Social sharing – Target Marketing

10 Critical SEO Best Practices for E-commerce Sites

Do you have an e-commerce website? If so, you might find SEO a tad more complicated than other businesses. Here are 10 SEO best practices for e-commerce.

Do you have an e-commerce website? If so, you might find SEO (search engine optimization) a tad more complicated than what other types of businesses face. Here are 10 SEO best practices for e-commerce sites.

1. Reduce Image Size to Increase Speed
It’s important to add images and if possible video of each product, as many shoppers use Google Images to search for items. However, pictures that are too big will slow down your page load times, which in turn will hurt your search engine rankings. To test your webpage speed, use Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool.

2. Optimize for Mobile Devices
Mobile optimization is becoming increasingly important for all businesses, but it is especially crucial for e-commerce sites. Shoppers expect to move seamlessly between devices, and e-commerce platforms that are not mobile friendly are almost useless on a mobile device. Create a mobile website or app, or use responsive design to automatically scale your site to the size of each user’s device. Use Google’s free Mobile-Friendly test tool to check for any mobile usability issues.

3. Streamline Navigation
Usability is an important factor in Google’s new algorithm. Design a visually appealing site with clear, obvious navigation options and minimize the number of clicks required to reach a specific page. Clearly label your product collections, and for larger websites, use an internal search engine that gives users the ability to quickly find what they need.

4. Write Unique Product Descriptions
Avoid the temptation to rely on manufacturer descriptions or to repeat content for similar products. To boost your Google rankings, you must have unique, high-quality content on each page. This initially requires a lot of work, especially if you already have numerous products for sale. However, this is well worth the effort to ensure your product pages have a shot at ranking in Google. If your descriptions are duplicates of other webpages online, then Google is not very likely to rank your webpage high in the search results.

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Share, Share Everywhere: Tapping the Social Activity of Email Subscribers

We’ve all seen it happen: a trusted individual recommends or suggests something. It’s a powerful way to not only convey a message, but also elicit a response. That’s why it’s important for email marketers to understand the value of social media sharing. Having prospects and customers receive, open and pay attention to your email message is good, but having them then share the message further via email or other social media is great. Customer-instigated sharing across social media channels acts as a force multiplier that can significantly ratchet up the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign, both in reach and impact.

Most marketers track the basics of email marketing: deliverability (i.e., bounces), opens (i.e., renders), clicks, unsubscribes and spam complaints. Add social sharing to that list in order to begin to understand the dynamic between your email subscribers and their social influence. If you’re tracking social activity and influence in another system, try to match the influence back to your CRM database by asking subscribers to provide their Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn handle.

If you pay for data from Facebook or other social networks, you can match data via email address. Be prepared, however, to see a low match rate between your email file and the email addresses on record at the social network. Many consumers use different email addresses for different purposes.

At the minimum, the data you see in your email marketing system — e.g., social sharing, link clicks and any self-reported data on social behavior — will at least give you an idea of what social activities are most important to your subscribers. It appears there’s a pretty wide variance by time of day for a retailer. Sale promotions sent on weekends were shared with social networks much more frequently than those sent during the week. Therefore, retailers were able to adjust the timing and content of their messages to feature social shopping activities.

In addition, time of day during the week was tested to see if there’s a correlation to opening email on a PC versus a mobile device. Sharing can happen from each, but often occurs more frequently on mobile devices.

There are a few factors to consider when analyzing social activity:

Cadence: Be aware that the footprint of each message grows as it’s shared. You may need to adjust the pace of certain messages to adapt to this longer tail.
Influence: Reach alone isn’t the key metric; impact and conversion are what truly matter. Track which social media channels provide the most conversions.
Influencers: Data collection and management allows you to identify your biggest brand advocates. Leverage their enthusiasm even more through special offers, enhanced communication and other promotions that recognize their status.
Segmentation: Slicing social media data by channel, time, topic, etc., can help you identify patterns that make it easier to target future email messages.
Privacy: Brands that overstep, spam or fail to disclose their intentions risk subscriber backlash. Cross the line and you’ll be contending with negative social media sharing.

Word-of-mouth today doesn’t just happen one-to-one in-person; it happens inbox-to-inbox and across a wide range of social media platforms. Learn to harness the power of this social media sharing and you’ll improve the reach and effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.

What are your biggest challenges when it comes to tracking and encouraging social sharing via email? Share your experiences in the comments section below.

Use Social Media Content to Boost Sales

Want to boost your sales? Try using social media content to support the purchase process, aid search optimization and provide customer service because regardless of where consumers ultimately purchase, at least one-third of them start shopping with online research, according to AMP Agency’s Inside the Buy research. Therefore, it’s critical to persuade prospects with the information they need to buy from your organization. Social media-enriched content is useful at every step of the purchase process to allow shoppers the ability to experience your products more fully.

Here are six examples where social media content helps boost sales by providing prospects with useful, credible information:

1. Product information. Instead of terse product specifications written for search engines, deliver content written for humans that answer questions your prospects and customers want and need to know about your products before they decide to purchase. Social media will show and tell the content for your offering, helping consumers to better understand your products.

2. Add videos to give customers a 360-degree view of the product. Integrate photographs to show consumers how the product will look when they get it home. Show them how to put together clothing outfits or furniture layouts. Provide product instructions, shopping lists and patterns using blog posts or PDFs. The goal is to help consumers buy and use the product.

3. Customer reviews. When it comes to product reviews, it’s not about you! Consumers trust their social circle, including family, friends and other consumers, not your marketing. Since customer trust is gone, if you don’t provide product reviews, prospects will leave your site to find them on third-party sites like Amazon or one of your competitors.

4. FAQs (aka frequently asked questions). Many retailers overlook using this underutilized content area as a social media content treasure trove that can support sales and reduce customer service inquiries. Ask your customer service representatives for a list of common inquiries and answers that can be posted on your website. Include product descriptions, purchase process information and post-purchase questions.

Cross-promote this question and answer content on relevant product pages, emails, customer service live chat and customer service IVR (i.e., the recording when customers call in).

Ask prospects and customers for their questions. This is a great way to find out what customers think about your brand. Answer the questions directly or allow customers to answer other customers’ questions. In this case, you’ll probably want to moderate responses to ensure that they’re correct and in line with your guidelines.

5. Post-purchase support. Think beyond your returns policy; this is where social media content is particularly useful. Additionally, this information can be a great place to upsell customers on refills and related products. Make sure that you include shopping lists where appropriate and links to purchase pages.

Provide step-by-step instructions or recipes with photographs so consumers can see what to do. Create videos to give customers visual help to put products together.

6. Customer galleries. Put the spotlight on your customers and how they’re using your products. Remember customers may need help visualizing how the product will look when they get it home. Get other customers to show how they use your products. While this is great for hobbies and crafts, don’t limit yourself.

For example, Stew Leonards, an East Coast supermarket, uses physical bulletin boards to display photographs of customers reusing their plastic bags around the world. How can your customers strut their stuff? Don’t forget to allow for comments and social sharing.

As with any marketing campaign, it’s important to test what works best for your prospects and customers when it comes to social media content. To enhance the impact of your content, make sure it’s optimized for search. This means adding related text to videos and photographs. Also, include social sharing via Twitter, Facebook Likes and comments to expand your reach and engagement.

Do you have any other suggestions for how marketers can use social media content to drive sales? If so, please include your ideas in the comment section below.