9 Key Content Types For Your Ecommerce Site
With so many ecommerce websites in each category, how can a retailer cut-through if they're not a 'high street brand'?
And while each of them is unique in their own way, they all have something in common too. They aim to deliver what their visitors expect to find, from products to great user experience AND useful content.
Content is the backbone of today’s marketing strategies.
Be it a short snippet in an AdWords ad or a lengthy blog post, it helps you to attract new visitors and build an audience.
But there is another type of content - the generic information about your store, which should be available right from the home page that convinces users to buy from you.
Here are the 9 content types every ecommerce site must have.
1. Shipping Information
You know that, to many shoppers, the cost of shipping is one of the key factors…
A detailed guide to scaling SERP rankings using competitor analysis
Every time search engine optimisation comes up in discussions with colleagues or clients, the first thing I do is place a mental bet on how quickly the chat is going down the rabbit hole. There is absolutely no denying the importance of SEO. No matter how much runway you think you have with PPC to fuel your business’ needs, sooner or later you’ll want to incrementally reduce the cost of acquiring users at the top of the funnel.
What’s that thing about rabbit hole again? There are numerous factors (some say over 200) that Google takes into account to decide where your page ranks for a given search query. If you go about optimising each of these factors, it is going to take you a whole lot of time before each piece of content goes out into the world. Either that, or…
A brand-building case study focusing on format length, branding and testing best practices
YouTube is becoming an increasingly important tool for digital marketers, both from an owned and paid media perspective. Over the last five years the platform has continued to grow and with over a billion users and many millions of views a day, Google can genuinely claim to have both the first and second largest search engines on the planet and a media platform to rival many mainstream broadcasting rivals.
From an advertising perspective, the reach YouTube offers marketers is phenomenal, however as with all forms of advertising, optimising the media alone will only get you so far. I’ve recently been involved in a multichannel equity campaign and due to the storytelling nature of the content we’ve had to really think about how best to recut the main TVC for the YouTube TrueView campaign (which is using skippable pre-roll ads).
The…
The top 5 benefits consumers expect from fashion and apparel brands
Know your audience: That’s the lesson retailers are acknowledging as the key to adapt their business to the reality of today’s rapidly-evolving market. Faced with unprecedented upheaval retail brands must now focus on understanding how to dazzle shoppers and earn their loyalty.
To uncover patterns among shoppers’ often-unexpressed wish lists, retailers are turning to technology, from data analytics to social media listening, for clues on how to improve their brands’ perceived value. They seek to discover what functional requirements shoppers will actually pay for, how to satisfy shoppers’ emotional needs and how to boost word of mouth.
These meaningful consumer insights can help retailers successfully meet consumers’ needs to enhance customer relationships, build brand trust and drive revenue growth.
What fashion and apparel shoppers really want?
New research in Harvard Business Review pinpointed five specific benefits that consumers want most from fashion and…
How to focus your efforts to improve mobile conversion performance by using the full range of mobile user research techniques and tools
For the past few years in the digital industry every year has talked about as ‘the year of mobile’. Despite this, many digital marketeers are still focusing CRO activity on desktop and leaving mobile devices as an afterthought. Latest stats show that mobile continues to be a growth platform for people accessing websites, and that those people are getting more comfortable using their phones for buying online.
As shown on Smart Insights last year, mobile traffic overtook desktop as mobile phone use continued to rise at a staggering rate. Stats from the same report also show that desktop users are around three times more likely to convert than those visiting a site from a smartphone; showing that there’s a lot of potential for improvement for mobile conversion rates.
This …
Affiliate marketing, done well, offers a way to circumvent the ad-blockers
The increased use of ad-blocking software is disrupting the digital marketing industry as we know it. People have grown tired of “interruption advertising,” whereby irrelevant ads are forced upon them or they are tricked into clicking them on their small mobile screens. Successful brand marketing depends on building relationships with consumers, and as customers demand more control over the types of ads they see, affiliate marketing has proven to be an effective way to establish, strengthen, and maintain these invaluable relationships more authentically.
The Affiliate marketing concept is simple: Brands hire affiliates, who may be bloggers, publishers, or other companies, to promote a product or service using their own blogs, websites, or social media channels. Affiliates are paid a share of any sales or a commission resulting from their efforts. Compensation for affiliates may also take the form of incentives, discounts,…
Good web design is crucial for making the right impression
First impressions are important... Presentable clothes, matching accessories, getting to meetings on time – it all matters. It shows people around you that you care.
Online, first impressions matter too. Website visitors make judgements about website credibility in as little as 50 milliseconds, and one in five website visitors will leave your website, not giving you a second chance.
Staying on top of the current trends makes it possible to create a website that will impress your audience, and will hold users attention for the first crucial 10 seconds, and beyond.
So what are the Web Design trends for 2017?
First things first. Web design is not art.
Art expresses feelings, raises questions, provokes emotions. By contrast, design helps people to find answers, take action, or complete a task.
More than ever before, everything in web design, from imagery to navigation,…
By
16 Nov 2016
Smart Insights and Adestra report on customer engagement 2018
Engagement is one of digital’s most prickly talking points. Increasingly Digital Natives expect brands to understand needs deeply and then deliver answers promptly. Thanks to technology, professional, personalized automated Marcoms programmes help ensure that such responses are not simply addressed, they exceed average expectations.
We live in a society where all generations see the world through the lens of technology. Engaging with Digital Natives calls for deeper insights into their lifecycles. Fortified by such knowledge, brands can provide accessible services that are easy to act upon via unified frictionless experiences that cross all divides and devices.
[add link to report when uploaded]
According to a recent report from Smart Insights and Adestra around 41% of marketers take advantage of a single welcome email. Inactive subscribers are contacted by 34% of marketers. Behaviour-based triggers (such as abandoned carts) trigger around 30% response.
…
Time changes all things - Especially SEO!
You need not cast your mind back far to reminisce about a time when the principles of SEO were little more than a rhythmic check list, putting everything in its place to best support the client at hand.
Now, times are changing, not only has the landscape been forever altered by Penguin 4.0, but we now have a new concept on the rise in interest and popularity: Semantic SEO.
Saying Semantic SEO is going to change everything is inaccurate, yes, it is a different approach to SEO but not entirely unrecognizable. The most common current SEO tactic is to filter out a target phrase, use it throughout the URL and, with fortunes’ grace, rank for the phrase chosen. With semantic SEO, you target a topic, not just a phrase. This is due to Google being much more competent at understanding the intentions of the user and…
Don't fall foul of these common but expensive SEO mistakes
Google’s engineers have said there are at least 200 ‘ranking signals’ which affect whether you can rank above your competitors or not. To make SEO even more challenging, many of them change frequently in Google’s algorithm updates.
So, it can be really tough knowing what matters in SEO and what doesn’t. To help give you focus, here we show some really common mistakes we have seen again and again as we have worked on SEO consulting and training projects.
We think SEO isn’t just for SEO specialists, all ‘hands-on’ marketers need to understand the main factors so they can ask the tough questions of SEO specialists and agencies. Here we're giving you five of the top 10 most costly SEO mistakes. If you're interested to discover more common SEO mistakes you can sign up for free to download the guide to the top 10…
