages and earning conversions.

However, the key thing to remember here is that the item must be relevant to the content. If sellers create a blog centered on ways to remedy plantar fasciitis and then include a link to great running shoes, that link will generate very few clicks and even fewer sales.

Alternatively, if a seller talks about and links to shoes or inserts for plantar fasciitis, it is far more likely that the content will earn sales as a result of the internal link.

The point of the post is to solve the reader's problems. If merchants have a product that can achieve that goal, then it is vital to include a link to the item. That said, do not promote products that are not relevant to the piece just for the sake of promotion. Doing so could damage a store’s credibility in the consumer’s eyes.

Employ Social Proof

Social proof has become a necessity in the eCommerce industry. With all the shady dealings that are happening online, consumers want to know that what they are getting is the real deal.

Therefore, including social proof within content and on product pages is a powerful strategy for increasing conversions and encouraging that elusive second purchase.

Some excellent forms of social proof that can be deployed in content or on product pages include:

• Testimonials
• Reviews
• User-generated content from social media

By providing the evidence that other customers love their purchase, others are more likely to follow the same path.

Utilize Visuals

Visuals are a critical element for content.

Including images throughout blogs dramatically increases the readability of the piece and helps consumers to retain more of the information contained therein. The fact is, nobody likes reading massive walls of text.

Therefore, several ways that merchants can increase the readability of a piece and keep it engaging include:

• Using screenshots to demonstrate ideas, topics of discussion or uses of a product
• Employ visual indicators like graphs or charts to highlight figures
• Summarize blog posts using embeddable, easily shared infographics

There are a slew of tools out there for creating such visuals, including Canva, Pablo, Easil and many others.

If merchants are looking to create content that converts, visuals are a must.

Include a Clear Call-to-Action

No matter if merchants are looking to drive traffic to product pages, get readers to share a post or simply generate comments, including a clear, direct call-to-action is vital to meeting that goal.

The fact is that if a merchant wants to achieve something with their content, they often must make it explicit by letting consumers know what step they should take next.

By including a call-to-action at the end of a piece for visitors to check out a product page or other content, retailers are far more likely to generate conversions than if they were to leave consumers to their own devices.

Retarget Content

For retailers who employ tracking pixels, those who visit their site can be retargeted to on Google, through social media and other popular online destinations.

Retargeting is an essential tactic for earning more conversions as consumers have already shown interest in a brand’s offerings–be they content or products.

While some consider retargeting to be an off-putting practice, looking at the facts about retargeting shows that this strategy is extremely useful in reaching consumers, generating sales and optimizing conversion rates.

In today’s attention economy, merchants must remain top-of-mind. Retargeting adverts help them achieve that end.

Final Thoughts

Creating eCommerce content that drives conversions is critical for merchants to compete in the increasingly crowded online retail industry. Moreover, by targeting user intent with such pieces, sellers can reel in new readers and bolster their customer base while still catering to existing shoppers.

For other ways to grow your ecommerce store, check out our list of ecommerce growth tactics.

Utilize the strategies listed above to help ensure that your company’s content earns the visibility it needs to generate clicks and conversions from shoppers–new and old. Don't have enough time to start a blog? Check out our ecommerce customer service automation guide to see how you can save time by automating many of the repetitive tasks that go into running an online store.

You might be assuming that there’s really nothing you can do to change this outside of overworking your team, or hiring more people.

This is completely normal, but there’s no need to panic. That’s because with Gorgias you can now integrate Loop in your ecommerce store. In case you’re wondering, Loop is an on-demand portal that allows customers to get the product they want, with less support touchpoints. 

Using Loop, there are many ways you can reduce one of the biggest and more time-consuming support-related requests… returns. Plus, they do this while still giving your customers a seamless experience. 

So, let’s dive in.

What’s the problem?

Did you know that 40% of support tickets are order related, with 5% being about returns? It might not seem like something worth looking into, or too problematic, but it is. 

Though these customers returning items do deserve a great level of customer care (everyone does), it’s not the most valuable way to actually use your support team’s skills. 

Why? Glad you asked.

There’s already a lack of resources

It’s always good to remember that your support team is juggling a lot more than you think because there’s so many different types of requests that come through. One of those requests that takes a lot of time is, you guessed it, return requests. While these are important, they don’t exactly require a human touch since they’re very straightforward and focus heavily on process. 

If your support team isn’t able to address other requests in a timely manner, that could mean losing new customers or returning ones because of those support tickets. 

Luckily, return-requests can be easily automated.

Customers want to control their returns

It may come as a surprise to hear that your customers don’t actually want a high touch support experience for returns from your team. They actually want to be the ones to choose where and when they want to engage with support teams. 

Since customers want a more on-demand experience when it comes to returns and something that happens fast, automation doesn’t hurt in these scenarios since it can be quick. 

What’s the solution? Enter Loop.

Bringing Loop and Gorgias together for a seamless customer experience that saves your team time is like a dream come true. 

But how exactly, can this address the issues we’ve been discussing?

First off, this partnership will allow your support team to use that extra time in valuable ways that make sense and benefit the business. For example, focusing more on new customers, shipping issues and more.

Secondly, it benefits your customers since it allows them to take control of their returns and do things on their own time. This makes it more seamless and makes them feel like the return process is easier than ever. 

Using both Loop and Gorgias together will create a better environment all around, decreasing stress both within your support team and customers so that your team can focus on conversions instead of returns.

Whether you’ve been looking for a way to reduce your support requests related to returns, or if it’s something new on your radar, it’s worth thinking about. Thankfully, you can sign up for a free 7-day trial with Gorgias and add in the Loop integration to see just how much time it can save.