Positioning your store to succeed in the e-retail universe will take some due diligence and smart thinking on your part. Experts estimate that e-retail raked in about $1.4 trillion last year alone, with current projections showing it eclipsing the $2 trillion marker by the year 2017. Making your store stand out is not rocket science. These following 15 ecommerce marketing tips can allow you to pack a bag for your rivals and bid them ado as their shoppers take a digital hike over to your online store.
Let Content Be Your Guide
An emerging trend in ecommerce is to fill your home page with suggestive content in addition to collage slides (which we will talk more about below). Content often links directly to related product pages, in addition to streaming images from popular social hubs like Instagram and others that depict real customers flaunting apparel and other wares.
Also, plenty of ecommerce stores are now linking images to their blogs, which also directly plug specific products. Be creative with your home page content and be sure to add plenty of visual stimulation, so that you can woo in shoppers by intimating their visual and mental senses simultaneously.
Make Your Lookbooks Stand Out
Lookbooks are a great way to make your products really stand out and to showcase your wares to prospective shoppers. But if you are not assigning product-specific links in the lookbooks, you are missing out on conversion potential. That’s because you are forcing shoppers to try and find the product that they saw in the lookbook, instead of making it effortless to just click on the image and be redirected to the product’s page. Your second ecommerce marketing tip is to link lookbook images to their associated product page.
Publicity is Credibility
Your image matters. How reputable it is also important to your customers and prospective customers. Commonly, you will see branding that adds credibility to certain services that you use online. But you can also add this very same credibility to your online store, too.
In par for entry number three on our list of ecommerce marketing tips is the power of the press release. Using a reliable distribution service, you can get your news out to the masses and syndicated in major newsfeeds. Doing so can let you brand your website with the “as seen in” logos of the newsfeeds that syndicate your release. We explain all the steps you need to take in our detailed breakdown on 12 Rules for Issuing Press Releases, which was syndicated by Entrepreneur Magazine, by the way.
Make Your Niche Your Bravado
A common mistake made by e-retailers is over-extending your product base. Many times, you will find that a niche product serves you far better. Instead of trying to sell a thousand products at your online store, focus on selling the fewer, higher quality ones that shoppers will struggle to find anywhere else. Doing so can help you set your store apart from others and can also help you find your niche with consumers.
Collage Slideshows Are the New Standard
We told you we’d revisit this in our first entry of ecommerce marketing tips, and here we are. The collage slideshow, as depicted in the screenshot below, is the new version of the slider. Website sliders are slowly waning in their appeal to shoppers. Considering that the above-the-fold marker on the website is the most viewed, instead of limiting it to a slideshow, where the second slide is rarely viewed by visitors, expand it to a collage slideshow and assure that your shoppers see a lot more images than just one.
Be Brief with Your “About” Story
Your about story matters. In this regard, look for quality over quantity. Sure, shoppers want to get an idea of who you are and why you are doing what you do. Short paragraphs and simple bullet points will suffice here. There’s no need to provide a ten-page bio that will rarely get read. You can see a good example of an ecommerce bio in the screenshot that we’ve provided below.
Make Sales Noticeable
If you’ve got a big holiday sale planned, make sure that you let shoppers know by making a visible header or banner graphic that can’t be missed. Integrating the banner at the top of the store (as depicted in the screenshot below), assures that no matter who visits your website, they’ll be apprised that you have some sweet deals that they can take advantage of which are time-sensitive.
Entice Shoppers by Offering “Bestsellers”
Featuring a “bestsellers” section is just good thinking at any ecommerce store. Letting shoppers know what your top-selling items are will aid in them getting on the trendsetter bandwagon and following suit with their purchase. Make certain that you have such a section in place that can be easily accessed from your home page. You’d be surprised at how much this simple trick can encourage increased sales from curious shoppers.
Use Great Images
One of the best ecommerce marketing tips that can be offered is to assure that your product images are featured in high definition. Since your shoppers are unable to see or touch the items that they are buying, you need to give them as good a visual offering as possible.
Deter Abandoners
Ecommerce stores suffer from an average aggregate shopping cart abandonment rate of approximately 68.7%, according to a report by Baymard. A number of contributing reasons are to blame as to why shoppers abandon the cart before closing the sale. To help you better understand why this occurs and what you can do about it, we’ve created this detailed infographic for you.
Increase Sales with Quick Shop Pop-Ups
What are quick shop pop-ups? They are small boxes that can pop-up when shoppers hover their mouse over cataloged products, enabling them to quickly make a selection that they add to the shopping cart (see screenshot below). They are becoming increasingly popular with ecommerce because they have been shown to increase the average order value exponentially. Consider including this helpful conversion feature at your online store.
Enable Easy Product Filtering
Make it easy for shoppers to find the products that they are searching for with nested search options, well organized categories and filtering features. A number of plug-ins are available, some free and some premium, depending upon the shopping cart that you are using, that can enable this proven conversion feature. After all, you want it to be simple and fast for shoppers to find the products that they want to buy from your store.
Increase Subscribers with Email Pop-Ups
Of the numerous ecommerce marketing tips that we’ve offered, this one is a back-and-forth subject matter. That’s because most people are not fond of pop-ups, so say plenty of studies; but other studies say that they work really well for growing your organic email list. It’s your call here. But if you like growing your subscriber base, pop-ups do indeed work like a charm. Think about expanding your business (and not your personal preferences here) when considering adding this feature.
Plan for Returns
Your return policy matters, and will greatly influence sales. Be sure to clearly state what your return policy is (sites like Zappos state it on the header for every page). Assure shoppers that they can confidently buy items from you and that they won’t be a hassle to return later on, after the fact. Doing so has the potential to dramatically increase sales.
Make sure you take a look at our guide on Reducing Online Returns in Fashion Ecommerce and our related guide on How to Create an Online Product Returns Policy. Take a look at the infographic below to learn how a hassle-free returns policy is one of the best marketing tools that you can use in ecommerce.
