Is your ecommerce business not driving enough sales? Are you not getting the most from your marketing budget?
Don’t worry because you’re sailing in the same boat as hundreds of other ecommerce businesses. From poor sales to low ranking to clicks with no conversions, even your best marketing strategy may be falling on its face.
With the competition level rising each passing day as customers are shifting to online purchases, it becomes challenging to stand out in the clutter. But, your next client will probably find your business online. So, to leave a lasting impression and ensure a loyal customer base, you need to revamp your digital marketing strategy.
But with the proliferation of the marketplace and a bouquet of options available to customers, it becomes difficult to get the attention you need to drive traffic and attract customers.
To make your life easier, we will discuss some must-have digital marketing tips to take your online presence to another level.
Are you ready?
Let’s get started.
6 Digital Marketing Tips to Expand Your E-Commerce Online Presence
Here are six digital marketing tips to get started with:
1. Add Videos
If you still haven’t realized, videos slay on social media and are one of the best ways to attract customers to your ecommerce business. So, whether you want to increase SEO engagement, conversion, or brand awareness, you need compelling and exciting videos.
With 68% of customers looking for video-related content before buying a product, videos are perfect for creating a seamless on-site customer experience. You can use videos to tell a story or use product videos as virtual salespeople explaining features of your product – either way, it will improve your customer’s shopping experience.
Creating videos is one side of the coin and getting it noticed is another. So, how can ecommerce brands get their efforts noticed?
To increase SEO and make your video searchable, eCommerce businesses should use an automatic subtitle generator. It will automatically generate subtitles from your video content and help you make it searchable. Also, when you add subtitles to your video content, you increase the experience of customers suffering from autism, and it helps provide clarity to technical terms.
Why add videos? With 85% of Facebook videos being watched without sound, adding subtitles to your product video could be a game-changer for your business.
2. Make use of artificial intelligence (AI)
AI is everywhere, and your ecommerce business is no different. To increase sales, improve customer experience, identify exceptional target prospects and create a more efficient sales process – AI is slowly becoming the backbone of an ecommerce business.
Ecommerce businesses can use AI to accurately predict how a customer will behave based on their past behavior. Using the latest AI solutions, you can generate significant new leads. It helps you gather data that provide you with strategies you should implement to encourage purchase, conversion, and increase loyalty.
Also, to provide a seamless customer experience and solve customer queries on the go, you can take help from chatbots that use AI technology to interact with customers. Apart from offering excellent customer support, Natural Language Processing (NLP) can easily interpret voice-based interactions with customers and address customers’ needs.
From intelligent product recommendation to inventory management, integrating AI in your ecommerce business could help you steer your ship in a preferred direction.
Why use AI? 47% of customers are open to buying online items using a chatbot.
3. Use advanced product filtering
The rule here is simple: the faster your customers find products, the easier it becomes to find products of their choice and the faster they will make a purchase.
That’s where product filtering comes into the picture. If your ecommerce business is offering tons of products, a cutting-edge filtering system could be the difference between failure and success. It can not only take your customer experience to a different level, but it will also drive sales, grow your revenue and enhance your SEO.
From category filters to thematic filters to filtering products by reviews, you can make the search simpler on your website. Adding these filters will improve customer experience, and you will see some tangible benefits quickly.
Why use product filtering? 42% of eCommerce websites lack advanced product filtering, and the absence of it results in loss of revenue and customers switching over to competitors. It’s a drawback of eCommerce that every buyer is not familiar with your website.
4. Focus on User-Generated Content (UGC)
As the famous saying goes, users trust other users over brands. This has given rise to user-generated content in ecommerce, and it is slowly outranking every other content type.
Content created by existing users and fans is trustworthy and authentic.
To create UGC, use hashtags on your social media channels and encourage your customers to use them. Also, by providing an easy way to share online reviews, you can build a loyal customer base.
With customers trusting online opinions and reading reviews, an ecommerce business that ignores UGC is the one that fails to attract their potential customers.
Also, it’s a cost-effective way to grow your business, combat negative online publicity, and improve your organic presence. UGC is an excellent option for any business that is strict on a budget but not on enthusiasm to provide content that resonates with their customer requirements.
Today, UGC is the way forward and a must-have for ecommerce brands looking to make a lasting impression.
The bottom line is that UGC gives your ecommerce business a way to pat itself on the back and solve customer problems.
Why focus on UGC? Ecommerce websites that feature user-generated content on their website can increase their web conversion by a whopping 29%.
5. Optimize your ecommerce website’s layout
Don’t just create a website that allows customers to purchase, focus on user experience to improve your website and allow visitors to convert into customers quickly. From navigation, layout to content, and product description, everything should work together to provide a seamless customer experience that instigates a customer to make a purchase.
Your goal is to provide an easy and simple checkout that naturally inclines a customer’s purchase from our website. So, test the website layout, including icons and elements, language in the conversion element, and product pages. You can use heatmaps to understand customer behavior on your website. Even if you plan to use a simple website design, keep your users in mind.
Also, give importance to optimizing your website for mobile because a mobile-friendly website is no longer a requirement; it’s a necessity. Optimizing your website’s layout is paramount for turning visitors into customers and customers into repeat customers.
Why optimize your website? 38% of visitors stop engaging with websites if they find them unattractive, and 88% never return to a website after encountering a bad user experience. So, as a business, it’s imperative to give weightage to website layout and design.
6. Reduce cart abandonment
The primary reasons for customers abandoning their cart are unfavorable shipping conditions and an overly complicated checkout process. If during a checkout process, your website crashes or takes ages to load, a customer is likely to leave all items in the cart.
So, to reduce cart abandonment and ensure your customers don’t switch to your competitors, focus on creating a cart abandonment email strategy that gets triggered every time a customer leaves unpurchased items in their cart.
It’s a great way to revive your lost customers. You can offer some discount to encourage your customers to finish their purchase. In case you charge a shipping cost, you can offer a free or discounted shipping option.
To further decrease your cart abandonment rate, you can use exit-intent pops, reengage with inactivity sensor pop-ups, create a sense of urgency, and provide incentives based on the value of products in the cart.
Why reduce cart abandonment? 87% of customers abandon their cart because of the cumbersome checkout process, and a single cart abandonment email can increase conversion rates by 10%.
Are you ready to expand your online presence?
You don’t need a million-dollar digital marketing budget to expand and increase your ecommerce business. A few steps taken one at a time can help you differentiate yourself from the online competition.
Use these six digital marketing tips to expand your ecommerce business and ensure you never face a shortage of customers. However, after implementing most of these strategies, you have to remain patient to see these tips work their magic on your customers. Focus on knowing your customers, understanding their requirements, and providing a user experience like never before.
For ecommerce brands looking to get one percent closer to Amazon or eBay, they need to give preference to user experience and customer requirements. Keep your customers at the heart of everything and see your ecommerce business flourish in no time.
Remember that not all strategies will work for every brand. So, if one digital marketing tip doesn’t result in the expected conversion rate, don’t lose heart. Try another one from our list!
Also, don’t forget to complete a status check on what’s working and what’s not!
Which of these digital marketing tips are you planning to implement?
Jason is the Marketing Manager at a local advertising company in Australia. He moved to Australia 10 years back for his passion for advertising. Jason recently joined BFA as a volunteer writer and contributes by sharing his valuable experience and knowledge.
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