America’s favorite shopping season is right around the corner and with it a barrage of online bargain shoppers. Is your site ready to handle the Black Friday shopping rush?If the answer is anything but yes, you may want to consider a quick preparatory revamp.Why? Because the year-end holiday season is not only the best time to meet your annual sales goals, but a great time to capture new customers. Following Thanksgiving, Black Friday and the last two months of the year are prime for gift-giving; people are shopping for themselves, their family, and their friends. Not to mention, over the last eight years, Black Friday retail e-commerce spending alone went from$534 million USD to $1970 million USD – and it’s only expected to rise again this year. Which means optimizing your site for online sales now can ensure your business is ready to roll this holiday season.So how can you prepare?The first step is to decide which holidays you want to run promotions on. Once you’ve determined that and set up a promotional calendar, you can move on to polishing your website and online holiday marketing strategy.To make it easier, we’ve compiled a checklist to help get you on your way.
Check Your Server Traffic Capacity. Black Friday weekend is sure to draw a lot of traffic to your site, especially if you are running promotional deals. So making sure your server can handle the influx of customers is likely to make both their and your experience easier. Check your server capacity before the season starts at LoadImpact.com or Blitz.io.
Create Landing Pages for Your Black Friday Deals. If you plan on setting your customers up with some awesome deals, it’s important to make sure they know what they are and where to find them. Landing pages on your website specifically made for the Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotions can help alert your customers to all the seasonal discounts you have on offer. Going the extra mile and creating a banner for your deals to be displayed on every page, will also help ensure no one misses out!
Make sure your website is mobile friendly. The share of mobile sales on Black Friday in 2013 went from27% to 48% in 2016. And with more and more customers turning to their phones for online shopping, having a site with responsive design is more important than ever. Don’t know whether your site is mobile ready? Check it out with Google’sMobile-Friendly Test. And if you still can’t figure it out, let us take a look!
Test and troubleshoot everything. Even with the best promotions, the holiday shopping season could still be a complete bust if your customers aren’t able to make purchases from your site. Whether it’s a broken link or simply a slow loading page, it’s important to make sure you’ve tested the durability of your landing pages and made sure your promotional coupons are working fine.
Make the checkout process as seamless as possible. Simplicity is key. Customers like it when they can make a purchase with the fewest clicks possible – and obvious clicks at that. So spend some time ensuring your website has a user friendly interface with clear add/delete item and checkout buttons. And if you need a little help, let us know.
Have your Shipping and Returns Policy for the shopping season in fine print. To prevent any future misunderstandings or complaints, it’s best to have your holiday season shipping and returns policy listed on your website where customers can easily access or see it.
Track EVERYTHING. To make sure you’re getting the results you want and your leads are converting into sales, keep a detailed track record of every change you’ve made to your site and how it has affected your conversions. A great way to do this is through tracking yourGoogle Analytics andFacebook Pixel data.
Marketing Yourself Right
Now that you have your website ready to go the next thing to tackle is your marketing strategy. To start, look at your past marketing data to see how your business performed during previous years. This will make it easier to plan a marketing strategy as you’ll have a better idea of what worked and what didn’t.Once you have that data, you can start to plan for the future holiday season. And the following tips will help you put your best foot forward!
Research your customers. A good marketing strategy starts with great research. For example, do you know 100% who your customers are? Have you created buyer personas? If you haven’t, check your Google Analytics demographics to ensure that the personas you have in mind match the factual customer data retrieved by Google. This will help you market to not only your current customers, but all potential buyers as well. Still unsure? Take a look at this helpful B2B Buyer Persona Guide for a more in-depth look on how to make your customer-data work for you.
Create a winning PPC Campaign. Pay-per-click is one of the best ways to reach targeted customers. If you have optimized your campaign with the right keywords, your ad should appear at the top of Google’s search results. However, if you did not have the time to get your SEO and keyword targeting in place, PPC can help! For example:
Shopping Ads is one of the best ways to get your products in front of your customers, because its CPC is much lower when compared to a Text Ad, and it can get you better conversion rates. You can also target local customers with Google’sZip Code Targeting.
