By the Marketing Team at InteractOne
Digital Marketing Plan for Those Shiny New Websites
So you spent a ton of time, money and effort on your big shiny website. Now what? Unfortunately, your site is not the Field of Dreams. Just because you have built it does not mean folks will come. In today’s ever changing world of eCommerce, a cool website is not enough. We help merchants launch and promote websites everyday here at InteractOne and we want to talk about what you should be doing after your site is live. Here is our four step Digital Marketing Plan for new (and mature) eCommerce websites:
1. Build the Right Kind of Site Traffic
You should work to add traffic slowly using tools like SEO and Paid Search.You want to be able review the traffic data and know how to convert it. After all, traffic is good, but conversions are the reason your website exists.The purpose of traffic generation isn’t to make a sale, it’s to get a site visit. Then it’s your website’s job to make the sale.
Don’t add traffic that won’t convert. If you were to get 10,000 new visitors to your website tomorrow, how many of them would become customers? How many would become lifetime customers?
2. Create an awesome Customer Experience that makes it easy for customers to convert
Your site needs to be designed for both looks and function. It needs to make people feel like sticking around long enough to be amazed by how the site is so friendly and easy to use. So, you want to make the path to purchase a pleasurable experience. Much of this work is done in the initial site build, but don’t be afraid to make changes and improvements to the user experience as you learn what works and just as importantly – what doesn’t.
- Know what makes qualified visitors not buy. Learn from cart abandonment and other actions that interrupt the buying process.
- Work to become a Content Authority. You’ll soon create content so good that it deserves to be shared on Facebook and Twitter and be at the top of the search engines.
And finally, learn what makes customers come back. You’ll want to encourage feedback – both good and bad. And test all communications and on site activities using A/B and multivariate testing.
3. Analyze data
Make sure meaningful analytics capabilities are in place from day one, so you can learn from successes and failures. Develop goals for everything you care about and create Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) that are connected to your goals to inform your progress.
4. Repeat – routinize these steps and socialize them within your organization, so they become second nature.
And even though you may follow these steps diligently, prepare for a site redesign every 2-3 years. Styles change, technologies improve, competitors come and go. It wasn’t that long ago for instance that responsive mobile sites were necessary and expected or that social media was even a thing. Now – according to a recent Pew Research Study, 51% of those surveyed say they have made a purchase using a smartphone 15% say they have purchased through social media links.
Are you ready to get started on your own Four Step Digital Marketing Plan? Contact us or give us a call at 513-469-3345