E-COMMERCE SUCCESS

HOW TO DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR ONLINE STORE

The famous psycho-physicist Dr. Howard Moskowitz once said: “There is no perfect Pepsi; just different kinds of perfect Pepsi for different groups of people.” His point is that every visitor that comes to your website is different –– bringing along with them various life experiences and points of view that alter the way your site and products look to them. Therefore, it is crucial to choose those marketing methods that will ‘attract’ your customer. For instance, if you know that your audience is frequent social media users, you need to focus on Social Media Marketing (SMM), such as Facebook:
 

  However, social media is not the only tool. Digital Marketing tools like HootSuite, Sprout Social, Social Oomph, and much more makes very easy to engage the relevant audience for sales. A very famous e-commerce company-Diamond Candles, sold their products in a unique way. These scented soya based candles can give a customer a surprise fancy ring ranging from $100 to $5000 in value. Instead of promoting their product on Social Media, they discussed the brand with every 3rd person and asked their customers to post their picture with a ring. Later on, they used same pictures to re-post on Social Media to engage their customers. CEO of Diamond Candle pretty much believed in “Showing” rather than “Saying” and thought out of the box to make it a huge success with help of social media and word of mouth. Today we will have a look at three ways of how to increase the number of visitors to your online shopping store.

INFLUENCER MARKETING

Influencer marketing is a relatively new concept in the marketing world. With the rise in popularity of social media, brands have realized that they no longer have the ‘one to all’ voice they used to. Billboards, TV commercials and magazine ads may still be used by big brands to increase brand visibility, but these tactics are usually outside the reach (and budgets) of small businesses. Fortunately, social media offers small businesses the opportunity to level the playing field. Instead of broadcasting their message to a large, generic audience – which is likely to cost lots of money and be only moderately effective – they can target a smaller, more relevant audience. One of the most effective ways businesses are doing this is through influencer marketing. This is the process of having celebrities, influential bloggers, or industry experts talk about your brand, mention a product, or share your content. Not only does influencer marketing tend to be less costly than traditional marketing methods, it’s a much better fit (i.e. more effective) in our word-of-mouth culture.  

 

Case Study: Daniel Wellington

According to Econsultancy.com, Daniel Wellington is a watch brand that has chosen to completely bypass traditional marketing to focus on influencers. The brand pays celebrities for the sponsored posts and gifts watches to lesser-known micro-influencers. In exchange, they post photos of themselves wearing the watch, accompanied by a unique money-off code for followers. It’s a simple formula: beautiful images of minimalistic jewellery, which serve to promote a lifestyle as well as a product. There are over 1.5m Instagram posts using the #danielwellington hashtag, with the brand’s main account amassing over 3.5m followers. Considering the brand’s beginnings as a small start-up – it’s an impressive display of the strategy's potential.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

We all know SEO is important, and yet sometimes we let it “happen by accident” instead of giving it the attention it deserves. 95% of web traffic comes from a search engine, and less than 5% of web searchers make it through to the second page of returned search results. It is important to pay attention to the product keywords you should be using. You need to use a tool like the Google Keyword Planner to guide you to the right list of words that are the most relevant to your product. Consistently adding unique and high quality content on a regular basis to your ecommerce site will not only add additional value for users, it will also help with your search engine ranking. Consider using your and add content that's related to the products and services that you sell.  

 

Few important SEO tips for your E-commerce store:

Image search has become a very popular function that internet users are increasingly using to find products online. Therefore, ecommerce websites need to add related keywords into the ALT tags of every image on their website. For optimal effect, make sure that every keyword used for an image is directly relevant and avoid stuffing keywords into the alt tags. A common error made by many ecommerce sites is burying their product pages deep within their link structure. This will not only make it more difficult for users to find products, it will also impact the product pages PageRank score, making those pages less likely to appear high in search. Having product content only a link away from your home page will make them easier for both the search engines as well as your customers. In addition, the way that you structure your online shopping store will impact its visibility. Consider structuring your ecommerce store so that it includes a number of landing pages. These pages can be specific to a brand or product type. Doing this gives you the opportunity to optimize for multiple pages and keyword groups, which will increase your site's visibilty in search (Shopify.com). Do you need SEO assistance for your e-commerce store? Let Blueninja.io help you! The more detailed explanation of how to structure your E-commerce website will be given in our next E-commerce article. Stay tuned!

PPC ADVERTISING

More and more people are shopping online, and advertising platforms have taken notice, giving more on-page real estate to retail-related ads. If you’re in the retail industry, chances are you’re already using some form of online advertising to promote your products (link to digital marketing service page), but there is most likely room for improvement. Just as with search or display ads, there are plenty of options when it comes to PPC ecommerce ads. The two most popular (and fastest-growing) platforms you should be using are Google Merchant Center and Amazon Advertising. Google shopping ads are growing. Amazon is another great option if you’re able to host your products there. A recent report from Slice Intelligence found that spending with Amazon accounted for 43% of all US online revenue in 2016, while the company itself accounted for 53% of all online sales growth in the US. Google has even taken notice of Amazon’s success, with the company recently testing running Amazon shopping ads on Google.  


  Besides, it is important to diversify the types of ads you’re using for ecommerce. Both text ads and Product Listing Ads can be useful when it comes to selling products. Text ads allow you to highlight more specific prices and features in your headline and description, while PLAs allow you to compete with the ever-growing online shopping industry. Having both in place will allow you to partake in the best of both worlds.

Conclusion

“The e-commerce industry is a force that no investor can afford to ignore” © Cushla Sherlock, Corporate Communications, Credit-Suisse. One of the most significant trends of the 21^st century is characterized with replacement of traditional retailing with online shopping, gaining the central stage. Driving traffic to your ecommerce store helps bring in potential customers to land you that sale. Many spend their time perfecting the appearance of their online store and fail to do what really matters: marketing. If you’re serious about the future and growth of your business it’s essential that you drive traffic to your online store no matter how much work it is. Do you want Blueninja.io help you with the development of a great online shopping store for your business? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing (link to service pages) are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!  

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