And if you are already running PPC campaigns, the holiday season is a good time to start a remarketing campaign. Reach your customers who are actively searching for your products, or are loyal to your business with remarketing campaigns.
Utilize social media for customer insights. Your social media channels can be a treasure trove of information. Places like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are full of consumer opinions on products and services. And not just on products they currently use, but items they are interested in buying. Put this information to use by –
Promoting your Black Friday deals on social media sites like Twitter or Facebook.
Creating product hype and awareness by offering special discounts to your followers.
Closely monitoring comments or mentions on your social channels and responding to any customer queries and feedback promptly. You can even make use ofsocial listening tools to listen to what people are saying online about your brand or products.
Creating your own hashtags for the holiday season. You can stick to the regular hashtags of #BlackFriday and #CyberMonday, of course, but you can also create hashtags specific to your business. If you do, make sure you plug them on all your marketing channels- website, social media, and emails.
Using Facebook Dynamic Shopping ads, which are a great way target customers who visited your website and added a product to their cart but never followed through with the purchase.
Start an email campaign targeting current customers. When it comes to gettingresults, email marketing is still very effective. Triggered emails like those to customers that abandoned full online shopping carts, still tend to bring in more customers than many social media campaigns. To get the most out of your email campaign –
Categorize your email lists. Segmenting your emails into specific customer lists based on products they’ve looked at or purchased is likely to get you more email open rates.
Personalize! Include the name of the subscriber and offer specific promotions based on their location.
Create and manage your email workflows in advance. This will ensure that every email is catered to the customer receiving it, and be less work for you in the long run.
Leverage your current customer base through exclusive deals. Not only will this help build anticipation for future Black Friday deals, but it will show your loyal customers that there is some advantage in following you.
Create a countdown timer for your emails to promote urgency.
In the End
No one knows your customers as well as you do and any website adjustment or marketing campaign should be planned with them in mind. However, we hope these tips will help get you and your site on your way to holiday-ready! And if you still have questions, let us know!
By now many of us have earned our stripes in web surfing. We’ve experienced a countless number of websites, and are savvy enough to know which sites are well crafted and which could use a serious face-lift – usually within the first five seconds of a visit. But what is it that makes a website “great?” Below are eight features many high-performing websites currently employ that put them at the top of their rank.
1. High Quality, Authentic Images
Humans are visual creatures. Think back to the last time you sat through a presentation where the speaker went on for seemingly forever without any graphics or visuals to break through the monotony. You may have absorbed some of the information, but chances are you walked away without having gained anything more than a headache.
This same principle applies to websites. Throw large columns of text at a user when they’re not expecting it (i.e. not a blog post) and they will leave your site without even a basic understanding of what you were trying to communicate. Studies show that users only read about 28% of the words on a page. Add that in with the fact that humans process images 60,000 times faster than words, and the best way to quickly express a message becomes obvious.
Not just any image will do, however. The best performing images for a website follow a few guiding rules:
High Quality: With faster internet speeds comes more capability of loading high resolution images. Low quality, pixilated imagery will make your site appear dated and untrustworthy.
Authentic: Gone are the days when users would be appeased by staged stock images of smiling business people shaking hands. We know they’re fake, your users know they’re fake, and they no longer represent real businesses made of real people. It’s recommended to use images of your own team, office, and products to boost authenticity.
Closely Related: That beautiful image of a sprawling scenic overlook may be eye catching, but if it doesn’t do much to describe what you’re selling, it won’t be an effective use of browser real estate. Images on your website should be companions to your content and remind users why they’re there.
2. Consistent Brand Voice
Though not limited to website design, a well thought-out brand voice is an important part of engaging users. All of your content on your website should follow the tone of your brand and reflect the core values of your business. Users will come to recognize your brand by various factors:
Tone: How do you want to communicate with your users? Consider your audience and the way that they use your site. For example, a financial institution may want to use a tone of voice that comes across as being professional and cordial, whereas a toy store can speak more whimsically.
