When business owners launch their online stores, they set up a marketing strategy that they put into play to bring traffic to the site.
They engage professional photographers to get high-quality product images, launch social media campaigns, and engage in email marketing. All this seems straightforward.
However, there’s a feature of the marketing strategy that online brand owners would rather avoid. Blogging. Writing blogs seems like a challenging task to accomplish.
You need several ideas and topics, and you also have to type out every single word. The very thought of all this is enough to take the wind out of your sails. However, contrary to popular belief, your online store needs a blog more than you could imagine.
An eCommerce blog presents plenty of benefits, including but not limited to increasing traffic to your site and instilling a sense of loyalty in your customers.
Therefore, you should seriously consider crafting a blog for your online store. In this article, you’ll find the various benefits of blogging for your online brand. But we won’t stop there. More importantly, we’re going to show you how you can use a blog for eCommerce conversions.
Your store’s success hangs on the fact that you’ve optimized your site to handle and convert incoming traffic. Without this, you’ll have wasted a lot of time crafting and optimizing a blog to funnel this invaluable traffic.
The solution? Debutify provides a free Shopify theme that’s fully optimized to turn traffic into conversions. Download Debutify for free now!
What Do You Gain From Having An Ecommerce Blog?
Before you build a blog, we want to paint a clear picture of all the good things you can get out of this endeavor. After all, we don’t want you to sink tons of energy and resources into something you don’t believe in.
However, we’re quite confident that you’ll be swearing by blogs when you reach the end of this article,. We know all you want to do is sell your products, but a well-crafted and optimized blog will make it such a breeze to get items of those virtual shelves.
Here are a few of the positives you can expect when you attach a blog to your site.
Blogs Improve Your Site’s SEO
When your online store is well-optimized for search engines, they recommend it to their users searching for something in your niche. And for everyone grinding on these digital streets, search engine optimization is practically the end all be all.
If search engines can’t find your website, you’ll have no traffic to convert into sales. For this reason, all online business owners come up with different ways of catching Google’s eye.
One of the best ways of doing so is by regularly posting articles on your blog. These don’t need to be basic pieces of text. No, sir. These have to be articles that potential customers find useful. After all,
Google won’t recommend something to its users if they find it useless. It just isn’t good for business. Still skeptical about the importance of blogs? Read on, we’ll try to change your mind.
A Good Blog Improves Your Industry Clout
Imagine you’re in the mobile accessories niche. Wouldn’t you love it, if every time someone talked about phone cases and skins, your brand came up? For example, every Jacuzzi is a hot tub but not every hot tub is a Jacuzzi. But the company marketed the hell out of them to the point that we refer to every hot tub as a Jacuzzi.
Now, we’re not promising that you’ll achieve that kind of global success, but you can damn well try. And how do you go about this? Building a blog is a great start. Blogs help you to put out excellent content about your products and the industry at large.
Consistent great content will have people running to you for anything concerning that industry. As your voice starts to ring out true, so will your brand, increasing eCommerce customer loyalty.
Great Blog Posts Increase Conversion Rates
Who would’ve thought it? You can use a blog for eCommerce conversions. Yes, you can. Many times, online shoppers will look through your store, searching for an item that you offer.
However, they’re just not sure if they really want it. They Google the product, and lo and behold, a blog you wrote about that product shows up in the search engine results. The potential customer reads this blog post and is convinced that your product is actually good; it offers a solution to their particular problem. Without your blog posts, that would have been one more unconverted visitor.
A useful eCommerce blog encourages several potential customers to take a punt on products that they would have otherwise overlooked. In so doing, not only do the blog posts increase conversions, but they also increase your average order value. Still not convinced? Here’s the closer.
Blogs Foster Ecommerce Customer Loyalty
Nothing’s better than having customers who keep coming back to your online store whenever they need something in your niche. Your marketing efforts might contain a customer retention strategy, and that’s good and all.
However, blogging is one of the most effective strategies you can use. For you to have a successful eCommerce blog, you need to craft compelling articles. These engaging posts keep customers hooked, coming back for more content.
The best way to ensure eCommerce customer loyalty is to have a mix of informative posts about specific products and those that touch on topics relevant to the niche. It also doesn’t hurt to throw in a bit of engaging fun posts. This kind of blog keeps customers engaged, making them come back to see what’s new.
Additionally, they share these posts with family, colleagues, friends, and social media followers. The result? You draw in more traffic to convert into sales or subscriptions. If you’re to have success with this strategy, you need to ensure that your online store is in a position to take advantage of this increased traffic.
Download Debutify, a free Shopify theme that’s well-optimized to increase conversions. Now that we’ve bought into the blog concept, let’s see how you can make it increase your store’s conversion rate.
How To Use A Blog To Increase Conversions And Build Loyalty
Okay, blogs are useful. Now what? You’re finding it hard to come up with what to include in your blog. This is a problem many online store owners face. In some industries, there’s plenty to write about.
However, in others, it seems coming up with topics isn’t as straightforward. And for your blog to be successful, you need to push out a constant stream of posts to reap the benefits. Below, we’ll paint some broad strokes of what you can write about and for whom you should write.
Target A Specific Niche
You’re not the only one in your industry trying their hand at blogging. A sizeable chunk of your competitors already have a headstart, so you’re playing catch-up. Since they’ve cornered a particular section of the market, you need to find a way to disrupt that. Find a specific niche that you can cater to.
You’ll be surprised to find that some people will cross over from your competitor because you have just what they’re looking for. Even if your competitor offers precisely the same products as you, you can always find a different market to target.
For example, you can target customers from a particular location. Optimize your blogs to rank in that specific area. When the locals find them, they can easily relate to them.
As a result, you’ll get more conversions from this audience. You can also develop a specific niche by using a distinct voice in your posts. Using slang in a casual, laidback manner can net you a young demographic.
