How To Promote Your eCommerce Website
Billions of people have been kept indoors by their respective governments, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, this has not deterred consumers from buying the products and services they have wanted. In fact, we’ve seen a staggering 49% rise in online sales. And because some companies haven’t been able to send out their fleets to work safely, buy-online, pick-up in-store has risen a breathtaking 209%. This has occurred during the pandemic lockdown. As you can see, ecommerce is leading the way. We don’t know for long this lockdown will carry on but regardless, the power of online shopping shows ecommerce marketing is a top priority for all.
Growing your lead list
How do you get customers to ‘hook’ themselves into your ecommerce website? The simplest and best long-term solution is to grow your email contact list. This can be done in the way of webforms. They can be internal page pop-ups that are simple to make and easy to use for customers. Couple your webform with a simple message, such as ‘we’ll send you some brilliant deals you’d like’ and have a bar for a consumer to type in their email address.
If you’re about to launch your ecommerce website, you can have a placeholder page with a simple email address typing bar. Marry this with a message that you’re opening soon as if a consumer would like to be first in line for the best deals, just typing in their email will put them in good stead for achieving this.
Engaging with the list
Lead conversion is the next challenge as now that you’ve got hundreds or thousands of email addresses, what do you do with them?
It's very crucial you have some kind of launch process. You need to do your research into what kinds of things your consumers are most anticipating. This is why it's so important to have email pop-ups on almost all of your pages. This way you will know, which pages have been the most successful in collecting leads. You can also send out a survey, which tries to gauge the reactions of your customers, in a bid to see what kind of features and functions they love about your website.
It's recommended you use some kind of feedback and information collection service such as Qualaroo or SurveyMonkey.
Something for their trouble
As with any type of product, service, or brand launch, you have to couple it with something worth their while. Consumers could be anywhere else in the world but they will choose to show up to your online launch if you present them some kind of gift.
Ecommerce websites have found that whenever they are launching a new partnership deal with a supplier, they will have a few days of discounts, multi-buy saving options, and even a competition everyone can enter. If you have signed a deal with a company in the dental retail industry, you may want to put their products in a discount category upon launch day. Allow customers to buy 2 products for the price of 1 ½. Offer customers the chance to win a month or year’s supply of toothpaste, high-quality toothbrushes, and mouthwash, etc.
If you’re just about to launch or relaunch your ecommerce website, you should use social media to run special sales initiatives. The truth of the matter is, hardly anyone will care about a website launch or relaunch. However, with social media, you can draw attention to your products and services via contests, hashtags, giveaways, posts with polls, and customer Q&A sessions. Social media is the number one tool for ecommerce marketing, so this is where the majority of your awareness campaign funds should be going.
A new age of constructive criticism
Unlike real-world retail businesses, customers are much more likely to leave any kind of feedback on an ecommerce website. It's convenient, you can have the cloak of anonymity and you are favored by the chance of getting a reply from the company. This is why you should be reaching out to customers and asking for their criticism.
What about the website do they like? What things could be made better? What things or steps could they do without, when trying to purchase something?
If you’re launching a website, you may not want to wait until after the launch has been done to ask customers what they think about the design and features. This is obviously seen as too-little-too-late by many people. You should use a professional user testing service, who will supply your website with fresh fingers and fresh eyes. These testers will trial the navigation, category, design, and speed of your website and give you great feedback.
Spread the word around
There are so many media outlets online that it should go without any saying. You must contact them and share your press release. Be sure to include some kind of promotion that will entice their readers. Be bold but not boastful. Send out a press release that shines a light on your best qualities. Something to the words of ‘Our brand offers the best contemporary clothing at below-average prices’.
A spike in helpful content
Business blogs are incredibly important. Millions of customers around the world want to know the inner workings of their favorite companies. But seeing as you’re trying to launch or promote your ecommerce website, the best tool you have is writing your own content on your business blog.
Write helpful content such as how to use your website, what the various features do, and things like ‘how to use the filter bar’. It may sound simple at first, but you should go into detail and present different scenarios to keep it interesting.
Ecommerce marketing has rapidly evolved to be one of the driving forces for social media trends. You should be using a user-testing service so you know you’re designing a website that is easy to use. Ecommerce is a continually evolving thing. You wouldn’t want to sit back and only ask for feedback once or twice a year. Interact with your customers in a positive way to enact change in design, features, and presentation.