eCommerce Blogging
When you start your first eCommerce website, it’s normal to want to focus first on the pages of the products and once they have been developed and optimized, start writing.
After all, the main objective of an eCommerce website is direct sales, not the creation of content, right? Yes, we want to drive traffic and boost revenues. However, we also want to establish ourselves as leaders in an industry, attracting new buyers and creating a loyal community of clients that repeat, defend, interact and follow our brand. This is exactly what eCommerce blogging can do for you.
The idea that you can only generate sales by making direct sales can be an easy one to follow. But managing inventory, interacting with your email list and making phone calls to get potential customers will only work up to a certain point. If you spend all your time trying to convert customers, you may soon stop giving new customers good reasons to discover your business.
Keeping a blog is a great way to build an audience and generate more traffic and sales for your business. You should not consider it an optional luxury.
Even infrequent posts could help your company, but consistency is favored. A blog is a good way to build your audience and generate more traffic and sales for your business. Most people know that having a blog can improve SEO, but also enables you to convert visitors into customers, and increase their opportunity to participate through social networks.
But this is not all there is to it! So, we are going to tell you why your eCommerce website needs a blog. Check out this guide on How to Start a Blog if you need to know where to begin.
Why eCommerce Blogging is Essential
SEO
This is one of the most significant benefits of a blog on any website. The more pages you have on your website, the more Google has to index and position in the search engines of its results pages (SERPs). Google values and rewards quality content. Now, it should be noted that quality over quantity should take precedence here, but having a large number of quality blog posts can only be good for you.
Having more content pages on your site could mean having more backlinks leading back to your website.
Internal links are great, but links from other sites are even better. When your article is shared on social media and linked from other sites, your page’s reputation can rise. It is easier to generate links with interesting content than with your product pages. And the more links you can generate to your site thanks to your content, the more you could climb into search engine results.
You need to make sure that your blog posts are targeting the right keywords and are properly optimized in order to be ranked accordingly within search engines. Good keyword selection and proper optimization along with a high-quality article could lead to thousands of visitors to your website every month that otherwise may not have found you.
What To Do
Read this guide on What is SEO in order to get a basic understanding before you do anything else. Afterwards, there are two main SEO techniques that you should stick to in order to improve your websites search engine positioning.
Getting More Traffic
A website with no traffic is like a lake with no water.
The amount of traffic your website receives will influence how much revenue it can generate every month. This is why you need to focus on as many channels as possible to drive traffic to your site, whether those channels be free or paid.
Look in the face of reality: you can not promote your company page on Facebook an infinite number of times, and it will be difficult to create more than a few shares for each of your products. When you write blog posts, you will have more content to share on social media.
A blog post can not only give you more social media material but can also encourage other people to link to your website or share your content. Touching on the previous point about SEO, when done right, this can also lead to organic search engine traffic and targeted visitors to your website.
What To Do
Getting traffic can be a challenging task, especially for eCommerce websites.
We already mentioned Guest Posting above, and this can bring you traffic in addition to improving your websites SEO. Aside from this, your best method would be to promote your blog posts via social media.
Having a Voice
Let’s focus on the product pages for a second. You only have a certain amount of space and you need to be as clear as possible. Tweets, Pinterest pins, Facebook and Instagram posts do not allow you to say much. And although videos may be the most effective way to tell a story, creating one will usually require a lot of work.
A blog has no limits. They enable you to be more creative and give voice to your brand. This allows you to develop what you want to say, connecting with your readers and providing value and relevant information to existing and potential consumers.
Just observe the anatomy of a blog. There is a title, to explain to readers what they can expect. There is space to tell a story. You can insert many interesting images. Anything you tweet can be part of a blog post, and you can also insert videos in the middle of the text. It is a very versatile way to tell a story.
It is important to know how to tell stories. Talking about the fantastic technical specifications of your products could only help you to a certain extent, people respond emotionally to stories, especially ones they can relate to or be inspired by.
In addition to telling a story, you could also showcase your products. You could be considered an expert in regards to your products. You are able to describe how they are manufactured, where they come from, and what their special characteristics are. Point out what makes them interesting and how they benefit the consumer.
Anyone can generally tell what a product does by looking at it. And if a potential buyer came to your site looking to purchase one, they probably already know what it does. What’s really going to sell the product is its benefits. These are not immediately obvious and if you tell people how their situation is going to be improved you could greatly increase your sales.
