The increasing adoption of digital channels has expanded the emphasis on e-commerce. It makes sense for many companies not only to advertise their goods and services online, but also to sell them. Across the world, Internet usage as well as smartphone ownership rates are rising, and customers are increasingly inclined to do everything from study to make their final buying decisions online.
If you want to keep pace with competition and continue to develop your business, you need to integrate e-commerce into your overall digital strategy. Below, we have outlined some key channels to consider that are easy to implement and will help boost your company’s growth.
1. Integrate Blog to Your Corporate Website
In some of our previous post, we addressed the possibility that many businesses run over-producing pointless articles on a company blog in an effort to increase their SEO. However, when properly implemented, company blogs can be a simple and cost-effective way to bring more visitors to the website and more customers.
Relevance is the secret to blogging success. If you can create an article that resonates with your target audience, anticipates their needs, or addresses any questions they may have, that piece of content can improve the credibility of your brand and make it an authoritative source of information. Irrespective of your product or service, strive to avoid over-difficult selling for the advantage of content that is closely linked to the specific selling points and offerings of your company. If you can show a willingness to provide your target audience with unplanned, useful content, they will be more likely to trust and eventually buy from you.
Similarly, avoid writing blog posts that include news or facts about your company – a post about the charity fundraising activities of your office might be of internal interest, but it will not affect potential new customers (unless they are extremely philanthropic!).
The ‘how-to’ article style is a useful place to start producing high-quality blog material. Irrespective of your industry, whether your article is titled ‘How to make Hummus’ or ‘How to Sew a Button,’ this type of content is highly informative and can serve as the ideal medium for subtly promoting your brand. For instance, if you are selling sewing kits, you may want to connect to a specific product page inside your ‘How to Sew Button’ post, if it feels normal.
If you have the resources to create a blog post once a week or once a month, it will help to improve your market search ranking and provide interesting, original content that can be promoted across social media to further increase exposure and generate more sales on your website.
2. Video Content
For any company , especially those with an e-commerce feature, video content is now a key component of successful customer interaction and conversion – it is no surprise that YouTube is now the world’s second-largest search engine, with more than three billion searches every month. It’s the ideal, innovative platform that lets you share interactive product demos and compelling brand stories with your audience.
In order to display life-like colors in their new monitors, the tech brand LG created video content that focused on tricking the occupants of the elevator into believing that the floor was falling away:
Not only did this video act as a groundbreaking product showcase, it has enjoyed over 25 million YouTube views to date and greatly improved LG’s brand awareness.
Read Also: 8 Competitor Market Research List And Tools
However, many brands are also discouraged by what they believe is a time-consuming and costly content format to be produced.
It’s easier than you think to create compelling, low budget video material. If you are using a simple camera, an iPhone or a laptop, there are plenty of applications and tools that you can use to make the editing process as fast and painless as possible. You can check out our article here for tips on how to build excellent video content on a budget. From there, once you have implemented a strong Call-To-Action, you can notice a positive effect on your online sales.
3. Email
When it comes to producing return on investment, email marketing has always been a high-rise platform with 3800 percent ROI – $38 for every $1 invested.
Because of the permission-based nature of email marketing, it acts as a strong conversion channel, primarily because the audience you are interacting with has deliberately wanted to learn more about your brand and its goods and services. It’s a direct channel that allows you to cultivate a more intimate consumer relationship that allows you to leverage to drive more sales. With this in mind, it makes sense to try and expand your list of subscribers as much as possible. You can do this by optimizing your website with prominent Call-to – Action on your website , in order to attract visitors to sign up to receive high-quality content.
Also Read: How To Build & Nurture Email Marketing List Of Quality Customers
By repurposing blog posts and video material, your company could easily organize a monthly newsletter that demonstrates your insightful leadership and value to the customer. Once you have made a healthy list, you can start inserting a special deal, discount, or connection to a new or existing product page in an occasional promotional message.
If you can build your credibility and deliver quality content regularly to the inbox of your target audience, they would be infinitely more likely to buy your goods.
4. Mobile Commerce
As digital platforms inspire enhanced levels of interconnectivity, the increase in mobile commerce has been somewhat unavoidable. 78% of smartphone searches for local business knowledge result in a purchase. This means that all companies now have a duty to recognize and integrate mobile into every area of customer experience.
Mobile offers the company the ability to connect with consumers anywhere at any time. You may send exclusive deals, discounts and customized messages to them based on their location, in an effort to get them to buy in and out.
In order to capitalize on the potential to convert customers entirely through mobile devices, it is critical that your business website is fully optimized for a variety of devices, including smartphones and tablets. How quick is it to fill out a contact form? Or look for a product? Or complete a transaction?
If all of these vital steps are difficult to complete, it will be worthwhile upgrading the website with a mobile responsive design, which ensures that the site would automatically adjust to the platform on which it is displayed. In the same way, you can also strive to ensure that your checkout process is as quick and streamlined as possible.
Avoid requiring users to create an account before they make a purchase and ask for as little details as possible. The average mobile cart abandonment rate is 97%, so if you want to optimize your revenue and take full advantage of the channel, you need to avoid bad design, complex processes and restricted payment methods to name a few – to be as versatile and welcoming as possible.
5. Comparison Shopping Engines
Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) is another powerful e-commerce channel that can be leveraged to drive more sales to your company. Comparison shopping engines compile product details and prices from a number of vendors and view the results on a single web page. This helps shoppers to quickly and easily compare product details, prices and shipping options and make a well-informed final buying decision.
Google Shopping is one of the biggest and most well-known CSEs. Merchants list their goods as part of a service that is integrated with Google Search. This ensures that your products will be shown to a wide, untapped audience of searchers and potential buyers, and you will only be charged when a user clicks and lands on your product page. Related websites are Shopping.com and Shopzilla.
It is important to remember, however, that when you compare shopping engines, there is always a pressure to lower your product prices in order to make a favorable contrast between you and your rivals. Because of this, you may have goods that you would like to advertise through CSEs because you don’t mind lowering their prices. Otherwise, you will want to concentrate on submitting products that are especially unique, with special features that you are sure can differentiate them on the marketplace. You can always rotate product listings and use different CSEs to measure which delivers the best ROI for you.
While it might take a while to find the right formula, the advantage of using a comparative shopping engine lies in the fact that you are given the ability to showcase your items to the right audience (which is already highly engaged and already looking to buy) at the right time.
What other channels do you use for online sales of your business? What successes and struggles have you had? Share your e-commerce thoughts with us in the comments section below!