Follow to the end and learn how you can go about Marketing your eCommerce Business Online. Regardless of the sphere, having a successful business is the aim of every business owner.
Have you ever thought of your current eCommerce business experience of how to successfully market it? Or have you ever taken into account the most significant points? In order to exceed your competitors by your success in the right eCommerce business tool?
In reality, there are many challenges in the eCommerce business. Not to mention, which are easy to overcome if you take into account certain business development steps. And on the other hand, eCommerce can take on a variety of forms. While at the same time, involving different transactional relationships between businesses and consumers.
As well as different objects being exchanged as part of these transactions.
1. Retail:
The sale of a product by a business directly to a customer without any intermediary.
2. Wholesale:
The sale of products in bulk, often to a retailer that then sells them directly to consumers.
3. Dropshipping:
The sale of a product, which is manufactured and shipped to the consumer by a third party.
4. Crowdfunding:
The collection of money from consumers in advance of a product being available in order to raise the startup capital necessary to bring it to market.
5. Subscription:
The automatic recurring purchase of a product or service on a regular basis until the subscriber chooses to cancel.
6. Physical products:
Any tangible good that requires inventory to be replenished and orders to be physically shipped to customers as sales are made.
7. Digital products:
Downloadable digital goods, templates, and courses, or media that must be purchased for consumption or licensed for use.
8. Services:
A skill or set of skills provided in exchange for compensation. The service provider’s time can be purchased for a fee.
What is eCommerce?
Generally, eCommerce, also known as electronic commerce or internet commerce, refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet. And also, the transfer of money and data to execute these transactions.
Often, eCommerce is often used to refer to the sale of physical products online. But, it can also describe any kind of commercial transaction that is facilitated through the internet. Whereas eBbusiness refers to all aspects of operating an online business, ecommerce refers specifically to the transaction of goods and services.
The history of eCommerce begins with the first-ever online sale: on August 11, 1994. Whereby, a man sold a CD by the band Sting to his friend through his website NetMarket (an American retail platform). This is the first example of a consumer purchasing a product from a business through the World Wide Web—or “eCommerce” as we commonly know it today.
Since then, eCommerce has evolved to make products easier to discover and purchase through online retailers and marketplaces. Independent freelancers, small businesses, and large corporations have all benefited from ecommerce. All in all, which enables them to sell their goods and services at a scale that was not possible with traditional offline retail.
For your information, global retail eCommerce sales are projected to reach $27 trillion by this year (2020). Not to mention, there are four main types of ecommerce models. And that can describe almost every transaction that takes place between consumers and businesses.
1. Business to Consumer (B2C):
When a business sells a good or service to an individual consumer (e.g. You buy a pair of shoes from an online retailer).
2. Business to Business (B2B):
When a business sells a good or service to another business (e.g. A business sells software-as-a-service for other businesses to use).
3. Consumer to Consumer (C2C):
When a consumer sells a good or service to another consumer (e.g. You sell your old furniture on eBay to another consumer).
4. Consumer to Business (C2B):
When a consumer sells their own products or services to a business or organization (e.g. An influencer offers exposure to their online audience in exchange for a fee, or a photographer licenses their photo for a business to use).
What is eCommerce SEO?
When it comes to eCommerce SEO, it has lots of different strategies that all focus on one thing! And which is getting an ecommerce store on the first page of Google and driving traffic to it!
But, this can be a pretty daunting feat for anyone, let alone anyone who is new to the world of SEO. So, I am going to outline some of the best strategies you can use to give your ecommerce store the SEO boost it needs.
Site Audits
Getting your ecommerce website audited is the most important first step you should take. It gives you the opportunity to fix any issues and ensures your website is built upon strong foundations.
You wouldn’t paint a wall before fixing the holes, would you?
The same can be said for your website. You wouldn’t start building links or optimizing your site if it has underlying issues that need attention.
