E-commerce Website
Much has changed since the days when every store was brick and mortar. One of the largest impacts of that change is the increase in competition. Today, nearly every business competes with other organizations throughout the globe.
Even local businesses like plumbers can deal with increased pressure. In yesteryear, local businesses realized most customers through the location or word of mouth. In the modern world, customers will conduct internet research. That research considers the organization’s website, social media presence, and ratings and reviews.
The term “e commerce” recognizes the digital nature of financial transactions for products and services. Just as how we conduct transactions has changed, so has changed how we market these activities. Companies still use large paid campaigns to generate initial interest. However, from that point on various types of content writing become the primary form of customer interface and marketing.
While it can change for different industries, e commerce content writing includes several components:
- Regular short email communications sent to a mailing list. These are also known as “drip campaigns.”
- Blog, website and ecommerce homepage content optimized to draw web searches.
- Social media posts on sites controlled by the company.
- Guest commentary on blogs or media sites owned by other entities.
These communications are important because they work to establish a relationship between the company and the possible customers. They encourage the potential client to develop trust in the company, and a better understanding of how their product can help them achieve their goals.
This is perhaps the biggest ideology shift between the way things were and now. In the past, the company’s desire was to sell products. Successful companies now know that the new goal must be to help customers achieve success through their products. Content writing is how we convey that joint model of success.
Content Marketing Examples
Writing effective content to educate consumers about your products requires a great understanding of your customer’s industry. You need to understand specifically how your customers intend to use your product to achieve their goals. You must also understand how your competitor’s products are used for the same purpose.
This understanding will help you to create an ecommerce content template that you can use to create consistent messages. This message can be duplicated to create e commerce campaign examples in formats like email, newsletters, and blogs.
For example, if you sell women’s clothes, you know you have a huge competition pool. By mastering the use of content marketing for fashion ecommerce, you can potentially give yourself an edge. If you have a fashion line targeting professional single women, you may use online shopping articles to guide search engines to your page. An article on breathable fabrics for women’s suits would probably generate interest from women shoppers during the summer months.
You can also draw website content ideas from your understanding of your customer base. In addition to general product pictures, your website may benefit from articles on issues important to professional women. The about us content for ecommerce website locations is often a great place to build a trustworthy identity. Content writing for ecommerce sites is all about understanding the buyer, where they consume content, how they like to consume it and what content interests them.
Content for online shopping websites is typically is product-focused but will also delve into lifestyle and how that product fits a certain lifestyle. There are many content marketing examples 2019 that focus on cooperative marketing as well.
Ecommerce Website Design
Modern ecommerce website design is a confluence of human and software forces. Search engine websites use website crawling software to read every page on the web and create an index. When you search for a certain phrase, the search engine matches that phrase with the best index results.
Older webcrawlers used easily manipulatable data like metatext or tags. Users may recall being linked to pages that read like complete gibberish, but for some reason ranked high on the search. These pages were made to fool the webcrawler, at the expense of human readers.
Search engine platforms quickly realized that ranking unuseful pages would not win them customers. Therefore, modern search engines include both the human experience and the webcrawler readout. This means that ecommerce website design must optimize the structure and keywords that webcrawlers love, and the usable content and clarity that humans love.
The practice of creating content loved by software and humans alike is now known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The challenge of SEO is to find creative website content that can keep humans engaged with your company on a regular basis. Keeping customers engaged is the cornerstone of creating repeat customers.
As mentioned before, one of the keys to using content to drive sales is to help customers understand how your products can help them achieve their goals. Therefore, the best-designed websites guide consumers to solutions for existing or perceived problems, or help them visualize success through your inventory.
Adobe’s website, for example, has two specific features that help it make the list of best ecommerce website examples. First, the website is organized by consumer needs, rather than a company catalog. The titles at the top of the page are items like “Creativity & Design” and “Business Solutions.”
Going further, the subtitles are again separated by the type of consumer, with an option to “Discover.” For those customers that know what they need, they can skip right to the product features.
Second, at the end of each of the link chains, one can find information for free tutorials and product trials. In addition to the direct product offerings, the additional content on the site is geared toward helping consumers realize their own goals by using Adobe products.
How to write content for ecommerce website
The best advice for content for ecommerce sites is to use templates and checklists based on customer needs. One of the simplest methods of achieving this direct customer connection is by asking yourself a series of questions.
- What does my customer want?
- How could my customers use this product to achieve their goals?
- What combination of my products best helps customers to achieve their goals?
- What features are my customers not using that could help them reach their goals?
- How could future products help customers achieve their goals?
- What issues outside my product base could impact my customer’s achievements?
The content for the ecommerce website is the customer’s first view of your overall vision for how you help them. Your product pages and content writing for online shopping websites should tie directly into how those products fill your customer’s success gaps.
Category pages can allow for the most creativity. You should categorize those products by type of industry, and then industry needs. That way you can focus on creating content that is directly relatable to customers in particular industries. If you sell tools to construction workers for example, you could create content around tool packages.
How to write content for ecommerce website
Assuming you are now convinced of the importance of effective ecommerce content, the next logical question is how to create that content. Logically there are two ways. The first method is hiring a content writer for your company. With this method, you don’t have to learn anything about SEO beyond drafting the ecommerce content writer job description. Your only task is finding a candidate with content writing experience and knowledge of your customer’s industry.
The other method is using an existing member of your staff to write the material. While this method may save money, it carries the additional risk of missing an opportunity by using unqualified writers.
Whether you hire or use internal staff, the process of ecommerce content creation can involve some standard steps.
UNDERSTAND YOUR CLIENTS
As mentioned previously, the beginning of ecommerce content writing must begin with understanding how your clients use your products to achieve. This understanding can be attained through surveys, focus groups, or informal conversations. Make sure you reach as many of your potential customers as possible, through a variety of methods and customer types.
No matter which feedback methods you use, you will need to develop some standard information checklists or questions. This standardization process will be necessary for creating comparisons. You must also give clients the opportunity to mention or discuss suggested product changes or new product uses.
In addition to direct feedback you should also follow industry magazines, blogs, and news articles. Your customers may not always be aware of the most recent developments and your organization can always benefit from gathering content ideas for ecommerce from others.
DEVELOP CONTENT CREATION SCHEDULES AND TEMPLATES
Once you understand the needs of your customers, you need to develop content templates and ecommerce promotion ideas. For example, you may have a website that markets a line of children’s toys. Your primary market is likely parents, schools, and daycares.
However, through your client research, you may discover that doctor’s offices also order your products. In this case, you may expand your business by writing blog articles on ways that dentists and doctor’s offices can better serve child patients. That way, when these professionals search for terms like “dentist” and “child” they can get your website including children’s toys.
