In job interviews, I’m often asked how I would build an Ecommerce strategy. It’s not a question that has a short answer. The strategy depends on what it is you are trying to achieve. Since all my roles involve selling products online, I break it down into three areas; 1. New Product Launches, 2. Promotions, 3. Day to Day sales, and align strategy accordingly. Lets take a look.
New Product Launches
An ecommerce strategy when launching new products is going to focus on creating visibility and awareness. You want to be able to effectively communicate to your consumer what is the value proposition, what is different about this product vs previous versions and competitor products and why should people buy it?
Newness usually requires more of an educational communication to consumers. Ecommerce tatics and strategies to support this can include:
- Landing Page – videos, banners, enhanced content, and product carousels can help communicate more information than a PDP to the consumer and describe product features and benefits in more detail.
- Email – Include in regular newsletter to generate awareness. Even better if a dedicated email can be sent and with a link to the Landing Page.
- On Site Ad Banners – Capitalize on the audience already on site by having banners link to Landing Page.
- Social Media – Ads on social media sites your customers are known to frequent as well as content on your own socials
Promotions
Strategies to support promotions online start with visibility, you need to make sure customers can easily find those items, followed by conversion to make sure customers finish the transaction.
- Homepage – communicate the promotion on the homepage carousel with a link to dedicated page/category where all products on sale can be found
- Dedicated page for sale items – make it easy for customers to find promotions. A dedicated page or category can be linked from Homepage, email newsletter and external links like Google
- Sponsored Products – on 3rd party sites or marketplace sites like Amazon, this can be a great way to keep your products in top search results
- Email & Social – communicate promotion, % discount and duration of promotion
- Google Search – update header & description text for brand and category keywords with promotion details
Day to Day Sales
When it comes to the day to day ecommerce sales, product content and search are the most important factors that will lead to conversion. Having managed a lot of content for many different merchandise categories, my quick evaluation of product content is always: is there enough information for a customer to make an informed buying decision and does the content make customers feel confident what they are buying meets their needs. If it doesn’t, then the content isn’t sufficent.
- PDP (product details page) Content – Content has gone beyond marketing copy & images. Videos, below the fold content (aka A+ content, enhanced content) all help communicate what the product is and help the customer evaluate if it meets their needs.
- Search – on marketplace sites, Always On search strategy is a must to keep products on first page of results. On owned sites, test frequently to make sure results make sense for keywords.
- Ratings & Reviews – while not always something you can control, they do help customers make a purchase decision. Campaigns and post purchase follow up to invite reviews are beneficial.
By no means is this a comprehensive list, ecommerce strategies can involve many different tatics used seperately or jointly to lead customers to site, product and purchase. Incorporate a variety of tatics based on what is trying to be accomplished, execute on the strategy and then analyze after to evaluate results and adjust strategy for future.
Not A Shopaholic 