Did you know — according to a survey, 98% of customers are dissuaded from buying a product owing to incomplete or incorrect content? In fact, half the shoppers return the product they buy because it doesn’t match the description that went along with it on the e-store.
Who knew content could affect your sales to this extent, right?
Well, it does. That means the efforts that we put into conversions have an additional focal point.
However, before we dive into the top content creation tips, let’s look at some more reasons why focusing on content is crucial.
Why Focus On Content?
First off, “content” isn’t just the written material on a website or as part of a product description. It also includes images, videos, GIFs, and other elements that bring value to buyers and/or encourage their participation. Creating excellent content takes time, effort, and discipline, but it is guaranteed to be worth paying attention to it. It will have more positive effects than you think.
There are plenty of ways in which good content can help get your business going.
Engage Your Audience
Good content — relevant, useful, and/or entertaining— helps engage your audience. Engaging content is so attractive and interesting that it immediately grabs people’s attention and makes them want to know more. If a shopper finds your store useful in any way, they would revisit frequently, which may lead to more repeat sales.
They may also sign up and look forward to your email newsletter, or join your referral program. All of this means more conversions.
Although there are several ways to engage audiences, the use of interactive quizzes, short videos, and how-to guides or listicles has been a favorite of content marketers.
Build Your Brand Authority
Establishing one’s name in any industry is no easy feat, and when starting up with a new business, it becomes even more difficult.
The content, both informative and entertaining, helps in the effort to assert one’s knowledge of the industry and of the product. Blog posts and social media content can help introduce the audience to your experience and expertise as a business owner.
This builds up an authoritative image in the minds of your audience, which in turn, helps in creating a trustworthy relationship.
Boost Lead Generation
Sales are more often than not a result of persuasion. While this convincing act could be upheld by a salesperson during offline or telesales, it becomes the content’s burden to carry when it comes to online sales and eCommerce.
In the absence of a salesperson, it is the job of a well-written product description, coupled with attractive pictures and videos, to communicate why the buyer needs to hit the “Add to Cart” button.
But it is also the content’s responsibility to convert visitors into leads. For example, you can create a lead magnet in the form of a free ebook or a checklist that visitors can access for free in exchange for their email address. In doing so, you can build an email list that you can then nurture with more valuable content, ultimately compelling your leads to convert.
Be a storyteller
Storytelling is the most effective and interesting way of communication. Packing something into a story is the best way to communicate and give information to your customers. Stories are making your business more like a human. Let people see behind the curtain and get to know you and your business.
Increase Inbound Links
The linking structure — considering both internal and external links — of any website is a crucial factor when it comes to search engine rankings. And a proper balance of inbound and outbound links should be maintained at all times.
Well-crafted blog posts tend to attract the most number of inbound links from other websites. This is because good sites love to link to pages that provide value, and it helps them create a reliable network and standing in the market.
More inbound links mean more traffic and better search engine rankings, speaking of which…
Support Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A website’s rankings on the search engine result pages (SERPs) are of vital importance, especially for eCommerce stores. Organic search traffic is one of the biggest sources of high-intent traffic, and that’s why many serious eCommerce brands tend to opt for professional SEO services.
After all, the higher you rank, the better your overall brand visibility and it automatically leads to higher conversion.
Admittedly, in the early days of search, the rules of these search engines were pretty loose, and sidestepping them for higher rankings was pretty simple. All you had to do was produce keyword-stuffed content in as high quantities as possible. The more content you published, the higher were your chances of being ranked at the top. The quality of your content played little role in determining its rankings.
But in recent times, search engines like Google have committed to providing the best possible user experience above all. Therefore, only high-quality content will support your SEO efforts. Marketers have to do contents, that are comprehensive, useful, helpful, educational, accurate. And provide the best answer to the searcher’s query.
Top Content Creation Tips For eCommerce Websites
Now that you know the numerous ways in which good content can be a prominent factor in the success of any online business, especially of the eCommerce kind, let us move on to the topic of the hour.
While each brand has its own way of determining what works for them and what doesn’t, here’s a curated list of some top tips to create content that drives results.
Identify the Audience and the Message you Want to Put Out
To ascertain whether your content is good enough to be put on the web, it is crucial to assess its messaging. Unless your organization identifies and supports the message behind the content, its purpose may be defeated.
Additionally, it is not just the message you need to stand with. You also need to determine whether your audience would resonate with it, otherwise, your content can cause you more harm than good.
