Online shopping has completely revolutionized the buying experience. You can order stuff in a few clicks, have your deliveries arrive at your doorstep, and access a plethora of goods at your fingertips. Your shopping options are almost endless.
As impressive as that sounds, it also makes standing out a bigger challenge. With the increasingly saturated ecommerce market, how can you attract customers and set your brand apart from the competition?
Dive into this post to find out.
1. Publish meaningful blog posts.
Launching your eCommerce store’s blog allows you to share your knowledge and builds your reputation as an industry expert. It also amplifies your customer engagement, online visibility, and website authority.
When you present meaningful information on various topics related to your business niche, you capture your readers’ trust and propel them to follow your blog posts.
Over time, your site traffic and authority grow because of this, especially when you optimize them for organic and paid searches.
(Boosting blog posts for search engine results takes time, strategy, and effort, though. If you need extra help in getting more favorable SEO results for your blog, consult helpful link-building resources and experts such as Paul Teitelman. His website offers an array of SEO-related services, including on-page optimization, local SEO, keyword research, site audits, etc.).
Rothy’s shows us an excellent blogging example on their ecommerce site:
Rothy’s features its best blog and then neatly displays its other riveting blogs. When you hover over one post, a “Read More” button appears to compel visitors to click it — and conveniently at that.
Follow these other blogging tips for your ecommerce store to stand out:
- Offer value. To turn visitors into your avid blog readers, focus on giving value and tackling customer pain points with practical solutions. Answer the question, “What can my readers get out of this post?”
- Directly address specific problems with actionable answers. For example, if your blog post is titled, “How to make my 10-minute vegan breakfast,” enumerate the steps and make them your subheadings.
- Share credible content and reliable sources. If you’re mentioning information from external sources, verify and cite them. Sharing false and plagiarized content ruins your rep.
- Infuse the right keywords into your content. Use phrases your readers are most likely to type on search engines. Then, sprinkle variations of them throughout your blog posts. Make them sound like they’re naturally inserted in your sentences.
- Insert links from your other web content or pages. This promotes your other pages and invites your readers to check them out.
- Encourage your visitors to like and comment. End your blog post with a call for readers to like it and share their thoughts. Reply to their comments as much as possible.
You can also promote your blog posts on social media and motivate followers to read them. If you still have a small following, consider buying influential Instagram accounts or those with thousands of followers already.
Marketplaces such as Social Tradia are secure venues for doing that since transactions and identities remain private. Once you have access to these popular Instagram profiles, you can instantly reach a vast readership for your blog posts.
Successful ecommerce blogging promotes your store and increases your business clout, solidifying your name and brand image.
2. Create an uber-helpful FAQs page.
Your FAQs page is where you can address your customers’ common queries, concerns, and issues when shopping on your site.
It is their go-to destination for answers to specific questions regarding your business, products, services, and policies.
The FAQs section can even be the first touchpoint for shoppers searching for answers before messaging you directly about their queries.
FAQ pages are ideal if customers repeatedly bring similar questions. Through this section of your website, you can best address them up front, publicly, and conspicuously.
Hem shows a perfect example:
Hem groups its FAQs by category and lists them in one glance, so shoppers can quickly scan through and read them.
Take these best design practices for your FAQs page:
- When choosing your FAQs, base them on practicality and relevance. Consider them opportunities to engage and convert your customers.
- If you finish with a lengthy list of FAQs, categorize them by topic, such as “Product Features,” “Shipping,” and more.
- Write the FAQs from your customers’ viewpoint (e.g., “How can I…”) and respond from your perspective (such as, “You can…” or “We offer…”).
- Incorporate your target keywords in your FAQs to boost your SEO.
- When necessary, supply your answers with additional resources, such as videos, images, and links to your other web pages.
- End your answers, especially to the last question in your FAQ list, with a compelling call-to-action linking to relevant web pages in your site. This helps you push your customers back into your funnel.
