Tim Rentowl, VP Product Management at Avolin, looks at how e-commerce businesses can develop quality content to boost sales.
With behemoths like Amazon dominating the market, when it comes to e-commerce sites, retailers are looking to powerful online tools to help them claw back some market share. One of the most powerful weapons online retailers can have in their arsenal is creative content, ensuring your online presence is so much more than the products you sell.
Rather than just a one-dimensional shop window for your products, a good e-commerce site should deliver an educational experience for your consumer. By offering unique photos, videos, tools, blog posts, reviews and more, you’ll help to boost your brand power, further encouraging shoppers to choose your products. Don’t just take our word for it, either. The Content Marketing Institute found that companies who adopt content marketing see conversion rates of almost six times higher than their competitors.
Undoubtedly, developing good content marketing requires time, money and skill but this doesn’t mean it has to be an arduous process. With this in mind, we’ve identified four practical ways you can boost your content to drive-up sales.
1. Don’t be antisocial
If used wisely, social media is your friend. Arm yourself with the knowledge about which social media channels your customers use the most and align your social media strategy accordingly. For example, if Pinterest is more popular with your customers than Twitter, high-quality, ‘pinnable’ photos should be a priority for you.
Integrating favourable social media conversations into your website also helps to enhance the information you provide to shoppers. Incorporating social media posts, articles and third-party product reviews or endorsements into search results creates a vital additional level of engagement for customers when it comes to how positively they perceive your products.
2. Blog about it
A well-written blog is a brilliant way to bring in some non-product content, while providing a platform to showcase your brand’s unique voice. It’s also a great way to generate organic site traffic, improving your SEO in the process. While posts shouldn’t necessarily promote particular products, they can be a great vehicle for providing additional interesting insight or information, positioning your brand as a leader in its field.
Once you’ve crafted a blog, maximize its potential by including it in search results where relevant, below best-selling products but above the fold. While of course a blog can be a useful tool for promoting new products, first and foremost it should be an educational resource, intended to inform and solve consumers’ problems. Therefore, it’s vital to strike the right balance between promotional and educational content.
3. Top tips, techniques and tutorials
Regardless of the products you offer, retailers have the ability to provide exceptional educational value to their consumers, all while fostering a real sense of community. How-to videos and step-by-step instructions, complete with photo guidance, alongside technical documents and product instructions, all help to build excitement about products. Enabling customers to share their own tips and tricks also helps build a truly vibrant and interactive customer community, encouraging consumers to view your site as an invaluable resource, boosting site traffic and underpinning an uplift in sales.
4. Be creative with your FAQs
Your FAQ page doesn’t have to be dull. Answering questions in a creative way serves to engage customers further still, highlighting not only your knowledge but your brand’s personality too. In an age where personal interactions with brands are few, any opportunity to give your brand a personality should be maximized.
In combination with an intelligent and intuitive search function, a content-rich site will exceed customer expectations, helping them to find relevant products and supporting information in super-quick time. With these four strategies in place, e-commerce businesses can increase customer engagement and loyalty, two of the key factors needed to boost sales, delivering an informative buying experience that sets you head and shoulders above the rest.
For more information on how SLI can help your e-commerce business derive optimum value from AI tools and technologies, contact us at info@avolin.com.