Buzzwords: What kind of language will resonate best with your users? The types of words you might use for a gym will differ greatly from those used for a spa. Think of the types of keywords a user might search for, or what will draw them in.
Conciseness: How quickly should the user be taking in your content? If you want to draw your viewers in with a well-crafted aesthetic, you may need to pad your copy with the appropriate amount of wordage to paint the right picture. However, if you want your users to quickly flow through your site and into a purchase or action, you’ll want to keep your copy short and sweet.
Once you have your brand voice, be sure to keep it consistent on every page of your site. This will keep your business recognizable and put users at ease.
3. Fast Loading Times
Have you ever clicked on a link to a website and hit the back button in frustration when it took too long to load? Users today have grown accustomed to fast load times and don’t want to wait. About 50% of all web users expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, and 40% will completely abandon the attempt after 3 seconds.
This means that if your website is slow to load, you will only be gaining at maximum 60% of the traffic that you could get. There are many factors when considering the speed of your website:
Image sizes: Remember those high quality images we talked about? Unfortunately, images can have large file sizes that will bog down the performance of your site. Consider keeping the number of images on your site down to raise site speed, or use a program to optimize their size.
Hosting: Your site speed may be completely out of your hands if you’ve chosen an inexpensive hosting plan. Though cheap, oftentimes you are sharing a server with many other money-conscious business owners, which will slow down your site’s performance. If it’s your hosting that’s the issue, consider upping your plan.
Optimization: There are several ways to improve your site’s overall speed from the backend; too many to name here. If your site is slow, consider asking a web developer to optimize all of your settings.
4. Simple Navigation
Have you ever gone to a store for something basic like toothpaste and been completely overwhelmed by the number of choices you have to pick from? Suddenly, a simple errand has turned into a confusing situation. Users feel the same about website navigation; give them too many choices and they will give up and leave.
This phenomenon, called the paradox of choice, deems that the more options presented to us, the more likely we are to become overwhelmed and not pick anything at all. In web design, 7 navigation links is generally considered the maximum number to hold, with 5 being the more optimal number. When choosing navigation links for your site, consider the purpose of your website and which ones would be absolutely necessary for a user to have a positive experience. If your site is very large and requires a multitude of navigation items, consider using a mega menu.
5. Mobile First
Mobile-friendly websites are no longer a nice feature to have in 2017; they’re absolutely necessary. More people are browsing the web on mobile devices than desktops, pulling in at a ratio of about 56:44. This means that if you’re not catering to your mobile audience, you’re missing out on over half of your potential!
Creating a great mobile experience is more than just having a responsive website, however. Mobile first design means exactly what it sounds like. Rather than designing based on a desktop monitor and shrinking it down for mobile, modern websites are now being designed first for mobile to create the best possible experience. Some factors that make mobile an entirely different medium from desktop:
Screen ratio: Many phones and tablets are designed to be held horizontally by default, meaning the screen size sits at a completely different ratio than most Desktop monitors. Side-by-side columns on desktop screens become far too narrow on mobile devices. Simply stacking the columns on top of each other for mobile is not the best solution either. After all, which column is more important/should be on top? Mobile first design addresses this issue before it even arises.
Screen size: Mobile devices have far less screen real estate than desktop monitors. Thus, making a desktop first design and paring it down for mobile often becomes a task of cutting out content that isn’t necessary. Mobile first design forces designers to first consider what is important for the user to have, preventing unnecessary content in your desktop view.
Touch interaction: Unlike most desktop monitors, mobile devices can be tapped and pinched, adding another dimension to the user’s experience. Rather than adding these features as an afterthought, mobile first design ensures that the entirety of the site is easily accessible to mobile users.
