List your product and service offerings on your eCommerce website, drive traffic to the website and optimise user experience for conversions – this is basically how eCommerce marketing works.
How eCommerce marketing works
The main components that make up an eCommerce marketing business are an eCommerce website and an eCommerce marketing strategy.
An eCommerce website is the equivalent of a shop in physical terms. So, the eCommerce website needs to cater for all basic functions of a shop. This includes nice display of product and service offerings, electronic checkout, basket, payment processing system, online security etc.
An eCommerce marketing strategy makes up various tools and tactics that drive traffic to the eCommerce website and optimise user experience on the website for conversions.
How to drive traffic to eCommerce website?
As traffic is the most important factor for the success of an eCommerce marketing business, you need to have proper tools and tactics in place to drive as much traffic as you can to your eCommerce website. Let us see some popular traffic channels for an eCommerce website.
Search engine marketing
As the name suggests, search engine marketing or SEM means using search engine for marketing. SEM mainly refers to paid advertisements on search engines such as Google or Yahoo etc. So all traffic a website gets from paid advertisements or PPC campaigns on search engines constitutes SEM. Some people include free search engine traffic too in SEM but others consider free search engine traffic as part of SEO.
Search engine optimisation
When you are running an eCommerce marketing business, it is important to make sure your website ranks high on search engine results. If your eCommerce website ranks high on search engines, people are very likely to click on your links and arrive on your website. You need to use a variety of SEO tactics such as targeted keywords, helpful and relevant content creation, inbound links, social media accounts etc. You need to use best practices in these areas that search engine algorithms take into account.
Affiliate marketing
You can derive large traffic by offering an affiliate program. You can offer others to register with you as an affiliate via your website or an affiliate network. Your affiliates can drive traffic to your website from their blogs, reviews, social media etc. You need to pay a commission to your affiliates for every sale they make for you. Many affiliates can bring in their loyal followers to your website and help boost your sales and revenues. Affiliate marketing can thus boost traffic and conversions on your eCommerce website.
Email marketing
As email marketing brings you very good returns on investment, you need to use email marketing best practices to boost sales on your eCommerce website. When a potential buyer arrives on your eCommerce website you need to capture their email address and add to your email list. Once you have their email address and permission to email them, you can send them various types of emails as per your email marketing strategy.
How to boost eCommerce website conversions?
Once you start getting decent amount of traffic to your eCommerce website, you need to convert as many visitors as possible into buyers. You need to use some conversion tactics to boost conversion rates on your eCommerce website.
Conversion rate optimisation
You need to collect analytics and metrics from your website and look for ways to boost conversions. Conversion rate optimisation may involve making changes to your website to improve user experience and persuade users to make more purchases. Some areas you may have to focus include, website page load times, simplifying purchase process, adding attractive product descriptions and images etc. Basically you need to help your website visitors and make it easier for them to find what they are looking for and then buy them.
Marketing funnel
Marketing funnel represents the journey that a lead goes through while making a purchase. As a marketer you need facilitate this customer journey on your website. When the customer enters the marketing funnel or conversion funnel, the journey starts at the top of the funnel. At the top of the funnel, the lead is looking for awareness of your products. As they go thru the funnel, at the middle of funnel, the potential buyers are looking at more detail of products and may be comparing various products. At the bottom of the funnel lies the hottest bit of the marketing funnel. People at the bottom of the funnel are almost ready to purchase and just need a gentle nudge to buy.