This is all to say, find your audience. Carry out market research to find out who your ideal audience is.
Then, develop specific niches within that audience that you can target. Regular, constant posts targeting this audience builds eCommerce customer loyalty.
Write Compelling, Engaging, And Interactive Content
Your eCommerce blog can build a loyal following if the audience finds the content captivating. You can do this by crafting pieces that your target market loves to get into. Earlier, we talked about identifying a voice that your audience can relate to.
When you use this voice in your content, customers view your brand as part of them and not a corporate poser pandering to their emotions. Start off with quirky and catchy headlines. This captures the readers’ attention from the off. Additionally, you should use plenty of images and video content in your blog posts.
There’s a common misconception that posts should always be articles. Far from it. You can have a blog that only has video content for your audience. After all, three-quarters of online consumers prefer to learn about a product from a video.
Therefore, give the people what they want. Ensure that you post high-quality videos, leaving a good impression on your audience. Make all your posts (articles and videos) interactive. Add a comment section where your customers can discuss the content above. You can also chime in whenever someone has a question.
The audience loves it when you engage with them. This provides a personal touch that captures your customers’ loyalty.
Create A Blog Content Calendar
You’ve come up with a niche to target. You’ve written and posted a piece each week for a month. The comments under the blog have shown that the whole project has some promise.
As the blog grows, so does business in your online store. You find yourself overstretched, and it becomes challenging to come up with things to write about. The blog’s quality declines, reducing traffic, conversions, and brand loyalty. You can prevent this from happening by creating a blog content calendar.
This relieves you of that last-minute panic to develop a topic for a post that’s due in a day. With a content calendar, you come up with the month’s topics in advance. The calendar also keeps track of the creation process, ensuring that you don’t do all the writing when you see the deadline approaching.
The calendar’s role is to keep you consistent so that you don’t lose out on the benefits your store reaps from a successful blog. But what should you fill the content calendar with? We’re glad you asked.
Write About Your Products
The whole point of writing a blog is to ensure that your readers find their way to your online shop to buy your products. Therefore, writing about your products shouldn’t come as a surprise. Of course, you have written something about them already; the product descriptions on your website, for example. But the catch here is that little traffic finds its way to your website and product pages.
A blog will attract more traffic. Use this opportunity to talk about the products your audience will find when they move on to the store. You can craft entire posts featuring a single product.
On the other hand, you can write blog posts to introduce new items in your product range. This is a chance for you to convince your audience about the importance of that new entry. In the same breath, why not talk about products that are coming out soon.
Such blog posts create a buzz about the soon-to-be-launched item, prompting your audience to check it out once you roll it out.
READ MORE: "How to Write Product Descriptions that Sell"
Provide Your Reader With Useful Information
Having a blog doesn’t mean you should bombard your customers with sales information in every blog post. No. You should also use this opportunity to solve the problems your customers face.
These kinds of blog posts highlight difficulties that arise in your niche or industry. Go ahead and show the audience how they can overcome these problems. This form of content should take up a sizeable chunk of your blog posts.
Customers appreciate it when a brand solves their problem. In turn, they always turn to it to get the products that cater to that issue. When done right, this is the perfect way to show off your products’ benefits.
When you write a featured product blog post, customers know that you’re in full-on salesman mode.
However, when you highlight problems and hint at your products as the solution, it’s like an eye-opener. Your audience is more likely to buy from you because they believe your product is the answer.
Give Existing Customers A Chance To Submit Review Posts
Get this. 7 in 10 online shoppers will trust recommendations from total strangers. So, if you’re looking to use a blog for eCommerce conversions, you can’t go wrong with posting blog posts that contain reviews from customers who have already bought and used your products.
Much as online shoppers trust strangers, they can only go so far. Let’s throw another number at you. 8 out of those 10 customers believe that reviews older than 3 months aren’t relevant anymore.
Therefore, you need to frequently publish customer reviews so that potential customers always have fresh recommendations to guide their buying decisions. If you can, provide customers with an email address they can send detailed reviews to.
Publish these on your blog. Even when the reviews are bad, don’t omit them. Customers are highly suspicious of an overly clean record.
They get a sense that the results have been manipulated to show your brand in a good light. After all, nothing can be that good. And even if it is, some people will always find fault with it.
Make Use Of Social Media
Social media platforms allow you to put your blog posts in front of countless eyeballs. Even if a few people directly receive the blog post, they can share it with their followers, making your brand reach people who weren’t even on your radar.
This can reap benefits in terms of increased traffic and conversions. And more so if you implement all the tips we’ve discussed above.
Place share buttons, with links to the various social media platforms, on every blog post so that readers can share it with their followers.
Optimize The Blog For Search Engines
If you want to use a blog for eCommerce conversions, you need to ensure that your target market finds it. And as with all information, customers use search engines to find it.
However, before your target market can find your blog, you should make sure that search engines like Google and Bing know about it.
Therefore, you should invest in professional SEO services to handle the technical part of this process.
You should also practice acceptable SEO practices on each blog post. Start out with doing keyword research to find out exactly what your target market searches for.
This will give you different topics to write about. Getting your brand noticed takes a while. Therefore, you need to post great content and do so regularly.
When the search engines see that people love your site, they’ll recommend it to more users, taking you above your competition.
In Conclusion
We’ve seen the benefits of using a blog to gain eCommerce customer loyalty.
We’ve also gone through the various ways you can use a blog for eCommerce conversion to send your brand floating over the competition.
To achieve this, you need an eCommerce blog that links to an online store ready to turn that traffic into conversion.
Debutify is uniquely placed and well-optimized with premium add-ons to increase conversion rates. Download the free Debutify Theme now!
Trisha Ballesteros