Industry E-Commerce
How to make 2015 your most profitable year
Al Keck, managing director of retail specialist toinfinity, looks at how to make 2015 your most successful year to date
A
digital marketing plan as part of your overall marketing strategy is crucial. If you are still putting your plan in place
for the year ahead there is still time to guarantee a more profitable online business in 2015. As Henry Ford famously once said: “If you
always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” In the world of online marketing and e-
commerce, businesses cannot afford to rely on static marketing plans. Online trends and consumer behaviour is constantly changing along with platforms and channels like Google and Facebook, that regularly update their algorithms. It’s never been so important to keep on top of what’s happening online and, with a flexible approach and following some simple advice, you can make improvements to your online sales. Here are five tips to ensure you have a profitable 2015:
Make sure your website is engaging With so much online competition and
customers expecting greater levels of content and ease of navigation, it is crucial to create a clean and simple engaging website. Your site is your shop front and as an
extension of your brand is ‘open’ to anyone across the globe 24 hours a day. While it is important your website looks good, making sure it is engaging to users doesn’t have to be complicated. Firstly, make sure your site has a sound
structure to make it easy for visitors to navigate. Good navigation will improve the overall customer experience and means they are more likely to return which will help your client conversion rate. Don’t forget to include calls to action
throughout the site. Think about ways in which you can distract visitors by getting them to engage and perform the action you want. Stand out from the crowd by using different
product shots or try video to allow customers to view all of its features at 360 degrees.
Be mobile and tablet friendly With shopping by smartphone and tablet in
the UK increasing by 18%, making sure your website is optimised for all platforms is a no brainer. If you are creating a new site it is essential it is responsive for mobiles and tablets.
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If you have an older site, make sure information is clear and as accessible as possible. Put yourself
into the shoes of your mobile customer and try the experience for yourself. Test as many devices as you can to identify any frustrations your customers may have and reasons why they may not return, even for reasons such as buttons are too small for big fingers!
Understand your customer Making your customers feel special and
important to you is essential. Spend time researching your current customer base as well as prospects you want to target. What products do they buy? Do they make regular purchases? What items do they put in their shopping basket but don’t check out? Through analysis of your customers buying
habits you can use insight and segmentation to target them about relevant products and tailor make your emails to suit each customer based on their interests. Show you know them and that you have gone the extra mile and you will be rewarded with happy, loyal customers.
Be visible Keeping your brand visible in a crowded
market place can seem daunting. With so many brands vying for attention you need to make sure your website is found by search engines to make sure you’re discoverable to potential customers. Many brands know that unless it shows up on
the first page of Google it is unlikely to be found. You cannot leave this to chance and if you want to get to position one, two or three there is some work to be done. To get started you need to learn about Search
Engine Optimisation (SEO) or hire a digital marketing expert to help you. Don’t under
estimate the importance of getting this right - your competitor doesn’t. You will need to understand who your
audience is and research what key words are relevant to your products and services. You can use free products such as Google AdWords to discover which words are searched for the most and those which need to appear in your web copy. Adding descriptions to the sites’ metadata will also help. You can also consider running some Pay Per
Click (PPC) ad campaigns to help drive traffic to your site and help raise your Google ranking. It’s vital you set up tracking on these ads and analyse them otherwise they will have no value.
Engage with your customers If you want to understand your customers,
what they want and their buying habits, you should talk to them. It might sound obvious but engaging with your customers past and present is one of the most important things you can do to improve your business and online sales. Whether it’s sending them an incentivised
online survey to fill in, getting feedback on their experiences through a customer feedback form or actually picking up the phone and talking to them, you will be able to find out key information about your service as well as discover opportunities for improvement.
Al Keck is an ecommerce/digital marketing consultant and managing director at retail specialist
toinfinity.co.uk
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