We've all been there. You clink on an ad, or a referral link from a friend, and the page loads up terribly slowly. Or there's no information on the product, just pictures. Or perhaps you can't even figure out how to actually buy the product.
There are tons of ways to attract more traffic to your website, from free to expensive. It’s all too easy to ignore the conversion process, though, and the importance of building brand loyalty which keeps people coming back. It is easier and cheaper, after all, to re-engage existing customers than find new ones.
In 2020 eCommerce grew faster than it ever has. As the online shopping market gets more and more competitive, the small details and optimizations that set you apart make more and more of a difference.
Here’s some concepts to keep in mind when reviewing your ecommerce platform:
1. Customers either want to learn or buy when they come to your site. They have come to your site either to make a purchase, or learn about your products to make a decision. Make sure you balance sharing information with a streamlined conversion process, or create multiple funnel pages for the differing types of traffic you’re getting
2. Consider what value your website is offering. Do you offer an incentive to buy? A simple solution to a problem your traffic is having? An easier purchase process or better customer support? Identifying your value in your market and capitalizing on it will help you increase marketing spend efficiency
3. Don’t ignore customer support: if brand loyalty is important to you don’t underestimate the importance of good customer service. Studies have shown that 89 percent of consumers would take their business elsewhere within a week if they received poor customer service. For small businesses, installing some automation like a chatbot or a well designed service request form will help your customers feel supported and cared for.
4. Don’t overwhelm your website visitors with information, products, bios and more. A good content hierarchy and sitemap will put this information in logical places for those who want to find it. Keep your most important pages balanced and focused on providing the most concise information and value to your customers. Look around at some of the most popular brands in the world and notice the simple, clean designs of their home pages and landing pages, for example Apple’s homepage
5. Don’t waste your visitors time or attention! Slow loading pages, distracting content, autoplay videos, hard to find CTA buttons, these fatal mistakes will take a fraction of your potential customers right out of the equation. Attention spans online are shorter and shorter, and patience for poorly designed website is diminishing as well as the overall standard goes up around the web. Make sure your website is as easy to use and efficient as possible. Use things like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to test the response time of your website and identify if you need to make improvements. Or a heatmap tracking tool to get more insight on how your traffic is interacting with your site and where you may have issues
Making your website visually appealing has immeasurable benefits. Humans are visual creatures and our brains process images faster than text, and as the saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Make sure not to bombard your visitors with too much image content though, as it can become overwhelming and actually turn your traffic away from converting on the website.
Incorporating the right SEO strategy is key for driving traffic to your business’ website, but if visitors are disappointed once they get there, they’ll never return. In this day and age, a brand’s website is often its most powerful selling tool, so take the necessary steps to ensure that it offers real value to existing and new customers.
Speaking of SEO, it is one of the most underutilized marketing tools for ecommerce websites. SEO is known as having one of the highest ROIs for ecommerce marketing campaigns, but also is known to take a long time to actually work. It’s very wise to incorporate this as a long-term strategy as when it starts to pay off, it will continue to do so perpetually with little ongoing work.
To properly do SEO for your website, here are some simple steps to follow:
1. Do your keyword research: you can use google, amazon or an SEO specific tool to help figure out what phrases and keywords your potential buyers are using
2. Copy SEO: once you’ve identified the keywords and phrases your potential buyers are using, put those same things on your website. This will allow search engines to index your website in a higher position as they will recognize your page as more relevant to the search topic
3. Technical SEO: a more complicated process on ensuring your website can be properly read by search engine bots, which are what determines how relevant your website is to a specific search
4. Content Marketing: adding more content containing your identified keywords. Things like additional product information pages or blog posts will increase your websites search engine rankings
Other additional activities like Link Building and Measuring your SEO position are advanced techniques that should be implemented in the longer term.
There are many other activities in the world of ecommerce that you can employ to set your brand apart and encourage loyalty from your customers. This guide will get you started on some of the most important tasks to at least put you ahead of the average ecommerce website out there. Digital marketing agencies like Goliath Marketing are experts in making the most of the techniques described as well as all of the additional activities and details that will take your online store from good to great. We hope you find this article helpful in getting ahead!
We're always interested in discussing innovative ways to do business. It's our passion to offer new perspectives, approaches and strategies to help businesses grow. We'd love to have a chat with you! Click on the button below to book a FREE consultation with us where we can discuss what your business can do during this unique, challenging time.