For instance, an Indian jewelry brand, Tanishq broadcasted an advertisement in 2020 that revolved around two families of different religions celebrating each other’s traditions and respecting the same, which caused a major controversy in the area. While there were many who saw the ad as an insult, there were also many who received it the way it was meant to be. However, what the company soon realized was that their audience wasn’t ready to accept the message that they had attempted to share and had to take it down.
Thus, before you start working on your content, make sure you know your audience and their needs well. But, please avoid broad assumptions, because your content will be just like someone else’s.
Creating a buyer persona can also be a good idea. A buyer persona is a person that you want to reach with your content and it will represent your audience. A buyer persona can help you to gain a stronger understanding and if you write content to this persona, then everyone will feel, that your content is for them.
Monitor the Demographics
As we just mentioned, ensuring you know your consumer is of utmost importance when creating content for them. And one way of doing that is by studying their demographics and psychographics.
The demographics of your audience include details like their age group, gender, race, ethnicity, level of education, employment status, marital status, etc. You can determine audience demographics with some good old-fashioned audience surveys and market research.
Similarly, the psychographics of your audience encompasses information like consumer behavior, shopping patterns, likes and dislikes, interests, opinions, and reviews. It is only when you know what makes your audience tick can you create content that bears fruit. Don’t be afraid to ask your audience what they would like to read about or what their feedback is.
Relying on the Buyer’s Journey
Buyer’s journeys are maps of the steps your customer will take from the problem recognition to the buying phase. At every step, your buyers have different problems and goals, that can be addressed with various types of content. For example, when people are in the buying stage, they don’t want to read about an overall problem in your industry.
Leverage Website Data
Analysis of the data your site collects (using a tool like Capturly or Google Analytics) on a day-to-day basis helps to determine whether the content you’re sharing is actually having the desired effect or not.
Such on-site data includes traffic, bounce rate, average time on page, session duration, conversions, etc. With the data in front of you, you can figure out what works and what doesn’t, and it becomes an easier task to create more customer-focused content that has a proven success rate. You can also check for the channels where each piece of content has received the most engagement and tailor your content marketing strategy accordingly.
In the end, you will know what changes and improvements you have to make to your content. If you don’t hit your goals, take your time to make changes.
Be current and improve your skills
Being up-to-date isn’t so easy, but crucial. You need to know as much as you can about the topic you are writing about. You always have to know about the actual trends and about what concerns the customers the most.
Tailor Your Content as per the Communication Channel
There are numerous communication channels available today as opposed to the olden days where only the traditional means of marketing, such as print media, radio, and television were at one’s disposal. For example, you can choose from social media marketing, pay-per-click advertising, content marketing, email marketing, etc.
Since you have an array of channels to choose from, take the time to determine the ones that have the potential for maximum reach and engagement. For example, if you wish to drive some quick sales, creating a paid advertising campaign on social media may work well. To drive brand awareness and SERPs visibility, content marketing is what you must invest in.
Write often find your own voice and give examples
It definitely requires a commitment to make posts frequently, but more content means more traffic and higher conversion. Make a blogging checklist, to simplify your tasks.
Writing isn’t just made up of consecutive sentences. The essence of writing is, communicating, showing your personality, and being natural. So don’t be shy, find your unique writing style and tone.
Examples make texts more real and relatable. With their help, people can more easily memorize what you want to say.
Use Attention-Grabbing Headlines
In vain you write very good content if people don’t pay attention to it. Headlines are the first parts of your content people look at. It needs to be interesting and attention-grabbing. Use questions or unfinished sentences, because people automatically want to know the answers.
Use Colors Carefully
Color Psychology is a much-sought-after topic nowadays that is even being taken into consideration in marketing curriculums of top-tier B-schools. That is because slowly and steadily, the world recognizes the power a color yields and the way it can affect one’s thought-process, mood, and decision-making. Therefore, designers now focus on creating content that has the right shades and hues to attract potential customers to the company’s products and services.
Be it a social media post or a PPC landing page, using the right shades of your brand colors in a consistent way across all marketing collateral can go a long way in building your brand.
Closing Thoughts
There’s no shortage of advice to read when it comes to the correct ways of creating content. Ultimately, it all depends on your target audience, marketing goals, and chosen channels. Still, we have shared some tried-and-true tips that can help you create compelling content for your eCommerce website. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Just try new things and you will find what is the best content strategy for you and what are the things that your audience likes or doesn’t like.
Do you have any content creation tips of your own? Feel free to share in the comments below!