With the growth of the internet and social media, ecommerce brands can reach more consumers than ever before. But as more companies try to fill their sites with customer-friendly content, more mistakes are being made.
Mistakes can lead to less traffic, poor conversions, and loss of consumer trust. Which ecommerce content mistakes are you making if any? Here are 24 mistakes many businesses still make, and some simple ways to fix them.
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Ecommerce Content Marketing
1. No Clear Ecommerce Content Strategy
You can’t track the results of your content marketing if you don’t know what your goals are. When you know your goals, you can take the appropriate action.
Be specific and realistic. Perhaps you want to attract 200 new email subscribers within a month. Now figure out what steps you need to take to achieve this goal. How many new sign-ups do you need every day? Where will you find these leads? Break it down into manageable steps and then get to work. A good strategy is nothing if you don’t act on it.
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2. Lack of Content Diversity
Content doesn’t just mean blog posts. Your target audience is made up of different people that all have their favorite types of content. Make sure your content strategy includes written, visual, and audio content. Create in-depth whitepapers, infographics, GIFs, short videos, animations, and podcasts to reach a wider audience and boost your SEO.
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3. Generic Buyer Personas
According to a study by IBM, 63 percent of customers don’t feel understood by the brands they love. Understanding your audience is key to creating engaging content. What are their interests, values, desires, and pain points? Where do they hang out online?
You can find out by combining research with reliable data. Conduct customer surveys via social media, email, and on your website. Ask questions about their buying journey and their concerns. You can use the sales staff to gather more information.
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4. Weak Product Descriptions
Without convincing product descriptions, shoppers are more likely to hesitate and look elsewhere. Original product descriptions are also crucial for driving organic search traffic to your product pages. Make sure your descriptions address buyer objections and focus on customer benefits rather than just product features. Include images and videos – especially user-generated ones – to build trust.
5. No Email Strategy
Email marketing is still incredibly useful, probably because it’s more intimate and direct than other channels. Consider email autoresponder tools such as MailChimp, GetResponse, AWeber, and Drip. Send out weekly content, special discounts, and time-limited offers to your subscribers.
6. Not Optimizing the About Page
If you check your website stats, you may find that your About Page is one of the most visited pages. Make the most of this space to build customer trust. Use staff pictures and talk about your values. Explain what makes you different from other businesses and how your products and services benefit customers. Also include testimonials, email opt-in forms, and links to product pages to boost conversions.
Don’t make it hard for visitors to share your content. Add social sharing buttons to product pages and emails to help people spread the word about your brand. Also, show reviews on your product pages. According to Reevoo, including customer reviews produce an average 18 percent uplift in sales.
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8. Low-Quality Content
As an ecommerce business, it’s essential to include unique keyword-rich text on web pages so that searchers find your content at the right moment. However, SEO shouldn’t get in the way of high-quality website content. With so much new content published every day, you can’t rely solely on SEO. Instead of spending your budget on five average pieces of content, spend it on one original and unique piece.
9. Unclear Calls-to-Action
Are you giving visitors to your website clear direction? Without clear calls-to-action, visitors won’t be able to navigate your site, and your conversions will suffer. Make sure each page has a clear purpose and is set up to encourage visitors to act in ways that meet your marketing goals.
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10. Poor Promotion
Many brands make the mistake of publishing content on one channel and then moving on to new content. The most successful marketers spend more time promoting content than they do creating it. So share your content multiple times across social media and reach out to influencers in your industry whenever you have something new to share.
Ecommerce SEO Mistakes
If you run an ecommerce site in today’s crowded online environment, there are some fundamental SEO mistakes you need to avoid to stay ahead of the competition.
Even with a beautiful site and quality products, if search engines can’t find your content and pages easily, then your efforts are wasted.
11. Duplicate Content
Since Google’s Panda algorithm update, ecommerce sites with duplicate product descriptions on multiple web pages will get penalized.
With your products, it’s easier to come up with original content, but if you’re reselling goods, copying product descriptions from other sources will trigger a Panda penalty. Focus on creating unique product descriptions instead.
12. Lack of Image Alt Text
It’s easy to apply image alt text to website images, but many companies are still guilty of leaving these blank. Especially in ecommerce, images are crucial to brand image and product promotion, so using relevant keywords in image alt text is vital for search engine visibility and your overall SEO strategy.
13. Poor Product Descriptions
While images are an essential part of any ecommerce site, words will always hold a special power. Google favors brands that can differentiate themselves from the competition with unique and relevant content.
Are you struggling to write captivating product descriptions? Learn more about how our product description writing service can help.
