As any business does, as an online store, you have to plan and strategise how you will go about your marketing.
You have to drive traffic to your online store using a whole range of SEO and other marketing techniques.
In any type of marketing, creating a strategy is your best plan of action.
So, how do you go about creating an eCommerce marketing strategy?
Research
How are you supposed to plan effectively if you aren't armed with the knowledge you need?
Our first bit of advice is to always research and monitor your competitors, especially if you are a new business in your market.
Look at what your competitors are doing right, and what they're doing wrong, so that you can avoid the same mistakes.
Never copy, simply acknowledge, and utilise what you see.
The biggest thing to research is your keywords.
Keyword research will show you the terms and phrases most commonly used by your target customers, so you can use these terms and phrases will promoting your products.
You can track and monitor your keywords using a range of software.
On-page SEO
On-page SEO is used so that search engine crawlers can understand what your pages and website are about so that it can be shown to the right people.
Meta-titles
Your meta-title is the heading that shows when someone searches for you or your service, so making sure that this is accurate and relevant to you is essential.
For us, our landing page meta-title states three main points:
It very simply summarises PageNorth, so the search engine knows what we can provide to searchers.
Meta-descriptions
A meta-description is a snippet of text that shows on a search engine's result page (SERP).
It gives a more specific description of the page, the description is there to help the searcher decide if they want to click on your result.
It should target human readers while still using keywords to help the search engine understand what's on the page.
Images and alt text
For eCommerce products, having high-quality images is key.
You should take clear and flattering photos of your stock, to then list on your website.
There should also be consistency with the images, the lighting, background, size, and quality should all be the same so it looks professional.
The images shouldn't just look good, they should have descriptive alt text and titles.
Having accurate and descriptive alt text is great for accessibility, but it also helps with ranking as you can include keywords.
Alt text should describe everything in the image, if there's text within the image this should be added as a screen reader may not pick it up.
Product descriptions
Similar to images, a great description can drive a sale.
The description should clearly describe the product, with lots of detail and specifics that can't be covered in a product title.
This helps the viewer understand what they're looking at, if they are debating a purchase, they will want to know all the details before they decide.
The product description is another great way to work in keywords so that searchers looking for something very specific will be led to your product.
Technical SEO
The point of technical SEO is to improve user experience.
Speed
Nobody wants a slow website.
More importantly, nobody wants to use a slow website.
There's likely to be an abundance of images, videos, descriptions, links, customisation options, you know the drill.
Due to all of this, your website can end up pretty bulky and slow, so you must work with your website development team to ensure you avoid this.
A slow-loading website will put many people off, possible customers are likely to bounce before the site is even finished loading.
Navigation
The way that search engines, such as Google, will rank your website on a results page will depend on the crawl results.
The engine will 'crawl' your site, meaning that it will go through your site and follow the natural navigation path to view all the pages, decide on the relevance and quality, then place your website in the search results where it seems fit.
If your website has no clear navigation paths, neither the search engine nor users will be able to make their way through it.
Pages should have a hierarchy, parent pages should link down to related child pages.
Child pages should also link back up to parent pages so the user doesn't get lost.
This is sometimes referred to as 'breadcrumbing', it ensures that everything is easily located and organised logically on your website.
Again, this is something that your website development team will understand and deal with, but if you are building your own website it should be kept in mind.
Responsiveness
Last, but certainly not least, responsiveness!
The way that consumers shop will vary from person to person, but if you shop online, think about how you do it.
Large, planned purchases will sometimes be done on a desktop, but for casual or impulse browsing?
Mobile is the key.
Some businesses opt for the app route so that customers can shop on their phones or tablet, but having a functional and responsive online store isn't difficult if developed right.
Responsive eCommerce stores will follow the same basic guidelines as any responsive website.
You're looking for a good text/image ratio for smaller screens, simple navigation, and all other usability aspects.
It's all about adaptability, you want your site to work for everyone on any device.
Conclusion
There's plenty more that'll go into creating your eCommerce marketing strategy, but that was some of the basics.
At PageNorth, we can handle creating your marketing strategies and ensure that any eCommerce sites we build are have on-page SEO and technical SEO.
Get in touch with our team to find out more about how we can help you.
