Free coaching for Ecommerce marketers from Rand Fishkin of Moz and other industry experts at International Ecommerce Day
The Ecommerce world is so crowded with a glut of content and different providers competing fiercely. What’s more, ecommerce marketers often are rushing to implement the latest tactics and technology, which can leave creating a proper strategy and plan being neglected.
There are lots of blog articles, infographics and tutorials about how to build a successful digital business. The problem with this is that there are too many people blogging for the sake of attracting traffic and clicks, and they don’t always offer the best business advice. This means it can be hard for marketers to know what pieces of advice will be useful, and which won’t be.
But, of course, you need to be connected to the latest trends in order to make your business grow and apply innovative techniques to drive up your sales.
One…
How to Create An Effective Digital Marketing Campaign for Your New e-commerce Business
Creating a digital marketing campaign for an e-commerce startup is a real challenge. You want to make your mark on social media as quickly as possible, and to begin building a following that will ultimately become loyal customers. The challenge is that you don’t have much to go on. Finances are tight. This means limited resources when it comes to market research, or paid advertising. In many cases, it is up to your team to build a campaign from the ground up.
The following six points will outline some very important points to know as you begin to develop your first digital marketing campaign. Keep reading to learn how to develop a strategy that is economical, results oriented, and lean.
1. The Key Starting Point is Great Web Design
As…
Partnering with a supplier can save time and boost profits.
Ask any eCommerce retailer what is the number one concern they have and inventory will likely enter the equation. Fulfilling orders yourself is time-consuming and not always the cheapest option in the long run. Hiring employees to do it cuts into your profit margin.
So what’s the solution?
Dropshipping.
If you haven’t heard about this rising trend in eCommerce order fulfillment, let this article be your guide to understanding dropshipping, how it makes you a better business owner, and what to expect in the coming months.
What Is Dropshipping?
Image: Oberlo
Rather than you buying inventory, stocking it, then packaging and shipping it out every time an order comes in, dropshipping allows you to sell products that are housed by your manufacturer or a wholesaler. They store it until you sell it. And you don’t…
A breakdown of online sales in the UK
We're continuing to see a steady growth in online retail sales across sectors based on a range of compilations. In this chart based on data from the UK ONS we see a breakdown by sector of growth and the proportion of online retail sales compared to all sales.
We are seeing growth in all sectors other than textile, clothing and footwear stores. Perhaps evidence of a change in preference back to the high street in this category. Year-on-year growth in most sectors is sub 20% other than the 'other' categories. For reference, the specific figures in each sector are below.
Source: UK Office of National Statistics August 2016 report
Related toolkit: E-commerce and retail marketing
…
Use these essential ecommerce tools to help convert your prospects
To maximise conversion, an online shopping experience needs to be simple and easy for the user, secure at the point of payment and robust so as to deal with both high volumes of product and traffic. E-commerce management tools were designed for this specific purpose and have a number of features that other platforms (i.e. a generic content management system) do not. All of these tools provide a platform for online retailers to sell their products and services online; they create a ‘digital store front’ to enable products in different categories to be search, browsed and purchased.
Key things to consider before purchasing and using these tools:
Implementation and running costs. There are (often large) costs associated with development, maintenance and migration from these tools. Be clear on these up front.…
Users are changing devices across the customer journey - marketers need to recognise this.
Mobile, mobile, mobile. It's all about mobile. Be mobile first. Do everything mobile first. That's pretty much what you hear from eCommerce or search thought leaders these days.
In fairness, they do have a point. Not only do mobile sessions now outstrip desktop sessions across the web, but they do so by a big margin on eCommerce sites. 59% of sessions on eCommerce sites are on some form of mobile device, according to a study of 87 million web sessions by Wolfgang digital.
But the picture isn't that simple. When it comes to revenue by device, it's actually desktop that still dominates. A massive 63% of revenue comes desktop, 3 times what comes from Smartphones.
So can eCommerce marketers breath a sigh of relief and stop worrying about those pesky mobile visitors that they've always struggled to engage with? -…
SEO isn't dead. It's never felt more alive.
I'd like to introduce a new rule for marketers everywhere. When something is declared 'dead' by a self-proclaimed 'thought leader' at a marketing conference, right thinking marketers should invariably assume that its prospects have probably never been better.
The rule certainly holds true for SEO as a revenue driver for eCommerce businesses. Although plenty of search conferences this year will have speakers declaring the coming death of SEO, the data shows it's scarcely ever been more critical.
As you can see from the chart below, organic search traffic makes up a massive 43% of all eCommerce traffic, almost double the next biggest driver - Google AdWords, which is also significant. This data comes from a Wolfgang digital study which analysed the traffic of 87 million website sessions, accounting for $230 million in eCommerce revenue. Our other summaries from data from YotPo and Custora tells a similar…
You could more than double your conversion rate of abandoned carts by following these email best practices.
A recent study by Barilliance of 200 ecommerce websites has discovered some rather interesting trends in the world of cart abandonment best practices. It shows that sending cart abandonment emails very soon after the cart is abandoned is actually more effective than sending it a day later.
It also revealed a big gap between the industry average of an 18% conversion rate for cart abandonment emails, and the best in the industry who achieve 40% conversion. If you could close that gap and join the ranks of the best in the industry you could be converting over double the amount of people who abandon their carts! Just think of the ROI possibilities of investing sufficiently to achieve that conversion rate.
For more insights on cart abandonment emails see the full infographic below:
…
The new Facebook marketplace will give online classifieds a social twist.
Importance: [rating=3] (For eCommerce businesses)
Recommended Source: Facebook Newsroom
E-marketplaces like eBay, Craigslist, Gumtree and Amazon marketplace are often big drivers of revenue for e-commerce businesses. Many find that although they also sell on their own site, big chunks of sales come from those external platforms which haves successfully amassed huge user bases.
As a social network, Facebook's decision to launch its own e-marketplace seems slightly strange at first glance. But there is a strong justification for the move. With over 1 billion active monthly users and 450 million users already using Facebook groups to buy and sell goods, Facebook already has the kind of large user base required to establish a successful platform for buying and selling.
The marketplace Facebook have designed is built in much the same way as the rest of the social…
How JD Sports outdoors brands Blacks and Millets integrated personalisation into their experience
With average online conversion rates still languishing below 5 percent for retailers, the use of personalised merchandising techniques to boost conversion is a popular investment for many retail sites. This case study of two outdoor retailers who are now owned by JD Sports shows the type of benefits that are possible with different forms of personalised recommendations and how they can be used on different page types:
“Compared to average site conversion rate, conversion rates were increased by 332% on Millets.co.uk and 277% Blacks.co.uk where a visitor selected a personalised product recommendation. The proportion of site revenue from product recommendations is significant, accounting for nearly one fifth of all sales (19.0% at Millets 16.9% at Blacks)”.
These examples and results relate to improvements during 2014.
Before this project, the sites were already using default recommendations from the commerce management platform on…