6. Engaging Micro Interactions
Micro interactions are those little experiences we encounter on the web that serve a single purpose, such as a checkmark showing us that we filled in a form field correctly, or a confirmation that an order went through. These interactions are so common now that most of us barely take notice, but their effectiveness is anything but miniscule.
Micro interactions serve to delight, engage, and deliver positive reinforcement to users to let them know that they’re performing the correct actions. Imagine hitting “send” in an email app and not receiving any indication that the button had been clicked or the email had been sent. How can you be sure that your email went out? Small indicators, such as the button changing color when clicked, the browser sending you out of your draft and into your inbox, or a notification alerting you that your mail has been sent tells the user that they have done everything correctly and that their job is done. Other examples of micro interactions include:
Play buttons turning into pause buttons when clicked
Form fields highlighting with a colored border when clicked
Load animations indicating that content is being loaded
Links changing color when hovered over to indicate that they can be clicked
7. Frictionless (In the Right Places)
Friction in web design refers to anything that stands between a user and their desired action. For example, a multi-page form before ordering a product, or a pop-up intrusion when reading an article. Generally speaking, friction on a website is frustrating for users and can drastically reduce conversion rates. Web users are in a hurry and want to consume content quickly – why stop them from doing what they came to your site to accomplish? Friction can be reduced in multiple ways, including:
Reducing the number of form inputs. Do you really need to ask for a user’s phone number, middle name, etc?
Clear call to actions. Users don’t want to have to search all over your website to find what they’re looking for. Identify what users most want to accomplish on your site and make it easy for them to access.
Make your header sticky. Users are now used to scrolling, however it can be frustrating to have to scroll all the way back to the top of a page just to access the navigation. Keep your header always in view for easy, seamless navigation.
Though friction prevents users from doing what they want, it is not necessarily always a bad thing; in fact, there are times when you want to add friction to create a better experience, as it makes users stop and think. Experienced web designers know when to apply the brakes on a user’s journey, such as making a user confirm before deleting something. Accidental clicks are a real occurrence, so asking a user if they’re sure they want to delete something before it disappears for good can prevent frustrating experiences.
8. Expert Usage of Color
Have you ever wondered why so many fast-food restaurants use red and yellow for their logos, or why so many businesses paint everything with blue? Design isn’t just about making things look nice; a good designer understands the psychology of color and how best to employ them on a website. Each color can evoke an emotion from users. (Keep in mind that these meanings can vary from culture to culture.)
Red: The color of passion and aggression, red is full of energy and can evoke a sense of urgency.
Orange: This color is a mixture of red’s passion and yellow’s optimism, creating an upbeat hue that expresses playfulness. It is also the color of impulse, and thus is often used in “buy now” buttons.
Yellow: Bright and fun, yellow expresses happiness, sunlight, and a cheery tone.
Green: The color of both money and the earth, green is used to express wealth and environmental consciousness.
Blue: This color evokes trustworthiness and professionalism, making it an excellent choice for many businesses. However, blue can also express sadness and moodiness, so be careful.
Purple: Wisdom and royalty come to mind with purple, making it a good choice for businesses that want to express reverence or knowledge.
Black: Though not technically a color, black evokes luxury, making it excellent for expressing wealth.
In Conclusion
Though none of the features listed above are absolutely necessary to craft a high-performing website (I’m looking at you, Craigslist), they are important to keep in mind when considering the performance of your own site. If your numbers are down or you’re looking into a redesign, keep these tips in mind and you’ll be well on your way to an excellent website in 2017.
Recently, Google launched a new update to their AdWords Sitelinks, doubling up on the previous limit of four links to give users more relevant options when searching. This update also grants advertisers more real estate to direct users to other pages on their sites.
Following the traditional carousal format, these eight links will appear side-by-side when viewed on mobile or tablet; allowing users to easily swipe through sitelinks to find what they’re looking for.
Image of Google Sitelinks
So why the change?
This new update seems to be following Google’s trend of placing greater focus on enhancing users’ mobile experience.
