Adding Forum to eCommerce Site

Wanted to get opinions on adding a forum to an eCommerce site in the pet industry. We currently have about 3000-4000 unique visitors each month to our ecommerce site, we build an e-mail list and have been adding fresh content to the site every few days. I am really wanting to find other ways to keep our visitors returning to our store. We are capturing e-mail addresses by having a monthly drawing for free products and we send e-mails with discounts etc. to this list with lots of success. But I still feel like we are losing a lot of potential customers once they leave our site. We are using all forms of marketing(ppc, social, etc.) but really want to drive more free visitors and keep them coming back. Our brand sells food products, so repeat purchases from customers are highly likely.

My question is, has anyone used a Forum to drive traffic to an ecommerce site? These visitors are obviously highly targeted, but turning them into buyers may not be worth the hassle of moderating a forum. It would also potentially drive customers away from our products and to the forums and end up costing us sales. Any thoughts, experience or recommendations?

Thanks!
Jeff

 

That's a great idea, many large e-commerce sites have forums.

Let your customers and potential customers discuss all aspects about your products, offers, services you name it.

I see it like an extra-branding thingy that everyone should implement.

 

You should include a forum as part of your eCommerce site. Active forums can go a long way at getting return visitors, who some might end up as potential customers. And since you own the site, you can place ads throughout the forum for free.

 

Forum helps to build trust and increase the engagement value. On a forum you can also build a section for offers, coupon for the visitors on various product - which can help to increase the revenue of the business.

In order to increase the revenue, have your tried using marketing automation strategy for your eCommerce business?
It can be a pure game changer for your business, it will help to increase the conversion from your current customers and also help to increase your customer through various medium.

Try Firecart - Marketing Automation Software for eCommerce industry. They offer features as follow:
Email Marketing
Referral Marketing Program
Drip Marketing
Abandonment Cart Reminders
Lead Nurturing
SMS Marketing
Customer Feedback Software and more.

I hope this helps.

 

Hi Jeff,

Make sure you create your forum that looks like the rest of the site, if possible use a forum addon to the CMS you are using. For example, bbPress with WordPress.

With that amount of visitors the forum should kick off nicely, you may need to invest a couple of hundy a month for a VA to keep contributing to the forums.

Having a blog is another way of bringing people back.

Cheers