While your retail business may have started as a pop-up or brick-and-mortar store, the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed how the retail industry operates. The nationwide stay-at-home orders ignited a shift in purchasing behavior toward online channels. Moreover, the accelerated user acceptance, combined with innovations like streamlined checkout experiences, pretty much guarantees a lasting effect even after the pandemic ends.
With new competition added every day, smaller eCommerce brands need to go the extra mile to stand against aggressive big-box retailers like Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target. As Direct to Consumer (DTC) eCommerce websites continue to proliferate across the Internet, it’s becoming more difficult to generate quality web traffic, leads, and sales.
So how can new smaller brands with eCommerce Shopify websites possibly hope to compete with larger companies? Try weaving these eCommerce Shopify marketing tactics into your existing digital strategy.
Get Strategic with Your eCommerce Keyword Lists
SEO is one of the strongest ROI strategies to drive more qualified customers to your online store. For eCommerce keyword research, your strategy should prioritize product-focused keywords, while taking your homepage, product categories, and blog content into account. Remember to mention your primary keyword in your product headline, product description, meta descriptions, image alt texts, and sub-headings.
Furthermore, focus on long-tail keywords by getting descriptive with your products, as they’re less competitive for shorter-tail keywords. For instance, you’ll have an easier time ranking for “woman’s color-treating shampoo” than you would for “shampoo.”
Branding Your eCommerce Website
Branding can change how people perceive your brand while driving new business and boosting brand awareness. If you want to keep your branding consistent, start reexamining your logo, creative style guide, and imagery.
- Logo: Your logo is one of the first things your audience will see when they land on your website. A great logo helps customers instantly recognize your brand, so keep it unique and clean.
- Creative Style: Take a moment to consider the colors, fonts, icons, textures, and patterns that define your brand. You should keep these consistent across your website and all marketing materials.
- Imagery: Your imagery needs to be on point. Capture your customers’ attention with beautiful high-resolution and stylized images that flawlessly showcase your products.
Harness User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) refers to content produced by online users who do not receive compensation in return. This gives eCommerce brands an advantage because they get exposure and reach to new audiences without dipping into their marketing budget or devote extra time to produce new content.
Moreover, leveraging user-generated content helps promote trust, shows real-life usage and practicality, and develops strong social interactions. Some examples of user-generated content can include reviews, testimonials, pictures, videos, and blogs.
Encourage Customer Feedback & Reviews
Allowing customers to provide company feedback and product reviews will demonstrate that your business cares about your shoppers. Customer feedback keeps your team informed if customers feel satisfied with the product or service you deliver. More importantly, this information allows you to pinpoint opportunities to further improve your services.
So if you want to get ahead of the competition and deliver an excellent customer experience, it’s time to start listening to your audience’s concerns and needs.
At Premiere Creative, we recommend two effective methods for earning customer feedback and reviews.
- Offer Rewards for Engagement: If you ask customers to provide a review or feedback, offer them a reward in return. Customers love free giveaways and discounts, so providing an incentive for engagement is a surefire way to get customers involved.
- Launch a Loyalty Program: A loyalty program is a great way to encourage customers to return to your website. From personalizing emails to providing special birthday offers or accrual of points for shutouts, these tactics will make a customer feel valued by a business.
Optimize Your eCommerce Landing Pages
You may need to give your landing pages a makeover. Some other things to consider when building your page:
- Define Your Value Proposition: Customers always want to know what’s in it for them before making a purchase. Your value proposition needs to convince them to purchase from you instead of a competitor, so keep your copy short, clear, and concise.
- Add a Strong Call-to-Action (CTA): A compelling call-to-action will help you capture more leads. Keep your CTA short and clear with action-oriented words to invoke an immediate reaction.
- Keep the Design Clean: Simple and minimal is the way to go, so keep your page design clean and embrace white space.
- Optimize Contact Form Fields: Only include essential questions in your forms. With the many distractions that consumers face during the buying process, marketers must aim to hold their attention long enough to complete the sale.
- Try A/B Testing: A/B testing lets you test various landing page layouts and content to understand which works best for your target audience.
Final Thoughts on Marketing an eCommerce Website
Many eCommerce business owners want and expect to jump straight to the top of Google immediately. Unfortunately, this process will take time before website owners begin noticing an influx of website traffic and sales. Nonetheless, integrating a mix of these eCommerce marketing tips can help level the playing field between you, your competitors, and eCommerce titans like Amazon. Moreover, using effective engagement methods will eventually convert website traffic into real paying customers.
Are you ready to give your eCommerce website better web visibility? Dial (973) 346-8100 to schedule a consultation with Premiere Creative’s experienced team of eCommerce marketing specialists.