From 2015 to 2017 alone mobile’s share of digital ecommerce has risen almost 12%. And with young shoppers increasingly choosing to make purchases directly on their mobile devices that number is expected to nearly double.
This means that pay-per-click advertisers now have new and growing opportunities to market their ads to mobile users.
How will it affect your bidding for mobile and tablets?
Not having any luck with PPC? Contact us today for a free PPC audit.
In our last AMP article, we covered how Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages work and how you can utilize them to help boost your mobile ecommerce.
Since then, Google has continued to enhance its mobile user experience. Rolling out new AMP updates like AMP Bind, which allows internet retailers to create product pages with interactive elements for color and size selection. As well as giving Adwords users the ability to use AMP pages as landing pages for their ads.
But that’s not all.
The new AMP updates also utilize Google’s Brotli to reduce document sizes by a further 10% and compress images 50% more efficiently without a loss in quality.
These additions, coupled with applications like AMP Lite – Google’s optimized version of AMP for users with a slower internet connection or a low-end smartphone – have allowed Google’s AMP pages to load nearly 30 times faster than their non-Amp counterparts.
So why the focus on mobile pages?
If you spend the majority of your time in an office – home or work – you may be used to conducting most of your online activity via a desktop. For the rest of the world, however, smartphones are king.
Think about it.
When was the last time you waited until you had access to a desktop to look up a restaurant or search the IMDB of an actor whose movie history you can’t remember?
The joy of owning a mobile device is its near instantaneous access. You not only have the whole of the web at your fingers, but you can take it with you anywhere you go.
Consider this:
As of 2016, comScore Mobile Metrix® reports that Americans spend an average of 87 hours a month browsing the web on their smartphones, as opposed to the 34 hours they spend browsing on a desktop.
Looking at places like the U.K., Italy, and Spain, the numbers are similar. Most people are accessing the web through their phones.
But why?
It’s simple – affordability.
Many people don’t have the money to invest in both a phone and a computer, so they go with the more logical – usually cheaper – choice.
And in developing countries with larger populations like Nigeria, China, Peru, and India, this distinction is even more noticeable.
For example, in a study conducted by MIT, 620 out of 690 million internet users in China go online via a mobile device. That’s almost 90%!
Following the Trend
So what does this mean for the future of web pages?
It’s hard to say. As smartphone technology continues to advance, the stripped down versions of AMP pages may change.
However, as it stands now, that easy mobile access is key.
Want to AMP up your page? Contact us today for a quote!
Graphic courtesy of Four51 OrderCloud. Used by permission.
The world of B2B selling is ripe for a revolution. Ecommerce technology has flourished in the B2C sector for decades, but it has not yet seen widespread adoption in B2B. Of course, that’s for good reason: the limitations of old software made eCommerce cumbersome in the complex world of B2B.
All that has changed. B2B eCommerce is now a viable alternative to the complex legacy systems used by many B2B companies. The benefits of adopting an eCommerce model in the B2B sector are many. To the company, eCommerce offers a better bottom line with less waste, higher margins, and all backend complexity maintained and streamlined; to the customer, it offers a simplified, intuitive buying experience that works on any device.
For today’s B2B executives and managers, only one question remains: which B2B eCommerce platform is right for my company?
[clickToTweet tweet=”Which #B2B #ecommerce platform is right for your company–#PaaS, SaaS, or in-house?” quote=”Which B2B eCommerce platform is right for your company–PaaS, SaaS, or in-house? ” theme=”style1″]
First, we’ll talk about the problem. Then we’ll outline 4 potential solutions.
The Problem: B2B Ecommerce Solutions Must Handle Complexity Efficiently
B2B selling is complex. In many legacy systems, that complexity means wasted time, money, and effort. For example, a typical B2B sales path might include:
A customer service representative who takes orders over the phone and enters them manually into a tracking system.
An email newsletter platform that can only communicate with a customer database through manual data entry.
Inability to take electronic payments.
