5 TOP takeaways from RESHOPER

This year Reshoper welcomed more than 4,000 visitors. We were among them. Continuous learning makes sense to us, and the Reshoper conference is made for exactly that purpose. At the same time it is in our interest to spread this information further, to inspire each other and thereby build a healthy, well-informed community. We believe the takeaways that caught our attention and that we have written down for you in this article will be of benefit either to you or to the development of your e-shop.

Real data

An interesting feature of this year's Reshoper was that all the talks were built on specific, unique data obtained from analyses of Czech e-shops created directly for Reshoper. The results pointed to facts and figures from which the speakers drew recommendations and tips on the right direction for Czech and Slovak e-shops. We have written down the ones we found most interesting.

1. E-shops & Instagram

In the first talk Jindřich Fáborský (director of the Marketing Festival) and Kristína Šuvadová (6clickz.com) opened the topic of Instagram. Their analysis was carried out on a sample of 32,000 e-shops, which is the total number of registered Czech e-shops on Instagram.

The results of the analysis: E-shops have 398 followers on average, while the potential is far higher, mainly for these reasons: - 27% of them do not publish a single post all year. - On average, e-shops publish 49 posts a year on IG. - 2–3 posts are published per day. - Low use of stories. - No posting at weekends. - Not using hashtags (14% of e-shops use no hashtags at all). - Using hashtags incorrectly.

Recommendations, tips, food for thought:

• Do not be afraid to publish your posts at the weekend. The competition is lower at that time, but the engagement (likes, comments, …) is just as strong as with posts published during the week.
• Find out your „magic hour“ – the hour when you have the most followers online on your IG. With a business profile you will find this in Insights – Audience – Statistics. Try to publish posts an hour before your magic hour.

• Videos in the timeline do not have the same reach as images.
• IG TV is not doing well and in 2020 there is a strong chance the service will disappear from Instagram.
• Using stories is still an easily accessible, cheap and least time-consuming tool for gaining new followers.
• Use hashtags in your posts. By not using them you are depriving yourself of new potential followers and shoppers.
• The maximum number of hashtags under a post is 30. That number is not recommended, though, and does more harm than good. The happy medium of around 13–15 hashtags is what is recommended.
• Finally, we would point you to the 100 most-used hashtags.

2. E-shops & returns

Over 6 months Peter Boroš from the company Retino tested the process of ordering and returning goods at 30 e-shops.

The test orders were always sent to the same address, similar products were ordered, products in stock, in the price range 300–700 CZK, and the ordering time was late on a Wednesday evening. How did the testing turn out and what lessons can you take away for your e-shop?

The results of the analysis: - Delivery times: the deadline was mostly met (the fastest delivery from placing the order was 17 hours, the longest delivery took 8 days) - Contents of the shipment: besides the goods, 7 shipments contained instructions for returning the goods and 6 shipments also included a gift. The other shipments contained only the goods themselves. - The procedure for returning goods: at 23.3 % of e-shops there was no returns procedure available either inside the package or on the website. - Free shipping: 5 e-shops offered free returns as a benefit. - Refund time: only one e-shop failed to meet the deadline and the refund had to be chased. - Refunds: 4 e-shops refunded only the price of the goods, even though by law the buyer is entitled to the full amount including shipping.

Recommendations, tips, food for thought:

According to Peter Boroš, what definitely needs improving when it comes to returns is:

• more intensive communication with customers,
• filling in the missing information (above all regarding the returns procedure and withdrawal from the contract),
• when refunding money, remembering to include the shipping payment in the total refunded amount.

Although returns are rather unpopular and unloved by e-shops, it is important to pay attention to them – they have a big influence on repeat purchases and customer loyalty.

3. E-shops & customers

How can you better understand and get to know your current and potential customers? The owners of the company Makevision talked about the methods small, medium and large e-shops should use so that they can process this data and turn it to their advantage.

„E-shops can differentiate themselves with better service or a better brand. The prerequisite is knowing your customers well.“

Which research methods do they recommend and which should the individual types of e-shops use? A small e-shop: in-depth interviews, a questionnaire among customers. A medium-sized e-shop: an online focus group, a representative questionnaire survey A large e-shop: a regular combination of all the methods above

4. E-shops & strategic planning

Why is it important to plan and follow a strategy? Honza Kvasnička chose 57 e-shops of various sizes and revenues for his test. The aim of his research was to find out how e-shops are doing in terms of strategic planning, how well they manage to fulfil their strategy and what fulfilling it ultimately brings them.

The results of the analysis: - Some e-shops like chaos and do not want to follow a strategy. - At others, too much pressure on strategy holds back growth. - Others take strategy so seriously that it becomes a problem. - A large share of e-shops have some kind of strategy, try to fulfil it and are guided by it.

Recommendations, tips, food for thought:

• There is no universal strategy; every e-shop is different – unique. So every strategy should be unique too, and there is no specific recipe for building one.
• There are, however, certain general foundations e-shops should stick to. Honza Kvasnička offered them in his presentation. You can download them here.
• To define the right strategy it is advisable to work with the OKR model (Objectives and Key Results) – a method that teaches you to plan properly and set priorities.

O (Objectives) = goals: You need to define quarterly and annual goals. Quarterly goals should be set half a year in advance and there should not be many of them; the optimal number is 3–5. Goals should be bold, they should aim at improvement and their evaluation should be subject to strict criteria.

KR (Key Results): You should assign a maximum of 5 key results to each goal. The results have to be easily measurable. A key result can also be the fact that something was or was not achieved. You should assign a specific person to each result so that it is clear who can influence it.

What role do KPIs play alongside OKRs? With OKRs you define your main goals and the specific activities that will get you there. KPIs are measurable indicators that help you check your progress towards your OKRs.

As an example, Honza Kvasnička presented a specific marketing strategy for an e-shop selling alcohol. You can take inspiration from it too.

5. E-shops & customer support

How much importance do you place on customer support, communication and building loyalty with your current and potential customers? Do you think you can build your e-shop into a brand thanks to excellently run customer service? Tomáš Hyben from the company Daktela s.r.o. tested several e-shops to find out the level, quality and use of customer support for the benefit of an e-shop.

The results of the analysis: - The phone test was carried out on a sample of 30 e-shops. The calls were made deliberately after 10 p.m., when he assumed nobody would pick up the phone. The following working day he waited to see how many of the 30 e-shops would call back. The result? ONE. - With the e-mail test the results were considerably more positive. Out of 12 e-mails sent he received 11 replies.

Recommendations, tips, food for thought:

• Do we really not want customers when we ignore missed calls?
• Do we care about being professional during the purchase and after it too?
• Increase loyalty and the desire to buy again through excellently handled customer support. Customers will certainly repay you for it.

Reshoper 2020 is behind us. We are already looking forward to what it will surprise us with next year. We hope our takeaways have inspired you. Perhaps you will manage to apply some of them and they will bring you the results you want. We will be glad if you let us know about them. Fingers crossed.