Growing your Shopify eCommerce business can feel like a slow and painful journey. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, if you understand search engine optimization and engage your audience across multiple social platforms, it can be painless.
That’s why other successful businesses have taken advantage of simple and low-cost ways to automate their eCommerce user experience. But at the same time, they have found ways to make it a personal experience so their customer base feels recognized.
Here are the general tips and tricks that can turn your eCommerce business into a cash-flow operation.
Post Blogs Offering Free Content and Education
One of the best ways to get noticed as a business is to rank as one of the top searches on Google. How do you do that without spending loads of advertising money? You can blog! Blogging has so many benefits and with the right keywords and information, you can find yourself as one of the top results when searching for your type of industry.
Why You Should Have A Blog No Matter What Industry You Serve
- When you offer free education, tips or tricks, or something entertaining to your audience they establish a relationship with them. This is a great way to market organically and attract customers. If they trust your advice they will likely trust your products as well.
- Blogs are a great way to rank on Google using SEO practices like internal linking to your other pages and products. The more time people spend on your page, the better your business and revenue streams. In addition, you instantly become easier to search when you have a blog.
- Blogs make you seem like more of an expert in the industry you serve. The more established it is, the more authority you have.
Ideally, you want to stay somewhat related to your industry as both Google and fans may find your content non-trustworthy. But if you talk about genres, you are an expert in that ranks better.
Engage with Your Audience on Social Media with CTAs
Social media has become one of the most dominant ways of communicating. This includes marketing. Without strong social media, you miss out on millions of potential clients, thanks to the billions online. While you don’t need every form of social platform, a few would serve your eCommerce business well.
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Instagram
Instagram is one of the most popular forms of social media to advertise. It’s also incredibly easy to bring the call to action to all your posts. You could post a story and link to your product or post directly to your feed about the blogs you’ve been posting. Other options like surveys and questions and answers are also great CTA’s that boost user engagement.
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TikTok
TikTok is a great way to trend and go viral. When a business gets down with the trends and dances of TikTok they open themselves to a whole new audience. It’s an easy way to get discovered and challenge your audience to do it with you. Plus you can always bring your products and services into your videos.
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Pinterest
Pinterest is great for so many reasons. Typically speaking it has mostly women on the platform but their attractive pictures and videos offer one-click stops to products and blogs. This is where most people get their ideas for home improvement, DIY, and cooking. If you fall into any of these categories Pinterest is a must. Pinterest in general is an often underused source that offers great results.
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Facebook
Facebook caters to an older market but having a Facebook page is a great platform to have if you have an eCommerce business. Those who like your business page can find your official website, customer service hours, ratings, and more. It’s also easy to post updates about the business right there and then.
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Why Twitter Is Not A Must-Have
Twitter is great at getting to a whole new type of audience. Journalists and those who love information (and fighting) are on Twitter. However, while it doesn’t hurt to have one, it doesn’t serve your business as the other ones do. Twitter doesn’t have an online storefront that you can take advantage of. Twitter also has limited spacing to get your information out there. If you have limited time and resources this would be one of the last ones recommended for your eCommerce.
Ramp Up Your Email List
Having an automated newsletter is incredibly important to keep your customer base updated. Your eCommerce business should also have an app or content management service that can help put together personalized email sequences. This helps not only with lead generation but also moving your lead through the sales process.
Sending a reminder to the customer who has items in their cart is just one example. These systems can also send promotions, welcome emails, and so much more. Based on the customer’s responses and decisions, the system can choose the next step that is appropriate for marketing.
In order to be one of those eCommerce success stories, you need to have the “subscribe button” at the end of every blog, on your social media pages, and anywhere that your potential client can bump into it. They will subscribe if they like the info and products you are putting out there.
Three Tips To Attract Customers to Your Email List
- Offer some incentive for signing up for your email list. A sample-size product or loyalty points is an easy go-to. But you can always get more creative with this and offer something unique.
- The subscribe option should be everywhere. So don’t make it difficult for your customers to sign up for your email newsletter.
- Offer content that is not always promotional. If it is organic and offers content within the email, customers are much more like to hit subscribe than unsubscribe. Sometimes it’s not always about direct selling.
Set Up Your Shops
Having a shop from your main website is great, but now, social media platforms allow you to have multiple shops. Taking advantage of this so that buying your services or products is only a click away is important. This is especially handy when you make posts that feature your products. There is nothing more comforting for people to see other people use products to eliminate questions or doubts they are having.
Instagram has a shop as well as the Facebook Market Place. In fact, Pinterest follows a similar method and on top of that TikTok Make Me Buy It” is a trend where people share great products with each other.
Mobile Optimization
If your business does not work well from the phone then you are going to lose out on a lot of business. Most people shop directly from their phones and will not bother if the formatting doesn’t load well. This includes having issues zooming in and out on the products. In addition, most content management systems such as WordPress will give you the option to mobilize your website. This allows for easy checkout and readability from your website.
Easy-To-Use Metrics
Lastly, but certainly not least, your eCommerce business needs to take advantage of metric and stat information. Using sources like Google Analytics, you can see how your website is performing and make necessary adjustments to improve your business.
Important stats you should pay attention to is what part of your website is the most and least visited. You also get a sense of where these visitors are coming from. For example, are they mostly international or is the make-up of your visitors people from your city?
One trick that businesses have been engaging in more often is paying for website visitor identification services. This can give your more specific details on who is visiting your website so that you can contact your lead and understand their interests.
Automation
You can set things on auto mode shouldn’t be done by your or someone you are paying to do it. Setting up email lists, scheduled posts, and other bits of your business on autopilot is a great way to not only save time but save money. Being efficient is the name of the game so the more you can automate the better. Here are great examples of successful programmatic advertising that can be set on automation.
Being Efficient
The name of the game when it comes to eCommerce is being efficient as mentioned. Understanding what social platforms to engage your audience in as well as offering a blog are two of the most effective ways to communicate. But the work doesn’t end there. Setting up email lists and subscriber options is part of the game too.
By doing this and analyzing your metrics, you can set up a real formula for success. And all the meanwhile keeping things low-cost. Just remember that if all your content is not optimized for phones then you are missing out. Most people are reading, shopping, and scrolling from their phones. With all this, you are ready to get your eCommerce up and running.