Running an eCommerce is a challenging battleground for any business trying to make their mark. The level of competition makes it difficult for brands to stand out from the crowd and get their message to cut through the marketing din. The competitiveness of the eCommerce industry is real, forcing businesses to invest prudently in their digital marketing skills to effectively capture the attention of their intended target market. There’s no secret formula to follow here – just basic marketing skills with no shortcuts. Read on for the latest insider tips that could help take your business to the next level.
Having great information architecture (IA)
Information architecture is arguably one of the most important aspects of a powerful eCommerce website. Displaying an array of products that is difficult to access because of the poor layout of your website is almost certainly going to be detrimental to your sales. From the moment your customer lands on your homepage, you want them to be able to intuitively find the right product they’re looking for so that they can complete their purchase.
When planning the architecture of your site, think logically. Use broad categories as the main headers and then filter out the products into sub-categories. The idea is to form a top-down structure that has the main categories crumble into smaller sub-categorized folders that will eventually lead your customers to the right product with ease. To learn more about what constitutes as great IA and how it can positively impact your website, click here.
Increase the engagement of your website
Apart from having great information architecture, there are a number of additional ways in which you can achieve this. To begin with, you need to ensure that you have the right coloring scheme on your website. Brand personality is everything, and conveying that appropriately is what’s going to separate your company from the rest. Pick the right colors that best represent your brand without it looking less professional. It’s all about trying to instill positive emotions into the user’s online experience, which leads to the second point.
The design of your website is equally pivotal. Important aspects such as layout, visual design, font size, typography and color schemes all have an influence on whether a viewer deems your website to be credible or not. Getting all of these elements right can drastically improve the credibility of your website. The only issue is that making these edits can be time-consuming. Investing in a specialist, such as Weaveability, will be a safe and effective way of circumventing this problem. You can go on their website here at weaveability.com to get more of an insight into their services.
Having a content marketing strategy
Content marketing is undoubtedly the biggest buzzword used by marketers today and for good reason. Every business that has executed an effective content marketing strategy has reaped the benefits, whether these be growth, sales or enhanced brand awareness. Content marketing doesn’t have to be complicated; it just needs to be well planned and executed accordingly. Here are three easy steps that can assist with the planning process.
1. Understand your target market
As obvious as this sounds, understanding who you’re selling to should be crystal clear before every content marketing campaign. Failure to do so will make it harder to connect with your customers, leading to a decrease in sales. You should know everything about the following:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Likes
- Habits
- Hobbies
2. Understand your customers’ online habits
If you know exactly how your customers operate digitally, then you’ll have a much better chance of successfully exposing your eCommerce brand to them. There’s an array of marketing channels for you to look into. Do they interact on Facebook? Twitter? Blogs? YouTube?
3. Create and launch your content
Only when you’ve identified what platforms your target market operates on can you then begin creating your content. Failing to execute steps 1 and 2 runs the risk of creating a dazzling piece of content that no-one will read. For example, if you spend the majority of your budget creating content to go on blogs when actually your audience is consuming content on YouTube, you’ve just invested heavily in a campaign that’s destined to fail. Bring your research together and create the content that is most likely to bring in results.
Create an app for your eCommerce store
According to Google, more than 50% of search queries are made on a mobile device. This rise in popularity of mobile search has prompted businesses to invest more heavily in mobile eCommerce. Choosing to do so will only be advantageous to your business:
- Apps are easier to work with than mobile browsers. Users don’t have to remember the URL of a website and tediously type it into a small screen.
- Apps have a better response time than browsers on mobile devices, helping to enhance user experience.
- Increases the chances of boosting customer loyalty. Downloading an app to a website demonstrates a higher level of investment in your brand. Your store will merely be a tap away from your customer base, something that will significantly increase the chances of a sale occurring than having to cumbersomely type in your full URL address into Google. Research suggests that customers are twice as likely to return to your store via the app than your mobile browser.