With the arrival of 2020, the competition becomes even more intense for online retailers who are attempting to keep up with the influx of sellers on marketplaces such as Amazon and Walmart, as well as from direct-to-consumer retailers themselves.
Thankfully, it is not an impossible task because we have compiled a list of the best ecommerce tips and marketing strategies that experts approve. By implementing these strategies, ecommerce brands can achieve the ultimate goal of reaching the appropriate consumer on the correct device at the perfect time.
Let us begin.
Optimize your website for search
SEO is critical in the digital world for both service-based websites and shopping sites. It plays a vital role in online marketing by enhancing the visibility of your e-commerce site, boosting sales, and establishing your dominance in your particular market.
While it is true that the majority of product searches typically start on well-known e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart, the search engine still accounts for 20% of product searches. Therefore, it is crucial to optimize your website for search terms that your desired audience is using. Remember that keywords play a significant role, so it is important to incorporate highly searched and relevant keywords to enhance your content’s optimization.
Place your products in the spotlight
Achieving a high ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs) benefits both small businesses and big brands, as it increases sales regardless of business size.
Investing in advertisement can be a wise decision as improving website ranking naturally requires time.
Google Shopping campaigns provide a swift and effective method to display your products to consumers. Google Shopping Ads, also known as Product Listing Ads, are visual advertisements that enhance your visibility amidst competitors.
Google shopping ads have a crucial role to play in the e-commerce marketing strategy by appearing above organic results and showcasing high-quality product imagery, pricing, and the seller’s website. Utilizing these ads can enhance your brand’s online visibility and increase your product sales. Additionally, investing in Google shopping ads allows you to specifically target your desired audience based on factors such as location, gender, age, and interests. As a result, your ads will reach only those individuals who have a genuine interest in purchasing your products.
Focus on product reviews
Product reviews play a crucial role in determining the success of an e-commerce business as they provide valuable insight into the standard and reputation of the online store. Many business owners overlook the significance of product reviews and focus on tasks like expanding their product range, improving website design, answering customer inquiries, managing customer service, and handling administrative duties. While these tasks are undoubtedly important, neglecting product reviews can render all efforts futile.
Are you aware that a majority of individuals, specifically 84 percent, place more trust in online reviews compared to the suggestions made by their friends?
Reviews are something that you cannot afford to disregard, quite honestly!
In order to succeed in the digital era, a significant amount of effort is required to make your business stand out. A helpful way to stay ahead is by receiving good reviews for your products. Therefore, it is crucial to give attention to the review section on your product pages. Positive reviews not only enhance your online brand image but also expand your customer base.
Make your checkout process short & easy
Is your e-commerce site receiving good traffic? The conversion rate is the only means of assessing its success.
Absolutely amazing…
However, receiving more traffic is not something to be happy about if it does not result in generating sales. To identify the underlying issue causing this problem, you can consider examining your shopping cart abandonment rate.
One of the main reasons why customers abandon their shopping carts is because of the confusing and lengthy checkout process. It is crucial to consider that time is valuable to customers, so it is important to make it as simple and brief as possible! By designing a fast and straightforward checkout process, you will provide your customers with a seamless experience and meet their satisfaction.
To ensure a seamless checkout process, it is advisable to consolidate all necessary information on a single page. In case multiple checkout pages are required, incorporating a progress bar somewhere on the website will enable customers to track their progress and visualize the remaining steps. Moreover, it is essential to design visible and easily locatable buttons to enhance user experience and facilitate swift navigation for customers.
Add structured markup language
According to Kent Lewis, the president and founder of Anvil Media, brands should incorporate structured markup language, or schema, into the backend of their product pages. This will aid search engines in properly indexing the pages and potentially enhance their rankings, as it facilitates the search engine’s comprehension of the page’s information.
Beth Kearsley, operations assistant at search marketing agency Tao Digital, stated that by incorporating rich snippets, you assist Google in displaying your products to the appropriate individuals who are searching for the relevant terms.
Focus on site speed
Kearsley mentions that ecommerce brands should ensure their websites are “bang on” by focusing on site speed, header tags, and interactive media.
She mentioned that properly addressing these aspects will significantly enhance the visibility of your website and the rates at which users click through it.
Clark Covington, marketing manager at Jelly Bean Rubber Mulch, acknowledges that positive outcomes occur when the load speed of a website increases, including a boost in the online ecommerce page’s performance for the brand.
