Marketing involves many strategies to establish brand identity and increase sales. The onset of the pandemic encouraged brick-and-mortar shops to create virtual stores to accommodate people who were hesitant to go outside. Digital marketing has become in demand as ecommerce has increased in sales and people have learned how to complete online transactions.
The enormous online activities have taught digital marketing specialists the best techniques to attract customers and convert leads. If you are thinking about opening an ecommerce shop for your clothing line or restaurant, you can learn a lot from this article.
Here are some marketing best practices online shops should follow now:
1. Improve Your Website Speed
Nothing is more disappointing than a website page that loads too long. People will just close it and go over the next search result. You do not want to waste your SEO efforts, so invest in improving your website speed by buying more storage, a premium web hosting plan, and a dedicated server.
Giving more space for your ecommerce items allow you to showcase your featured clothes more effectively. You can add more photos of your products with different camera angles so that people can get a full view of the items.
You can also compress the images so that you can reduce your website’s load time. Group related images on one page to save more space. Avoid adding too many videos and just focus on five featured items per day.
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Check the load speed of your website. As said by Digital Authority Partners, go to your site’s Webmaster Tool to check bugs, fix duplicate content, and add no-follow tags to clear issues on your pages.
Increasing your site’s load speed will facilitate decision-making among your potential customers. They are trying to compare colors and styles, so you’d better have a fast-loading site to match their fast-paced browsing habit. Make sure to organize your web pages better so that people can shop more efficiently.
2. Simplify Elements on a Page
Make your target audience focus on the key message of your website and display buttons that will persuade them to take the next step such as looking at the actual item or paying for the product. Remove irrelevant advertisements and allow the white space to lead people to your featured products.
If you think of the lost opportunity for the revenue from external ads, compute how much you can increase your conversion rate if users trust your website page more because of clear information. You can earn more if you focus on establishing your brand’s credibility online by professionally presenting your brand messages and campaigns.
You should simplify the customer’s steps in paying for an item; otherwise, they will get irritated and just close your checkout page. The most important details you need to get from a customer are their contact number, shipping address, and email. Provide an optional “Sign Up” button for them to access your express checkout service or receive a discount shipping voucher or freebies.
After the purchase, you can always follow up with the customer and persuade them to engage more and stay on your website pages. The trend is a minimalist website design with a smooth navigation flow and an efficient checkout page.
3. Write Blog Posts Regularly
Deliver good results with content creation or blogging. Writing for your brand enables you to highlight your best products or services and persuade the target audience to purchase right away.
Blogging can give you instant traffic to your website because of your already established backlink score. When writing blog posts, add internal and external links. Regular blogs keep the optimization campaign going and improve the overall online presence of your website.
Furthermore, your content enables users to know your brand more. Information is vital on the internet, and content remains king. As long as you have a solid system for managing your website’s content, you are on the right track to reaching the top rank in search results.
You should keep optimizing your content and blogs to track how well your digital marketing campaigns progress. You can monitor improvements in conversion rates via Google Search Console.
4. Offer Various Payment Options
Not everyone has the same payment method preference. But don’t get intimidated by this, especially if you’re a budding entrepreneur. Some people like to pay via a credit card, and others like to pay in cash. Offer both online and traditional payment options so that your prospects will easily proceed with hitting the “Pay Now” button.
Consider accepting money via Visa, MasterCard, Pay Pal, American Express, bank fund transfers, over-the-counter transactions, cash-on-delivery transactions, and crypto payments. If you have a physical store, you can allow orders through the ecommerce site and receive cash payments in-store.
If pandemic restrictions have loosened in your area, be more lenient in allowing customers to visit your store and pay in cash. On the other hand, if your business is in the luxury line, consider offering an installment payment schedule for clients who want to have one of your signature pieces yet cannot pay the total amount. Who knows, they might be able to increase their capacity to pay in the following months and become your loyal client.
You should explain well on your checkout page if you have other special terms and conditions for purchasing products, such as your return and exchange policy. You are in the ecommerce industry, so provide a customer hotline, through which they can relay their issues with finishing the payment transaction, changing the shipping address and date, or verifying the credit card payment.
Final Words
Marketing best practices that online shops can follow now include optimizing your website, its content, and your customer hotlines. Ensure that you deliver the optimal web services to customers to satisfy them with the online shopping process.
Remember to treat your customers with respect and appreciate their time knowing your brand more. These tips will help you boost your online presence and, as a result, revenue for the months and years to come.
