It may seem obvious but the most important thing your e-commerce website needs to succeed is traffic.
You can have the best-looking website, fantastic range of products and the best prices around but if nobody sees your website it may as well not be there.
That’s not to say that a professionally designed e-commerce website is not important. If your website looks unprofessional or just thrown together it does not inspire confidence.
Your website also needs to be secure with an SSL cert to encrypt traffic. (It’s hard to believe but some e-commerce websites still do not have an SSL cert and are losing sales because of this.)
Find out more about SSL certs here.
You also need to make sure that your website has a strong call to action to convert visitors into sales. If your Buy Button is not easily seen or people do not have a compelling reason to buy right now you are losing sales.
How Do I Promote My E-Commerce Website?
Okay, you have your beautiful website and it is secure.
You have just launched it and are waiting for the sales are come in.
The bad news is you have a long wait ahead unless you market your website.
There are many ways to market the site from pay per click (PPC) advertising on platforms like Google ads to social media campaigns and display advertising.
How do I build awareness of my e-commerce store?
You do not need a huge advertising budget in order to build awareness of your brand and sell your products.
There are many free ways of doing this. The most popular of which is social media and content creation.
Don’t forget to start with word-of-mouth. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your postman. Tell anybody who will listen about your new site and what you are selling. You will be amazed how even this simple thing can start to generate sales.
Create Videos
Show people how your product works then upload them to video-sharing channel such as YouTube and then embed them your products page.
This will have two advantages. First of all, when people visit your website there will be able to see the video of the product and know exactly how it will help them.
Second of all, you have a YouTube channel that may generate sales for you as well.
Spread News of Your Products on Social Media
There are a huge number of social media channels available for you to spread the news about your new website. Far too many for you to use them all effectively so I suggest you concentrate on the ones that suit you best.
If you are selling directly to the consumer, for example, gadgets, clothing and so on Facebook is an ideal platform for you to start with. Unfortunately, Facebook’s organic reach (the amount of free exposure your business post gets) has declined greatly over the years so you may need to supplement this with paid Facebook advertising.
Other Social Media platforms include
This can be great for newsletter signups but in our experience, if you are going for direct sales it can be difficult using this platform.
Share pictures of your products, this is fantastic for anything fashion-related especially. Don’t forget to post Instagram stories.( A visual format that disappears after 24 hours.)
The drawback of Instagram is you are not allowed post links to your content unless you have a large number of followers.
Content Marketing/ Create a Bolg
Write Articles in Your Blog about Your Products and Also Articles Related to Problems That Your Products Can Help.
For example, if you were selling window cleaning products you could write articles on how to clean PVC windows or how to remove stubborn marks from windows.
These articles can also help with your search engine optimisation as outside sites may link to them as reference materials.
Sell on multiple channels
Don’t forget you can sell your products on websites such as eBay, Amazon and Etsy if appropriate.
The more places you sell the more chance you have of being a success.
Search Engine Optimisation
The bad news about having your own e-commerce website is that you are in competition with the major online retailers such as eBay, Amazon and the major retail stores.
Because of this if you want to rank on the limited number of results for your product on the first page you need to make sure that you have a lot of content about that product as well as links pointing to your website.
Make sure you do keyword research to ensure that your website ranks for the popular key phrases related to your niche. There’s no point in trying to rank for keywords that are either too competitive or nobody is using.
This can turn into a full-time job by itself and is be on the scope of this article. If you would like us to take care of your search engine optimisation for you you can find out more here.
Use Email Marketing
Build an email list. It takes almost no effort to include the checkbox that would allow people who buy a product from you to sign up for a newsletter which can contain information and special offers from you.
I don’t recommend bombarding anybody who signs up with one offer after the other as they will quickly get annoyed and unsubscribe. My recommendation is to include interesting information on what your product can do to help or related information to your niche mixed in with pure sales emails.
Managing an email list can be hard work so we recommend using a paid mailing list management solution such as Get Response. Using this you can set up a sequence of emails that will send at predefined times by you. So, for example, you can set it up to send one email when they sign up, another a few days later, another a few days after
that and then at whatever intervals you decide for as long as you like. Keeping in regular contact can help a lot, keeping you and your products in your customers’ mind long after they have made a purchase.
Ask for Product Reviews.
You can say what you like about your product and people will not believe you but if somebody else says it sounds a lot more convincing. Make sure you ask for reviews of your product, most e-commerce platform such as WooCommerce and Magento include a facility to easily add client reviews.
Cross-Sell and Upsell
What is cross selling?
Cross-selling is when you offer a customer a product that would go well with the purchase they have already made.
For example, if somebody bought a new mobile phone you might cross-sell them with a case to keep it safe.
What is upsell?
That is when you sell an additional product such as if that client who decided to buy a mobile phone was sold a Spotify subscription for example.
I’m sure you have seen these when you have bought something online with titles like you may also be interested in for cross selling and customers have also bought for cross selling.
These simple add-ons can greatly increase your revenue.
Reduce abandoned carts
Unfortunately, a great number of shopping carts are abandoned without making a purchase. With some of them being used just to see what the shipping costs are going to be.
These people may be interested in buying again so we recommend using a Google ads remarketing campaign or a Facebook remarketing campaign to follow these people up with advertising.
You can also set up software that will email them if they have given you their email address to see if there is anything you can do to help with the sale.
Advertise
Advertising is by far the most effective way of getting your product in front of potential buyers. The bad news is that online advertising has become quite expensive in recent years. The good news is that it is because it is the most effective form of advertising ever created with your ads only been shown to people who are interested in buying your product.
Google Ads
I love Google ads. They are the most configurable source of advertising you can get. They are based on what users search for so your ads only appear to people who are looking for your products at the exact time when they are searching for them.
There also remarketing options whereby you can use Google’s display network to show your ads to anybody who visited your site previously. This can greatly help with conversions as somebody who may have abandoned their shopping cart will be reminded of you and your products.
The downside is that because the cost per click is so high you need to make sure that your keywords are highly targeted and use negative keywords to prevent your ads from being shown to irrelevant prospects.
We recommend against using Google’s fully automated options like Google ads express because that is like handing Google a blank cheque & saying “here spend this any way you like”
There are a lot of different options to configure with Google ads which can be a bit overwhelming for this reason we recommend that you use a Google ads management service such as ours.
Facebook Ads
While not as effective as Google ads these can be highly profitable as the cost per click is a lot less and you can target specific groups by gender, age, income and many many other options. For example, if you are selling baby clothes you can target new mothers.
If you would like us to help with your Facebook advertising and marketing campaign just let us know.
To sum up
Having a really good e-commerce site is only the start of building your business. Without marketing your website may as well not be there.
Do not neglect marketing and promoting your website.
If you need help with a professional marketing campaign for your e-commerce site why not contact us for more information.