E-commerce is a flourishing industry today, and as it grows, so does the competition. If you are in the e-commerce business or are thinking of venturing into it, you must already be aware of the increasing number of e-commerce start-ups springing up daily. In an industry with such immense competition, you have to strategize and plan your moves beforehand, if you wish to sustain through the rat race.
Attracting customers and increasing traffic to your e-commerce website is not as easy as it may sound. You may be doing everything right, stocking all the right products, offering something that no other website does, but without proper e-commerce strategies in place, all your efforts will be in vain.
Here are 5 of the best e-commerce marketing strategies that you can adopt to outrank most of your ace competitors.
Structure of the website
The structure of your website is an essential factor that impacts your site’s user experience as well as its ranking in search engine results pages. The structure of the website should be such that it is easily navigable and simple to use. Adding too many unnecessary elements to the site only makes it more complicated. The aim is not to make the place look fancy but to ensure that people keep coming back to it for its ease of use. Nobody wants to go through a maze of web pages before finally finding what they are looking for. Ideally, every product on your site should be a maximum of three clicks away from the home page. Make the products easy to find by categorizing them correctly on the home page. Also, product pages that are clearly defined can be indexed much more easily by search engines too.
Search engine optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very important for any online business. Appearing at the top of the search engine result pages increases your chances of getting higher traffic. Create an SEO report for your website, finding and identifying the right keywords and phrases that customers generally use. Tactfully using these keywords in your website content can help drive traffic to your site. Optimizing your site so that potential customers can easily find it also adds to the user experience. Without proper SEO, your site loses visibility, and many potential customers may not even know that your e-commerce site exists, no matter how exceptional your products are. SEO also includes optimizing your product images for the search engine, using strong copywriting for product details, using a meta description for each product and including keywords in the URL.
Customer reviews
You may think that nobody reads the customer reviews on a website, but on the contrary,88% of consumers say that they read customer reviews to determine the quality of a business, as found by the BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2014.CLICK TO TWEETApart from offering customers with an idea of how your products perform, customer reviews also give you more content for your website. More content means that search engines will be able to understand better what your web page is about. If you have just started with your e-commerce website, you don’t have any online customers yet. In such a case, you could offer a few free samples to your family and friends and ask them to review the products on your website to start with.
Social media marketing
Social media is one place today where you find the bulk of your potential customers. Almost everyone has a social media account these days and making your product visible on these platforms is sure to get you some hits. Create a page for your e-commerce store on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and also Youtube if possible. These social media pages will act as a place for people to learn about your business, add reviews about your products and services, and for you to share events and updates. Add your social media share buttons on your product pages too so that people can share a product that they like, on their accounts. You can also use pay-per-click ads on Facebook and Google to increase your visibility.
Online security
One big concern that most consumers have when shopping online is the security of their payments and their data. There are excessive cases of data theft online every single day. This is why Google has also included security as one of the major ranking factors. So, if your page is still HTTP, its high time to convert it to HTTPS. Most customers also know the significance of an HTTPS web page these days. This will help build trust among your customers and help you avoid any litigations due to data theft in the future. It is also important to partner with a trustworthy and secure payment gateway that will keep customers’ payment information safe. Security is one of the most important factors to build a reputation for your e-commerce website.
With these few up to date e-commerce strategies for 2019 and a little planning and foresight on your part, it shouldn’t be difficult for your business to soar above all its rivals in the market. You can begin slowly, taking care of one step at a time but ensuring that all these factors are taken care of eventually. Once these few things are in place, you are ready for the competition.
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