14. No Product Reviews
Research has shown that consumers are more likely to purchase from websites featuring customer reviews. Take advantage of this by using a plugin or other tool that lets you feature reviews on your pages. Reviews are good for everyone.
You can also use a product review writing service to keep a regular supply of reviews for your blog. They help the customer, they improve your credibility, and they result in unique content, which keeps search engine crawlers coming back to your site.
15. Multiple URLs for One Product
It’s often the case on ecommerce websites that one product can be reached via different routes, creating different URLs in the process. Unless you use the rel=canonical tag to tell search engines which page you want to be indexed, it can create duplicate content issues.
16. Using the Wrong Keywords
It pays to regularly check up on the keywords you’re using on your product pages. Analytics tools like Google Analytics can uncover some surprising data if you look carefully enough. For example, you may find that more people are finding specific pages through keyword phrases you didn’t even consider. Try using alternative keywords in page titles and headings to appeal to your target demographic.
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17. Lack of “Speaking” URLs
Also known as “keyword-friendly” URLs or “user-friendly” URLs, “speaking” URLs help users and search engines understand where they are on your site. For example, instead of “/cat-10/product-5678?top,” people would see “/newlook/striped-blue-white-linen-top.”
To improve your SEO strategy, create keyword-focused URLs for every product.
18. Lack of Clear Sitemaps
It’s easier than ever to integrate sitemaps into your site that automatically update as new products and pages are added. Regularly updated sitemaps make your site more crawlable, helping Google and other search engines index your pages correctly.
19. Slow Page Load Speeds
Google penalizes sites that have slow-loading pages, so it’s crucial to optimize your site with this in mind. There are many ways to ensure your site runs smoothly. For example, don’t use too many large images, and keep your source code light. Check out Google’s Page Speed Tool to find out more.
Making the right SEO choices is fundamental to the success of your ecommerce store, but there’s no point in generating lots of traffic if your website is not user-friendly; this is only detrimental to long-term sales. Ultimately, your SEO strategy should work in harmony with delivering a quality experience to consumers.
Ecommerce Conversion Mistakes
There are many places in the customer experience where shoppers can get tripped up and bounce from your website before making a purchase. If that happens, all of your efforts and money spent on acquiring that initial interest is wasted.
One study indicated that poor online customer experiences could cost American companies up to 23% of their total annual online revenue.
So, here are four common mistakes that prevent many ecommerce businesses from converting people’s interest in to sales and what you can do to mitigate them.
20. Unoptimized Website
You don’t have very long to make a good first impression and keep shoppers interested. Every inconvenience – be it a website glitch or a slow connection – brings you closer to losing a customer. So, make sure that you:
- Have a fast loading time. If your website takes too long to load, your customers will likely explore another option. Keep your load time to a few seconds or less.
- Fix broken links. Check those links regularly! There’s nothing more frustrating for a user to see than that little broken icon or a 404 page.
- Ensure compatibility. Ensure your site adapts to different browsers and screen sizes.
- Optimize for mobile. Responsive design is now an ecommerce must: nearly two-thirds of smartphone owners report that their phone is the main way they access the Internet.
21. Not Articulating Value
Content is a great way to show your expertise. But that doesn’t help you sell more if you don’t then explain your product or service’s unique value. This means demonstrating why you are the best solution for your customers’ needs, wants or pain points over other options.
Explain what your customers get with their purchase price with vivid product descriptions, demos, trials and, of course, high-quality images.
22. Not Alleviating Anxiety
There are lots of aspects of an ecommerce site that can create anxiety with shoppers. Bad or outdated design is a major one along with any kind of ambiguity about your offer.
Establish trust by including security badges (especially on the checkout page), refund options if they aren’t satisfied and don’t be afraid to show the people behind the brand on your About Us page – people like buying from other people, not anonymous websites. Most importantly, include testimonials and customer ratings along with your product or service as proof of your customers’ success with your product.
23. Complicated Checkout Process
Don’t make your checkout more complicated than it needs to be. Give customers the option to check out with their desired purchases without having to make profiles or answer unnecessary questions. While it’s great to have more information on your customers, each form field you add will increase your cart abandonment rate.
If you like, you can add the option to create a profile after they have completed their purchase. But for your checkout, keep it straightforward and simple. Having a progress bar at the top is useful, too, so customers can see exactly how many steps are left in the checkout.
Keep Learning
Keep in mind these ecommerce content mistakes, but also remember that your business is unique, so don’t be afraid to take a few risks and see what works best for your company.
Successful content marketing is a mix of strategy, understanding your audience, quality content, SEO, and distribution. You have to keep learning, optimizing, and fine-tuning. It takes consistent effort to see positive results, but with a proper ecommerce strategy, you can reap the benefits for years.