OSI Affiliate Software integrates with many shopping carts and payment gateways. One of the most popular shopping carts that our customers have is Bigcommerce. This article will help Bigcommerce customers come up with a great bigcommerce marketing strategy. It is not only limited to Bigcommerce. If you have a different shopping cart, you can still use the same strategies to market your ecommerce store.
1. Overlooked Link Building Opportunities for Ecommerce Category & Product Pages
Building links to category and product pages is critical for any e-commerce website. For many, outranking their competitor’s category and product pages can be challenging. Even if they do flawless on-site search engine optimization for many major competitive search terms, the fact is domain authority is hard to outrank. However, there are straightforward ways to get links to your category and product pages and these are crucial to your goal of bringing in more revenue. This article explains ways on how e-commerce companies can improve their link building approach. The methods listed include the following: category-specific competitors; non-competing, complimentary retailers; mention monitoring; and segmenting deep link opportunities.
2. The 7 Things Every (Great) Checkout Page Needs
For any e-commerce company, the most important goal is to make a sale. No matter how much traffic is being generated or how remarkable the site looks, none of it would matter if the sales are not coming in. One of the most critical factors that e-commerce websites should evaluate is how effective their checkout page is. While there is significance in keeping things simple by having only fewer form fields, providing a checkout page that contains only few information may not be so effective. The trick is to provide the right number of form fields, improve your buyer’s mindset, providing trust seals all throughout your e-commerce website, and providing an FAQ.
3. Eleven Actionable eCommerce Link Building Tips
This article provides link building tips that e-commerce websites operating in any industry can utilize on their own sites. The list includes tips like reaching out to suppliers and event partners, monitoring the competition, creating custom content, training an internal team to acquire natural links, finding people who have taken your old content and request for links, asking your followers to use your badge on their blogs or websites, performing reverse image search to find users of your infographic who are not linking to you and then requesting for a link back to your site, tracking all sponsorships that have been made and getting link equity, uploading offline catalogs to your e-commerce website, taking advantage of shopping center directories, and brand mentions.
4. Comforting the Terrified, or: How to Build Better Product Pages
Product pages are key to making a sale. Consumers constantly battle with fears when it comes to shopping online as they are plagued with concerns on cost, product quality, and delivery. This article expounds on the importance of having a framework that will guide e-commerce website owners on where things should be placed on the page, what content should be written, and which photos are appropriate to use on their websites. In other words, building a product page that achieves what the shoppers need is crucial. The framework can be applied to fundamental page elements to make more effective product pages.
5. Evolving E-commerce Checkout
Checkout is a highly important part of the online sales funnel. Even though e-commerce has continued to grow, the process of buying online remains largely unchanged, always culminating in a form that requires buyers to fill out a form field that asks for buyer details. And while there have been efforts to optimize the checkout experience, online shopping cart abandonments rates have been soaring for years. Due to this, there have been efforts to improve the online shopping experience through improvements in the checkout process. This article provides a thorough look into how checkout has evolved through a number of notable milestones.
6. Shopping Cart Abandonment: Why It Happens & How To Recover Baskets Of Money
Online shopping cart abandonment is a constant occurrence, with research from Baymard Institute showing an average of 67.75% of all online shopping carts being abandoned. To be specific, the amount of money that e-commerce websites lost from shopping cart abandonment during 2009 was $1.2 billion and increased in 2011 to $9 billion. Forrester Research estimates that the projected total of annual abandoned shopping cart revenue is set to reach $31 billion. In line with this staggering statistics, this article provides an insight into why the problem persists, how to recover abandoned carts, and what e-commerce websites can do to stem the problem.
7. Fundamental Guidelines Of E-Commerce Checkout Design
Various studies have been conducted on shopping cart abandonment, with abandonment figures continuing to rise over the years. The article raises important questions about why customers decide to abandon their online shopping carts often, what makes it difficult for them to purchase products online, and if there are ways to improve conversion rates for e-commerce products. The article lists over 10 ways that e-commerce sites should implement on their websites to improve the checkout experience for shoppers and to help them achieve better conversion rates. The tips range from providing a meaningful flow, putting in good content, implementing a simple form design, and taking privacy considerations into account.
8. 5 Reasons Product Reviews Should be Your Core Linking Strategy
Product reviews are a critical strategy to your core linking approach. However, it must be done properly in order to avoid negative results. This article enumerates ways for e-commerce websites to take advantage of product reviews for the betterment of their link building strategy and to improve their search engine rankings. The article also talks about 5 major benefits that e-commerce websites can enjoy by sending out products for reviews: deep links, referral traffic and sales, social strategy, branding, and relationship building. Additionally, there are some tips on how to find bloggers to review products. All in all, the strategies provided can help e-commerce websites to improve their online visibility.
9. How to Transform Your eCommerce Store Into a Personable Sales Machine
For e-commerce website owners, generating enough transactions is important to keep their business going and ensuring that they can compete with their business rivals. The article talks about making an e-commerce store perform better and to make the site a personable sales machine. The tips offered in the article include practical tips like: providing a personable and likeable copy; an easier and more enjoyable shopping experience; going social and interacting with customers; being there when customers need assistance; and, serving customers efficiently both during and after sales through the use of support ticket system, toll-free numbers they can easily find.
10. 10 Simple eCommerce Design Tips That Will Increase Sales
Designing an e-commerce store is not just about appearance but also about making sure that it generates sales. While it is vital for a site to look good, it would not amount to anything if it is not converting. Also, giving customers the ability to navigate quickly and easily is also a crucial matter. With these in mind, the article lists 10 e-commerce design best practices that can be applied to online stores to make them more effective and accelerate their purchasing process to subsequently improve sales. The tips range from providing a clear call to action, making important information public, providing easy navigation, to providing smart forms.