Customer-facing website that displays products but cannot offer on-site purchasing due to complex permissions governing pricing.
Customer-facing website that is not optimized for mobile devices.
Each of these points of information exchange contains hidden inefficiencies. These inefficiencies add up to lower margins across the board for B2B companies.
Ordering through CSRs may not be the first choice of some demographics, such as Millennials. That means HR expense that may not be necessary.
Manual data entry is inefficient.
Processing non-electronic payments can be time-consuming.
A non-eCommerce website serves as little more than a print catalog of offerings, forcing the customer to jump through another hoop (phone call or fax) after determining what to purchase.
A non-mobile-friendly website could lead to missed sales as mobile users give up on type that is too small to read and buttons that are too small to tap.
Worse, every time information is exchanged within a system like this, there’s potential for error—which introduces even more waste.
CSRs can make mistakes in manual order entry, leading to costly returns.
Marketers building email lists from customer lists can make mistakes in data entry and grouping.
Paper invoices and checks can get lost in the mail.
Customers can make errors in relaying their buy lists to a CSR. These errors may come under dispute later.
For non-mobile-friendly B2B eCommerce websites, difficult navigation leads to more attention needed from CSRs. That is a cost to the company.
Solution 1: Cloud-based PaaS (Platform as a Service)
In an interview on the 216digital blog, Bill Osteraas, VP of Channel Development at OrderCloud, talked about the features which PaaS offers for B2B ecommerce. “We face this topic with a different approach,” he said. “Flexibility over features.”
[clickToTweet tweet=”.@OrderCloudIO shatters the B2B #ecommerce #PaaS market with ‘flexibility over features’” quote=”OrderCloudIO shatters the B2B eCommerce PaaS market with ‘flexibility over features’” theme=”style1″]
OrderCloud is an API-first platform that allows developers to build the exact custom apps that a unique B2B eCommerce client needs.
In other words, B2B managers don’t have to sort through a long list of “included” and “not included” features when trying to figure out if OrderCloud’s PaaS will work for them. If other B2B eCommerce solutions are a finished house with most fixtures installed, OrderCloud is a floorplan and foundation. Everything else is open for development, ready to be built out into a unique, efficient configuration.
In the world of B2B eCommerce solutions, PaaS is ideal for companies that have complex relationships with manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and multiple sets of customers. Platforms like OrderCloud are ready to be built out into multi-portal eCommerce stores, with features like varying permissions per user group, variable pricing per user group, CSR interface that talks directly to inventory, and much more.
Example 1: Bachman’s B2B Ecommerce Model
Image courtesy of Four51 OrderCloud. Used by permission.
Because OrderCloud is PaaS, the core foundation is ready to integrate with all the 3rd-party APIs that this company needs to run its business. The flexibility allows a custom solution, and the company pays only for what they need.
Pros of cloud-based PaaS for B2B eCommerce:
API-first configuration ensures that your third-party software will work seamlessly with your store across ongoing upgrade cycles.
Your custom PaaS solution is built right the first time with functionality that fits your unique, complex operation and the place you occupy in your market.
You do not pay for a one-size-fits-all SaaS solution that then requires customization to work for your unique business.
You don’t have to build from scratch. A raw, highly-adaptable framework is provided, ready to be built out.
Your custom applications are cloud-hosted and can be accessed from any web browser.
Upgrades are automatic.
Pay-as-you-go pricing.
Flexible support plans that grow with your business.
PCI compliance built-in.
Total flexibility in payments.
Omnichannel order management.
Total order fulfillment tracking.
Powerful CSR automation.
Solution 2: Licensed SaaS (Software as a Service)
In a SaaS (software as a service) solution that is not hosted by the software provider, you purchase a license to use eCommerce software. You must arrange your own web hosting and install the software there. This is a common arrangement in the B2C eCommerce world. How well it adapts to B2B will depend on your business’s unique needs.