Now you understand why you should complete a site audit, let’s take a peek at some of the things you need to look for.
Here they are;
- First, duplicate content,
- Secondly, missing Canonical Tags,
- Then, missing Alt Tags,
- Or missing or Duplicate Title Tags,
- 404 Error Pages,
- Deindexed Pages,
- 302 Redirects,
- Lastly, missing or Duplicate Meta Descriptions.
There are a bunch of tools available that do all the hard work for you! And my favorite of the tools being Ahrefs.
Keyword Research & Optimization
Keywords are still a major influence within Google’s ranking factors so the research needs to be taken seriously.
There’s no use ranking for keywords that aren’t going to bring you qualified traffic.
So with that in mind here are the 4 factors for you to consider when researching keywords for your ecommerce store.
- Search Volume – review other high traffic keywords and use those as a benchmark
- Relevance – to pick relevant keywords all you need to do is think what your product can offer and it matches the keyword.
- Competition – be realistic with the keywords you choose to rank.
- Intent – you need to attract people who are in the correct stage in the sales funnel.
Use a couple of tools that make all the hard work out of keyword research.
Let’s start by taking a look at SEMrush who has a nifty little feature called “Keyword Difficulty”.
This shows you the top 10 pages that rank for a specific keyword and their domain strength it also gives you the keyword difficulty as a percentage.
Onpage SEO
There are a number of on-page SEO techniques that you need to be aware of and more importantly act upon.
-
Site Structure
Google crawlers will look at the architecture of your website and you get brownie points if its….simple.
A quick way to figure this out is to see if you can get from your homepage to your product pages in three clicks or less.
If you can’t then you have some work to do!
-
Internal Linking
Internal links are mega important because they are links that you have complete control over.
They help Google recognize new content, you can use your higher authority pages to link to ones you wish to promote and they keep visitors on your website longer.
-
Mobile Version of Website
With everyone walking around with their heads in the phones most of the time, it just makes sense that your ecommerce store is mobile friendly!
-
Customer Reviews
Testimonials and reviews work because people like to see what experience others have had before they buy.
This is called ‘social proof’ and you can use this to increase the trust of your customers and also your conversion rate.
-
Rich Snippets
Rich Snippets are a great way to indirectly increase your SERP as they encourage more clicks resulting in higher traffic. Google will see how many clicks you are getting compared to others and your rankings will start to increase.
-
Integrating Social Media
Social media is a valuable tool as any interaction, be it a like or a share of your site gives Google an indication that what you have is valuable.
You can encourage this by adding social buttons. Not just the homepage but on the product pages and the blog too.
-
Content Marketing
Having a blog on your ecommerce site opens you up to a whole new level of marketing with a massive increase in opportunities for traffic.
Keep it relevant and write posts that your audience will find interesting and helpful.
Remember with content it’s quality, not quantity.
Site Speed
Speeding up your website can and will have a massive impact on your earnings!
Any store taking more than 3 seconds to load, is waving goodbye to nearly 40% of visitors. Get a speed test done quickly and easily with GTMetrix
Link Building
We already talked earlier about internal links but I have saved this SEO strategy till last because it is the best SEO method of getting noticed by Google.
First of all, let’s understand what I mean by ‘link building’.
Every link that points to your website is viewed by Google as a recommendation. The more you have, the higher you will rank which in turn drives more traffic to your website.
So building links is something that every website owner should have on their agenda!
However, not all links have the same impact on your SEO.
Links that come from high authority websites will help you massively whilst links coming from low-quality websites won’t really help and may even be harmful.
So with that in mind, I am going to show you my favorite method of link building.
Competitor Backlinks – My favorite strategy!
This method lets your competitors do all the hard.
It is very simple:
Find out who is already linking to your competitors and how. It could be a guest post, a testimonial, a forum post or answering a Quora question.
Set up an excel spreadsheet, then add the top 10 websites for your keyword from the Google search results.
