How to up your eCommerce marketing game in 2021

The global pandemic has undoubtedly had an impact on almost all businesses, regardless of industry. To adapt, many savvy business owners have swapped their highstreet stores for online eCommerce equivalents. With so much online competition, it’s even more important than ever to take full advantage of every eCommerce marketing trick available.

With this in mind, it’s not just about having a ‘good looking’ eCommerce website anymore. You need to be smart, innovative and think outside the box. Read on for some of our tips on how to put together your eCommerce marketing strategy.

The basics

Make sure your website is set up properly for eCommerce

Whilst this may seem a little bit obvious, you would be surprised to know how many websites are trying to run an online shop without using an eCommerce template or properly set up plugin. As an eCommerce marketing agency, we highly recommend WooCommerce via WordPress, but have also built and managed websites using Shopify and Squarespace. 

Separate your products into easy to navigate categories

Again, another simple one but also very important to get right. You don’t want to stick all 200 products under one umbrella category, but you also don’t want 100 categories that take customers ages to scroll through. So think cleverly about your categories and create yourself a sitemap. This could be the difference between a customer quickly bouncing off your site because it’s too complicated or staying and browsing for 20 minutes (and hopefully purchasing too!).

Top tip – Use gloomaps.com to craft your sitemap easily and for free!

Use the tools your website has given you

Have you optimised your products recently? Well if you’re unsure what this means, chances are the answer is a no. Optimising your products includes tasks like: 

  • Getting the SEO right and choosing the right keywords
  • Setting up upsells and cross-sells on each product
  • Adding high quality product images
  • Creating unique descriptions
  • Providing informative FAQs
  • Adding (or getting) reviews 

Right, now we’ve covered some of the basic tips, let’s move onto the exciting stuff. Smart marketing we like to call it…

Advanced eCommerce

Get yourself a Google Shopping campaign 

You’re really missing a trick if you own an online shop but aren’t investing in Google Shopping. If you’ve never heard of it before, it’s basically those small product ads you see when you type a product into Google. By utilising this type of advertising, you are literally shoving the product that the customer wants to see right in front of their face (if you get your campaign set up correctly). 

Google Shopping works by you providing a product feed through Google’s Shopping Merchant with all the information it needs to promote your product. This will include things like a title, description, image, price and more. Depending on your budget, it will then show your advert when that product (or a similar keyword) is typed in by someone browsing the internet. 

Genius huh? If this sounds a little bit too complex (which we agree, it’s not the simplest thing to get your head around), then all of the team at CW Marketing are Google Shopping certified and ready to help your online store rack up those orders. 

Start playing around with automation

When clients say they are interested in automation it’s like music to our ears. Honestly, imagine being able to do something once and then not having to touch it again but the results keep coming in! There are loads of types of automation you can get stuck into, some popular choices our clients use include: 

  • Mailchimp for email automation – For example abandoned cart emails when a customer doesn’t finish a purchase.
  • Facebook automation for returning customers – Ever been followed around on Facebook by ads after looking at a product online? Yep, this is Facebook automation for you! 
  • Retargeting through Google Ads – Similar to the above, Google Ads can be created that will target your customers after they’ve seen your product… clever stuff ey? 
  • Review collection – Many review plugins can be automated so you don’t physically need to sit there requesting a review after every purchase. We’ve found Trustpilot to be very successful for our clients. 
  • Pop ups – A great way to get the information you need your customers to see in front of them. 
  • Live chat – You can implement easy to use live chat systems that act as robots for your business, then once a chat get’s to a certain level, it can be passed to a real person. 
  • Follow up emails – These could be used after someone has purchased a product from your shop to let them know of other products they may be interested in. 

According to Salesforce, 54% of consumers trust information from online reviews and recommendations from their peers, compared to the 20% who trust the brand itself.

Ready for some advanced automation? We’ve been using Klaviyo which allows you to fully look at your customer database, segment the data and send automations when people have viewed a product, abandoned their cart, have a birthday coming up and much more. Think of it as making money in your sleep!

Make sure your user experience is on point

It’s all well and good having a beautiful eCommerce website, but if the user experience is bad you will fall at the first hurdle and chances are your customers will bounce off relatively quickly. Keep in mind the following: 

  • Navigation through the website 
  • The customer journey 
  • Checkout experience
  • How easy it is to find products 
  • If it’s easy to contact the company 

Use social media to do the hard work for you

There are far more advanced ways to promote your products on social media than there was 3 years ago, keep in mind the following: 

  • Facebook ‘shop’ – You can now create a ‘shop’ directly on Facebook of as many products as you want. You may choose to add just your top performing products or go all out and add them all.  
  • Product tagging – Once you have created your Facebook ‘shop’ you will be able to tag your posts with products on both Instagram and Facebook. This allows your customers to go directly to the website page rather than having to search it for themselves. 
  • Linktree – Gone are the days on Instagram where you can only post 1 link in your bio, by using Linktree (or similar) you can add various links in place. So, if you have products (for example) on a main website, a third party site and eBay, amazon or Etsy, you can send people in the direction they want to go.

With over 500 million daily active users, Instagram is one of the fastest growing social apps around, connecting consumers, influencers, and brands. – Shopify

Utilise an eCommerce marketing agency

Don’t have enough time in the day to dedicate the hours your eCommerce marketing strategy needs? Let us take that stress off your hands. 

We’ve worked with eCommerce sites turning over a quarter of million pounds but have also helped small businesses that just want everything set up correctly. Regardless of the level of eCommerce marketing you need, CW Marketing can help you. 

If you are looking to improve your eCommerce marketing strategy, get in touch with us today by calling us on 01202 888200 or email us at info@cwmarketing.co.uk. 

Take a look at a recent case study of our successful motocross and mountain bike eCommerce client. 

We regularly post helpful eCommerce marketing tips on our social media so head over to our Facebook for more helpful advice.