If I had to pick one of the most important indicators of a successful e-commerce inbound marketing campaign, if not THE most important factor, it would be content. Without quality content that engages potential clients and customers, website visitors won’t have a reason to take any kind of action or convert.
The purpose of inbound marketing is to attract visitors, convert those visitors into leads and close those leads into customers or clients. And the key to turning a profit with an e-commerce site is customer retention.
Content is the key to being successful in all of these aspects.
When we refer to content, in addition to text, we’re referring to images, videos and audio. Content is anything that’s placed on the website that causes a user to have a more amplified, more informed, positive experience. The anchor text on the front end of the website provides users with the best possible search experience by giving them results that meet their needs. Search engines reward sites that have useful, quality content on their pages. Keep in mind that it’s better to have a website that contains 20 pages of good content than 100 pages of thin content. When writing website content, remember that each page needs to serve a specific purpose. Don’t build out another page just for the sake of h aving a bigger website.
Website content should be written first for target buyer personas, then for the search engines.
What kind of information are your buyer personas looking for? Once you’ve reached a decision about this, then get started with research around the phrases that buyer personas are searching under. Then, publish information that incorporates those topics and weave those phrases naturally into the text, where it makes sense. Nowadays, there is no need to over-emphasize any keyword phrases thanks to an update to Google’s algorithm known as Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). LSI is a way for Google to be able to tell what a particular piece of content is about, meaning that it’s unnecessary to repeat a keyword phrase time and time again throughout a piece of content. Simply talking about that topic is enough for Google to know what the piece is about.
Here are some other tips that are of great value for e-commerce customer retention:
1.) Be Available – when customers have a question, give them multiple channels to contact you. Some examples of this are online chat, social media, e-mail, 800 number.
2.) Give Buyers a Voice – Do this by adding a “Reviews” Capability on your Website – Social proof speaks volumes. This is one of the reasons why Amazon is such a popular website. Customers want to see how others feel about a particular product. Ask your web designers to create a way for customers to leave reviews on the website. Additionally, having a way for staff to provide original commentary about a product that they’ve used on the site is a powerful way to speak to customers and sell a product.
3.) Go after Abandoned Shopping Carts – 80% of companies do not do this, but studies show that if you contact these almost-buyers via e-mail, you will have a greater chance of seeing them as return customers – usually within the first 12 hours of contacting them.
4.) Say “thank you” – Thank your buyers for the sale. You may be surprised at how far genuine appreciation can go.
In a nutshell, the human elements of making a sale extend to e-commerce. After all, its people that you’re making a transaction with 🙂
If you’re interested in learning more about e-commerce sales from an inbound marketing perspective, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d be happy to take a look at your website to tell you what should happen in order to be successful online.