What To Do
Utilizing a blog is a great way to get your voice across, and complimenting your blog posts with videos would take it to the next level. You can include videos on interviews with your staff or industry experts, product guides, demonstrations, and much more. Videos are easy to watch and consumers love them because of this.
Establish Credibility
Everyone wants to establish their authority in their industry. A blog is a good way to establish it for the benefit of your products and services and content such as product guides can display your extensive knowledge to your audience.
You could have been in your industry for years and have extensive knowledge of everything about it just waiting to be told to the world. Your blog visitors and potential customers could lap this up and see you as an authoritative figure worth listening to.
Think about what your audience may want to learn more and show your experience by writing about something related. The key here is to provide useful information, which is valued by your readers. Content of interest is shared by users on social networks and can acquire links from other websites.
A good piece of content to create for an eCommerce website can be guides on how to use its products. Not only does this promote your products, but it actually shows them in use, which the consumer could then be able to relate to and make a purchasing decision as a result.
What To Do
Creating a product guide can greatly help to establish authority and credibility. These are designed to teach people how to use certain products and contain links to those products for people to purchase if they choose to. We used a makeup website for an example on this in the guide linked below.
Increase Conversion Rates
Having a blog with all the features could lead to some serious traffic and business for your website. As a result, this can increase conversions that you otherwise may have not gotten.
All of those blog posts, videos, infographics, and guides have the potential to convert a casual visitor into a customer. Someone could have found your blog post about lawn care and had no interest in buying anything. But after seeing your awesome guide and products in action, they just couldn’t help themselves and bought some products from you. If your niche has questions to be answered, then there’s content to be created.
What To Do
To find out what questions need to be answered, you will need to ask your audience. This can be done in the form of a survey. You can offer a small incentive for the user to complete your survey, such as a discount code for your store. This can make them feel like they’re getting something in return. You can then use the survey data to make improvements for your website or products and increase your conversion rate.
Become A Resource
Imagine the sales that you could drive to your store if your eCommerce website has the best blog in the business. This can be achieved by having blog posts consisting of incredibly useful content that the consumers would love.
You can create pages and guides that answer typical questions a consumer would have and showcase all of the uses that your products have.
Let’s say you have a business that’s involved with lawn mowing and lawn care:
You can create separate blog posts about different types of products that you sell such as fertilizer, insect repellent, hoses, etc.
These blogs posts can show people how to use these products effectively and also contain a subtle upsell or cross-sell for the product in question. It can also have a video demonstrating how to use the products and an FAQ section at the bottom of the article.
What To Do
In order to become a go-to resource, you’re going to need to have a database of content that people can visit to get their information. The best way to get more content is to create it, and to do this, you’re going to need some ideas. There are many topics that you could create content around, so be sure that it’s something your readers would be interested in.
Build A Loyal Following
Once again, having all of this content on your website serves multiple purposes. In addition to being recognized as an authority figure within your niche and driving more sales, your readers could become loyal followers of your brand.
This enables you to acquire lifetime customers who always come back and also spread the word about your business to people they know. A loyal following of customers become advocates for your brand and promote it for you.
Make sure you get email subscribers so that you can update them when you have put new content out. This can result in an influx of social media shares and residual traffic as well so do not overlook this.
What To Do
Having a blog can help to build your email subscriber list, which means you can then market to them and promote your newest content once it’s published. This can lead to an influx of readers to this content who could then go on to share it on social media or even make a purchase.
Build Rapport
The many eCommerce websites that don’t have a blog can struggle to foster a good relationship with their customers and website visitors. This is because the relationship is seen as a business transaction with little personal involvement.
Having a blog can break down the wall that you’re this business after their money and actually have a human side that they can relate to. This can relax the users on your website as they start to feel friendlier and more connected with your brand on a human level rather than a consumer level.
If you sell weight loss products, for example, you could post client success stories with before and after pictures. Not only does this show that your product can work, but it also shows a real person, just like them, using it and getting results.
This can strike a chord with your blog visitors on a much deeper level than a website that just sells weight loss products and has no content at all.
What To Do
Create good content that the users can relate to and make sure everything on your website is catered to them. In order to build a rapport, you should create social proof for your brand. Such as the example with before and after pictures for weight loss products, you can create content that shows the users what you’re selling actually works.