There are a lot of other methods to link building for ecommerce stores and the trick is to try them all and find out what work’s for you!
How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business
Starting or Running a business can have a powerful impact on your life and the lives of those around you. But before you can run a business, you need to start a business.
Deciding to start your own business can seem like a daunting prospect if you’ve never done it before. Luckily, plenty of other entrepreneurs have, and you can benefit from the wisdom they gleaned from their successes—and their mistakes.
Here are some of the proven ways to start an eCommerce business online;
Create a website for marketing your business
The first step for building strong imagination about your business and having an evident growth, is giving in-depth information about what you suggest, (including the details; product, service, quality, price range, conditions, etc.).
This can be done with a simple website. Through a number of free-website builders, one can easily customize the content and share it in no time. However, there are a lot of websites, which can suggest similar products and services, so as not to be out of the market.
Marketing eCommerce business by SEO strategy
To be in the ”first lines” you should cultivate a strong eCommerce SEO strategy. Through SEO your website will be more visible, available and easily accessible. It plays a great role in the eCommerce business, as when your website appears at the top of SERPs, you easily get access to your potential clients.
Here it is important to mention, that a successful SEO strategy will broaden the chances for the success of your eCommerce business, and in case you choose an eCommerce SEO audit services with proven experience, you can surely say that the first step of your prosperous plan is successfully accomplished.
Make use of social media marketing
It is an indisputable fact, that social media has become an inseparable part of everybody’s life. Millions of people around the world deal with it every day.
Social media accounts will give opportunities to all your clients to connect with the company, to read about and get familiar with the products, and as well get information from other clients about the details of the products and services.
Through these actions, they get their feedbacks. Through a number of famous social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. you not only get in touch and directly face your potential customer’s needs and read reviews, you as well greatly advertise your business and bring remarkable fame to it.
So, create social media pages, spread maximum information about what you suggest, and develop your unique social media marketing plan and through these strategies be sure to achieve your eCommerce business goal.
Use a blog to market your business
Blogging has as well become a necessary part of leading business online. By starting a blog you will certainly feel the business development, in terms of search visibility, as the more original posts you make, the more the chances of being the leading one in the marketplace will be.
Besides, your blogging gives an opportunity to have your own unique content, which can, later on, be spread in different areas. Not only blogging yourself but as well as showing off your experience in similar industry blogs will be a good idea.
So, leading in your business sphere with your best suggestions and showing your priority in comparison to other similar businesses you not only get clients but also fix your place in the marketplace.
What is more, joining a relevant online community is another step for marketing successful eCommerce business online.
Introducing and giving information about what you suggest is equally important as the quality and the product or service itself. As the online community does not separate people in their languages, this is also a great chance to market your eCommerce business all over the world, regardless of the language they speak.
Take advantage of free email marketing services
For those who want to have an individual approach to everyone here, free email marketing services will come to help.
By choosing a good service, you will be able to influence your customers, which will catch their attention immediately. This strategy will keep you in contact with customers, and through the helpful information sent to them, they will be in detail aware of what you suggest.
Make sure your post videos
Last but not least, as some people like to get information by watching and listening than reading, here video channels come to help (for ex. Vimeo, YouTube, etc ). Making videos, which will describe your products and will be much more informative is the key to your business success.
In conclusion, by following certain steps marketing business online becomes an easy task. Among such steps we can include;
- creating a website,
- sharing your business details in social media accounts,
- starting a blog,
- showing your experience in other industry blogs,
- using email marketing and posting videos.
Marketing your business online can open new horizons for your business. In addition, it will help every business owner to get new experience and developing the business.
See other useful and related topic links below;
- What is Search Engine Optimization?
- Email Marketing Masters Guide In Publishing
- Affiliate Marketing: How is It Different From Referrals?
- Online Business Branding | Beginners Strategic Guides
- Brand Definition Meaning | Everything you Should know