According to him, our findings indicate that enhancing website load speed will result in higher rankings for relevant keywords in Google search results. This is achieved by improving the page speed score in our paid Google Ads account. Notably, a Google study revealed a significant 90% rise in bounce rate when load speed increases from 1 to 5 seconds.
Lewis suggests that it is important to optimize images for commerce because Google Images is the second-largest search engine in terms of volume.
“It is crucial to optimize your product images with alt text to guarantee their visibility in searches related to products,” he emphasized. “The images are clickable and directly lead potential buyers to the product pages for convenient purchase.”
Make lots of (relevant) videos
Jeff Neal, who is employed by The Critter Depot, an online marketplace, believes that the ecommerce brands that will be successful in 2020 are those that establish YouTube channels specifically designed to provide videos addressing pertinent inquiries from their customer base.
He explained that they offer live feeder insects to reptile owners via mail. As a result, they produced several videos which they uploaded on their product pages. These videos cover topics such as cricket breeding, proper storage of crickets and superworms, and provide an insight into the unboxing experience.
What is the outcome?
He stated that the videos have effectively raised our on-page time by more than a minute per page. Therefore, we are proceeding with creating additional videos for our highest converting pages.
Matthew Ross, the COO of The Slumber Yard, a website that reviews mattresses, concurred that YouTube can be beneficial in generating website visitors and income due to Google’s tendency to organically rank pertinent videos at the top of the initial search results page. This approach proves to be more cost-effective compared to pay-per-click advertising and resulted in The Slumber Yard accumulating 2 million views last year.
He added that overall, this strategy has effectively resulted in saving hundreds of thousands of dollars that would have been spent on digital ads.
Try filters and QR codes
Filters on social platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram have the potential to provide exclusive shopping experiences for ecommerce brands, according to Sneh Ratna Choudhary, a content marketer at Beaconstac, a proximity marketing company. For instance, Levi’s, a denim brand, enabled Snapchat users to virtually try on jackets by scanning QR codes in-store before making a purchase online. Additionally, Kylie Cosmetics, the makeup brand owned by Kylie Jenner, utilized Instagram filters to allow users to visualize the appearance of her new lipsticks.
In a similar vein, QR codes featured in printed advertisements enable consumers to conveniently access advertisers’ websites.
Choudhary stated that the QR Codes are typically dynamic, enabling users to access new offers at various times during the day. In November, Amazon distributed a toy catalog to its millions of customers, which included QR codes. These codes allowed parents to effortlessly shop for toys for their children, which was particularly advantageous after the closure of Toys R Us.
Write newsletters and blog posts
In order to achieve good results in 2020, Calloway Cook, the president of Illuminate Labs, a dietary supplement company, advises that it is essential to have a substantial amount of content. To accomplish this, he suggests implementing guest blogging as a practical and budget-friendly approach. Cook further recommends utilizing a tool such as MozBar, a browser extension, to determine the domain authority of websites. He advises only contacting websites with a domain authority rating above 40.
According to Cook, it is an established method to acquire high-quality backlinks that direct to your homepage, leading to an increase in your site’s domain authority and subsequently boosting your site’s organic rankings.
Over the course of a year, Gildner agreed that long-form blog posts with informational guides have the potential to increase organic SEO by 2 to 3 times.
Andrea Loubier, the CEO of desktop email client Mailbird, stated that having well-written content on your ecommerce site offers a reason for both potential and existing customers to visit. It not only provides valuable information but also establishes the brand as an authority on a specific topic, thus giving potential customers more incentives to shop with that particular brand.
According to Loubier, all content marketing strategies vary, especially based on the specific field. However, the most effective strategies are made up of various techniques, including newsletters, emails, social media, and link building. Look at your content as a complimentary offering to potential or current clients, which can serve as a means to generate new sales and additional sources of income.
Issue coupons
Shopper.com, a client of Fractl, a content marketing agency, has discovered that discount codes are an effective strategy. This is unsurprising according to Sara McQueen, a digital PR executive at Fractl. She mentioned that approximately one-third of online shoppers consistently search for discount codes when making a purchase, a trend that is projected to increase in the upcoming year.
According to McQueen, in interviews with 1000 customers in the U.S. and U.K., Shopper.com discovered that consumers feel three times more knowledgeable when they discover coupons through online searches rather than receiving them directly. Furthermore, McQueen mentioned that one out of every three consumers expressed annoyance if a retailer failed to inform them about possible savings, and three out of every five consumers would request a refund if they realized they had missed out on a discount after making a purchase.
