Tips for building and marketing your website

Over 206 million predicted shoppers are buying products online this year. It’s a great time to be in eCommerce if you know what you are doing. How well do you understand what is involved in setting up, maintaining, and marketing an online business? It begins with the right website platform.

Ecommerce website platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce will come with the tools to help you handle issues involving website design and hosting, marketing tools and reports, and even pricing and payment options. Before choosing the site builder platform, consider the following:

• amount of inventory
• volume of traffic
• online storage space
• inventory
• payment security
• sales reports

You will want to provide payment and shipping options for your customers and think about the ability to create discounts or programs for customer loyalty. Do you want to offer gift wrapping? Certain promotional features may cost extra. 

Think like a consumer when designing menu options to streamline navigation and minimize the amount of time it takes to find and purchase a product. Both aesthetics and well-organized web pages are part of optimizing the user experience (UX) that ensures an enjoyable visit to your site. Apply conversion rate optimization (CRO) which is part of the website design that converts visitors into customers, asking them to take a specific action on a webpage.

Once you’ve put your site together, you need to market your store effectively. This means understanding what it takes to drive website traffic.

Online marketing uses several channels:

Pay-per-click (PPC)

PPC campaigns require bidding on keywords or phrases being used in the ads for your business. Higher bids earn better ad placement by search engines. Pay-per-click may also be referred to as search engine marketing (SEM) and describe the use of the Google Adwords platform or other paid platforms. AdWords pioneered PPC advertising and currently has the largest share of the search market.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO is “organic” traffic, meaning it does not require payment to use. Instead, it requires knowledge of best practices to apply relevant search terms to quality information in all website content, provide appropriate inbound links, share value across social media campaigns, and other considerations important to search engine algorithms. Doing these things can get you to the first page of search engine results pages (SERPs) which is critical to your website visibility and gaining new customers.

Email marketing

Email marketing targets site visitors by newsletters or email notifications in varying stages of the sales conversion funnel process, from becoming aware of your business and until the final purchase of your product. Afterward, it can include a remarketing effort to encourage future business.

Display advertising

Display advertising consists of banners, sidebars and other visual content on websites that are placed by ad networks such as Google Display Network.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing uses reviews, comparisons, and testimonials to drive traffic to an online website. They receive a set commission for referred sales and usually have a loyal following or receive traffic from other marketing channels that can be of benefit in the relationship.

Online marketing strategies constantly change with technology and need to be adjusted regularly because search engines and advertising platforms keep altering requirements and refining algorithms for better search results. This makes it hard to stay compliant with rules, but also allows consumers to find products with less precise keywords and is the reason why blogs and other types of content have become more popular.

Ecommerce Marketing Strategy Tips:

• Create an automated email marketing campaign
• Sell your products across different marketing channels and social media platforms
• Optimize your checkout process and ask customers to write product reviews
• Personalize your content marketing and improve your mobile experience
• Implement an SEO strategy once a pay-per-click campaign gets traction

An SEO strategy is an essential component of your eCommerce marketing plan. It can build a positive profile and reputation for yourself and your business by using effective keywords in website copy and blog content. The information provided must be relevant to the business and offer education or entertainment, include promotions or contests, and link to social media pages. Social platforms gain greater reach and lead to word-of-mouth traffic in industry and consumer forums. This becomes Influencer Marketing which is rising as a popular eCommerce marketing approach. By using hashtags, you can find your biggest product supporters encouraging your audience to trust you and buy.

How do you determine which combination of actions, channels, and tools

should be used to expand your eCommerce brand visibility,

attract new consumers, and retain them?

You can learn how to build and market your eCommerce site by yourself, however, that requires some education about website design and recommended tools such as Google Analytics, MailChimp, and <Hotjar>article link. Technology can make much of your work easier using apps for things like customer relationship management and accounting software. You may decide to handle some parts of the business and outsource others.

While a digital marketing company can deliver valuable advantages in areas of eCommerce site building and marketing, there are associated costs. Before you get your eCommerce business rolling, determine what aspects of the business are more easily handled by you and what parts are better off being outsourced. Is marketing the business the best use of your time?

Sympler can help you determine if you will get the expected return on investment by hiring a marketing partner. They offer a free analysis of your company and your biggest competitors and can tell you how your site is performing based on recent activity. This helps to find out where marketing dollars make the best sense so you don’t overspend on services that you don’t need.

Ask for a free analysis. You can also call us at 800•984•6248.

Sources:

Your 10 Point Checklist to Starting an Ecommerce Business, Akalp, N., 2017. https://smallbiztrends.com/2015/08/checklist-starting-an-ecommerce-business.html

Top 10 eCommerce Sites, https://www.top10ecommercesitebuilders.com

Big Commerce, What Is Ecommerce Marketing? https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-ecommerce-marketing/

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