11. The Mega Guide to Maximizing eCommerce Sales, Revenues and Performance on all Fronts
Kissmetrics provides a detailed guide on the best practices that e-commerce sites can use to improve their efforts and to help increase their revenue. The tips provided cover a range of topics including the following: mobile e-commerce; SEO organization; increasing page speed; conversion analysis with PPC, Heatmaps, and customer validation; data testing with abandoned carts and how to decrease the rates; purchasing funnel testing; assigning values; and, CTA and goal testing. In all, the practices are targeted to working on the inbound experience, the search experience as well as the shopping experience to make sure that the e-commerce experience for customers is greatly improved.
12. What Customers Want in an eCommerce Site
This article looks at an e-commerce website from a visitor’s point of view. It provides insights into a potential shopper’s impression at the beginning, his thoughts while browsing through the website, and his reactions to the process of placing an order right up to checkout. With this in mind, the article goes on to impart what a visitor wants in an e-commerce store, particularly in terms of design, speed, product selection, product pages, shopping cart, making the transaction, and after the transaction. The article provides concrete examples of what is considered appropriate and how e-commerce stores can improve their approach.
13. Understanding How People Shop Online
Shopping online continues to grow as more people discover comfort and ease associated with purchasing online. However, for e-commerce stores to better understand their attitudes concerning buying, they need to have a clear grasp of how people conduct their online shopping. This article lists down a number of stages that each provides an explanation on how shoppers conduct their task online. It also offers ways on how e-commerce stores can target these customers at every stage. The important lesson in this entire process is for e-commerce stores to give buyers what they need in order to keep them coming back.
14. Examples of effective landing pages for Ecommerce sites
One of the means that an e-commerce website can succeed in its field is by having an effective landing page. E-commerce landing pages are utilized for marketing and created to increase sales. There are a lot of factors that need to be considered in order for a landing page to achieve the desired effect. However, there are best practices that e-commerce websites should implement in order to improve their bottom line. The key is to ensure that the campaign is consistent and to make sure that the landing page is simple yet provides what the visitors are expecting to have.
15. Product Photographs to Increase Conversion Rates
Photographs are among the most important components that can enhance conversion rates in an e-commerce store. Since online shopping takes away the important opportunity of physically touching the item and personally experiencing it prior to buying, it is essential for online stores to cover the lack by means of providing high quality photographs of each of their products and are accompanied with appropriate, well-written copy. The article also discusses the different ways that photography can improve a customer’s impression of a particular product. These can be through options like 360º photographs, “stop-motion” 360º photographs, and “changing color” 360º photographs, which allow shoppers to have a better browsing experience.
16. 6 Ways to Get More Out of Your Order Confirmation Page
The goal of any e-commerce website is to convert visitors into buying customers, but how about after they place an order? This article provides a number of methods that e-commerce site owners can make use of the order confirmation page to improve their sales and enhance customer engagement. The ideas range from cross selling, signing up for newsletters, account creation, resources for instant gratification, social media, and, asking for their feedback about their experience. These ideas all in all are created to get more out of the order confirmation page and then turn it into a revenue enhancer for the website owner.
17. SEO tips for e-commerce sites
This article provides a list of effective SEO-related strategies that aim to help e-commerce companies achieve better sales in addition to better search engine rankings. The 13 tips cover a lot of aspects and include a variety of elements such as: streamlining the checkout process; sending the appropriate response to deal with orders that are temporarily out of stock or are sold out; including a form-filling to minimize the instances of bottlenecks when entering information during purchase time; being savvy about product variations; installing product markups for rich snippets; implementing best practices in site architecture; converting search results pages into category pages; turning search results pages into category pages; ensuring that searchers find helpful reviews; and providing a value-add option.
18. Replacing Drop-Down on an eCommerce Store Increased Revenue by 56.43%
Most e-commerce websites use drop-downs and accept them as standard and a requirement of design. However, there are studies that show drop-downs are considered annoying by visitors. While these do not exactly lose sales per se, these can improve long-term business value for a website and can lead to increased loyalty and customer satisfaction. A case study was performed on an e-commerce store and it was found that removing the drop-downs from their site improved conversions by 56.43%. The article provides a detailed account of how the case study was carried out and what factors were taken into consideration.
19. Creative Link Building for Ecommerce Sites
One of the most pressing issues that e-commerce websites face today is developing a long-term content/link building strategy that works. This article provides ideas on outlining content and link building initiatives, offers insights on how e-commerce websites can develop this strategy, and cites real-life examples of brands that have carried out the techniques. The methods mentioned include the following elements: creative category pages, using products as linkbait, leveraging sales/deals pages, personalized product giveaways, link-worthy contests, value of high-quality photos, leveraging anticipation, widening the audience, using personal stories, developing amazing content on a budget, audio content marketing, and utilizing Pinterest.
20. How to do Content Marketing for Ecommerce Websites
Content marketing can be a very successful and a fruitful strategy for any e-commerce website, so long as it is done right. Content is integral in that it helps businesses connect with their customers, acts as a retention tool, and helps attracts more customers. This article lists ways on how the content marketing strategy should be implemented in order to accomplish results. It talks about how to create content that customers like, holding webinars, organizing and hosting events, providing guides, maximizing social media engagements, taking advantage of mobile marketing. The idea is to focus on providing content that customers appreciate, are engaging to read, and something that they will find good value in.
About Tariehk Geter – Tariehk Geter is the Director of Marketing at OSI Affiliate Software and he loves to share strategies that help businesses sell more. Follow him on Twitter and Google+
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