The goal of building an ecommerce website is to convert its visitors into customers. The journey of surfers on your website can take place over several days and in several stages: Google search, price comparison, search for customer reviews, recommendations from friends on social networks, and more. So to reach and attract these consumers to your e-commerce website, it is important to map their journey (customer journey), and then choose a marketing strategy.
The idea is, to be present in the different channels where your audience may look for you. In this article, we will focus on promoting an e-commerce site organically and give practical tips that can help with this.
Table of Contents
Give Practical Tips That Can Help With This
- What are the different digital marketing channels?
- Organic impressions – also called organic website promotion / SEO
- Publishing Google ads
- Posting Facebook ads
- Additional social networks and community
- Blogs
- Different price comparison platforms
What is the way to the success of your digital e-commerce site?
Inbound Marketing
On the practical side of the matter, inbound marketing is defining several actions around content to interest and entice consumers who are looking for the product you are marketing, usually doing this through content marketing: SEO, campaigns, technical reviews on strong websites, etc.
Outbound marketing
Outbound marketing is designed to spread your message to consumers. Go “hunt” them in short. They were not necessarily looking for the product, and we appeal to them in different and diverse ways: TV, radio, SMS, newsletters, email marketing, Facebook ads, Google GDN ads, etc. Having reviewed in general the approach that must be taken for success in marketing an ecommerce site, we will now focus on everything related to the world of promoting an ecommerce site organically.
Promoting an e-commerce site organically – How do you do it?
#1 Optimizing the content of the product pages on the website
First, the volume of content around the product pages on the website should be increased. It’s not about creating content just to “inflate”, but about improving the user experience around understanding the product. It is important to understand that for a surfer, this page is the only interaction they can have with your product before purchasing. Therefore, he must answer all the questions that arise for the surfer. We often see on many e-commerce sites a short description of the product, price and that’s it. However, the product page can be taken much further. You will find relevant elements that will motivate the surfer to move to the purchase action:
- A full and very detailed description – imagine all the questions a customer can ask themselves about the product and reflect it on the page.
- Think about downloadable components around the product (if necessary and relevant of course).
- Product review and test videos.
- Customer reviews and, if available, from well-known bloggers.
- Ancillary products – this definitely works and increases the volume of the shopping basket.
Although it is not possible to give all the options presented in front of you in all sectors of activity, it is still necessary to open all the cards to the maximum in front of the potential client in order to increase the conversion ratio.
#2 Optimizing the content of the site’s category pages
Similar to the first tip we gave, the second tip concerns category pages. Unfortunately, most e-commerce sites forget them. It must be remembered – like the other pages, they are pages that are scanned by Google and can place themselves on very relevant queries. Therefore it is recommended to scan all of them and improve them, both for the site’s SEO and to improve the user experience.
On each category page it is recommended to add short content at the beginning of the page and additional content at the end. This is a great way to use content to create an internal link profile that will strengthen different and relevant pages on the site itself. This is critical and important in terms of Google’s crawling and improving organic promotion results.
#3 Blog – turn from sellers to consultants
Our third tip is to set up a blog on your trade website. This is one of the best ways to establish yourself as a digital marketing expert in your world. You need to convey to the surfers (potential customers) that you are here to help them choose their product.
In terms of SEO, this will allow you to emphasize the importance in Google’s eyes of the important keywords in the field and to take positions on new and more targeted keywords (called in the professional language: “long tail phrases”), where none of your pages are currently positioned.
Important – the topics mentioned in the site’s blog should clearly show that your brand is an authority in your field – an excellent means of creating authority and credibility for the site, which will allow you to simultaneously promote an ecommerce site on Google organically in a better way and of course win more and more customers.
#4 Customer reviews, synergy of SEO and e-reputation
Our fourth tip is a must for ecommerce websites. This is a strategy of customer reviews: tracking and optimization for the online stores. This strategy has a triple effect: SEO, conversion and branding.
How is it recommended to show user reviews?
Google My Business account – you can pull the reviews from the account directly to the website.
Add-ons that show a global score of the reviews (yellow stars for example that really catch the eye).
Reviews of surfers on the product pages – this is to give confidence just before the purchase operation. Sometimes Google also highlights these comments directly in the search results (SERP) – called in the professional language “rich searches”.
Read more: Latest eCommerce Marketing Trends Dominating The Industry in 2022
Important – when a customer leaves a comment on the website or in the Google My Business tab, make sure to always respond, whether his comment is positive or negative.
Another important thing – do not leave fictitious reviews – Google punishes this kind of thing. If it is about one or two criticisms – everything is fine, but not beyond that.
#5 Switch from SEO to SXO
SEO strategy (oriented to search engines) to SXO strategy (oriented to search engines and surfers). Although this concept is not new, it has not sufficiently entered the consciousness of many. The goal is to take actions not only in order not to attract a maximum of traffic to the store website, but to attract quality traffic and adapt the content on the ecommerce website to the surfer – which will usually be expressed in more conversions.
And as a bonus
Define the right keywords for your ecommerce website. This tip is valid for all sites and is especially relevant for trade sites. It is about choosing the right keywords for the website. It must be understood that not all keywords are of interest to you. Before choosing the phrases you want to focus on and advance in Google, you must understand what the users’ intentions will be, which are divided into 3 types:
- Information search: These are queries from Internet users looking for specific information. The surfer is usually not yet ready to move to the purchase action;
- Free navigation: reflecting brand images.
- Purchase Intent: These are queries made to make a purchase.