- Display your FAQs section neatly for an easier read. Leverage clean layouts and other excellent features of ecommerce platforms to make your page visually appealing and easy to navigate.
With an uber-helpful FAQ section, you can effectively assist your customers, save you and your shoppers time and energy, and boost their engagement and satisfaction.
3. Share your story.
If you’re writing your store’s bios on your social platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, you’ll notice you only have limited space to share everything on it. This hampers your brand strategy from really shining through and captivating your customers.
Dedicate a page on your site for sharing your ecommerce shop’s story. Typically, this is the “About Us” page, but you can also name it something along the lines of “Our Story.”
Doing this gives you the perfect avenue to freely introduce your business — especially if you’re still starting your online store — and the impact you can bring into your customers’ lives.
MVMT’s Our Story page is a stellar example:
MVMT briefly tells when and how they began, where they are now, what inspires them, and so on. They also divided sections of their content with titles, such as “Our Products,” “Our Mission,” etc. This makes it simpler for visitors to get the entire picture of their business in snapshots.
Remember this narration flow when setting your story:
- Introduce yourselves, your current setting, and the status quo or how things were before for your business, customers, and industry niche.
- Describe the predicament that prompted you to act (such as by opening your ecommerce business) and what you aimed to do with your solution.
- Explain the challenges you faced.
- Recount how your ecommerce store is working to fulfill your goals and the milestones you’ve achieved with it.
- Give your customers an idea of the future you intend to build for your ecommerce business. You can also present your store’s vision and mission.
You can even showcase your strengths and unique selling proposition in your narration. What makes your ecommerce store different? Why should your customers feel great about shopping with you?
Finally, add stunning photos to increase your page’s visual appeal.
Making your Our Story page a focal part of your brand strategy moves your customers and causes them to resonate with you more quickly.
4. Hold a virtual summit.
Organizing a virtual summit is another excellent way to set your ecommerce brand apart. It exposes your company to hundreds or thousands of potential customers, clients, business partners, and industry leaders.
Virtual summits consequently widen your network, visibility, and business opportunities. Audiences and partners get acquainted with your brand and will put you on their radar for possible partnerships.
As the host, you get to gather this valuable crowd, share your story, and exchange ideas connected to your niche.
Below are some tips for hosting memorable brand-boosting virtual summits:
- Identify your goals
- Plan ahead (at least three months in advance)
- Select reliable video conferencing software with robust features (preferably automation) for your registration, invitation, promotions, technical, and other needs
- Manage your speakers properly: their basic profiles, presentations, speaking schedules, etc.
- Facilitate the program flow and conversations during your virtual summit
- Wrap up your event with thank-you emails, social media posts, payout management, evaluation, and others.
5. Create your store’s own app.
Building an app for your ecommerce store helps your brand stand out in several ways. It helps you:
- Widen your shopper reach
- Increase your visibility
- Serve, engage, and nurture customers more quickly, and
- Boost your mobile traffic.
You can build your app with Microsoft Azure DevOps to streamline the entire software development lifecycle from creation to deployment.
The platform lets you collaborate with your teams, automate tests, scan for vulnerabilities, and more.
When building your app on Azure DevOps, be sure to secure your source code through frequent backups, so you don’t lose it in case of system failures, cyber attacks, and other threats.
However, since backing up your app’s code can be burdensome, automate it with hyper-efficient backup tools such as Backrightup. Backrightup is an automatic backup tool specifically for Azure DevOps. It daily and instantly duplicates your repositories, wikis, work items, etc. and updates you about it. This lets you focus on your app’s primary business and brand-building activities and gives you peace of mind about your code’s security.
Make your ecommerce store stand out.
Cut through the noise by highlighting your store’s competitive edge throughout your site content. Incorporate positivity into your brand strategies to always make your shoppers feel good about your shop.
Remember also to maintain consistency in your messages across the platforms you’re using, especially your site. In this way, you reinforce what your brand is about wherever customers interact with your ecommerce store.