Common SaaS eCommerce platforms not hosted by the software provider include Magento and WooCommerce. Note that while these platforms can be adapted for simple B2B operations, they were originally intended for B2C eCommerce. They may not provide all the custom rules which a B2B eCommerce solution requires.
[clickToTweet tweet=”A #SaaS solution for #B2C may not provide all the functionality required by B2B #ecommerce” quote=”A SaaS solution for B2C may not provide all the functionality required by B2B eCommerce” theme=”style1″]
Pros of Licensed SaaS:
You can choose the most competitive hosting plan that meets your company’s specific needs.
Because hosting is not tied to your eCommerce software, the cost of your hosting will likely depend on bandwidth and storage needs, rather than a sliding revenue-based scale.
Likewise, there are no transaction fees deducted from your revenue.
Cons of Licensed SaaS:
You must adapt an out-of-box solution, with or without customization and/or add-ons, to the complex needs of your unique B2B eCommerce operation.
SaaS solutions are often not API-first.
You may have to establish PCI compliance yourself.
You are responsible for routine maintenance, updates, and upgrades to your eCommerce store.
You are responsible for emergency troubleshooting if the store goes down or a third-party integration stops working with your store.
Third-party integrations, critical to B2B operations, are often available only in paid add-ons which must be updated separately from the core software. These add-ons can break your store when compatibility issues arise.
Unknown whether you can create customer groups that allow multiple users from a customer company to log in and see each other’s orders.
Checkout process may require modification to meet the complex needs of B2B.
Solution 3: Bundled Hosting and Ecommerce (Cloud-Based SaaS)
SaaS hosted by the software provider offers tradeoffs that may be attractive to some business models. These solutions may charge revenue-based fees and/or transaction fees for use of the service. They are generally geared toward B2C eCommerce startups, and their application to large B2B enterprise operations is questionable.
Common SaaS eCommerce solutions hosted by the software provider include Bigcommerce and Shopify.
Pros of cloud-based SaaS hosted by the software provider:
All-in-one eCommerce and hosting package that does not require you to get your own hosting.
Software updates are pushed automatically without compatibility issues.
Cloud-based solutions are generally PCI Level 1 compliant.
Easy, cost-effective solution for small B2B startups that do not require complex functionality and do not plan to grow beyond the capacities of cloud-based SaaS solutions.
Omnichannel functionality is available, generally with paid extensions.
Cons of cloud-based SaaS hosted by the software provider:
Different pricing for different customers or for different customer groups may require third-party add-ons.
Complex permissions structures may require third-party add-ons.
Revenue-based pricing.
Transaction fees.
No FTP access.
SaaS solutions are often not API-first.
Unknown whether you can create customer groups that allow multiple users from one company to log in and see each other’s orders.
Checkout process may require modification to meet the complex needs of B2B.
Frankly, this is an obsolete solution. Even for large companies that can afford the expense, the benefits gained by such a great capital outlay are available for a much lower price with a PaaS solution. Since PaaS providers like OrderCloud have already covered the ground of building the foundation, you gain nothing by reinventing the wheel—particularly when these providers make their reusable eCommerce foundations available at highly competitive prices.
Pros of proprietary in-house B2B eCommerce solutions:
Total control over all aspects of the solution.
Cons of proprietary in-house B2B eCommerce solutions:
They uselessly reinvent the wheel.
They do not provide any value beyond that of existing solutions.
They cost far more than any PaaS solution to develop, deploy and maintain.
Making a Decision
Paul Demery reports in B2B Ecommerce World on a recent study by Forrester Consulting with examined emerging trends in PaaS and SaaS deployment for B2B eCommerce. The study found that “the rate of increase in planned PaaS-based deployments over the next two years is twice that of the increase in planned SaaS-based deployments.”
[clickToTweet tweet=”Next 2 yrs, % of planned increase in #PaaS installations=2x planned #SaaS installations in B2B #ecommerce” quote=”Over next 2 yrs, rate of planned increase in PaaS installations=2x planned SaaS installations for B2B eCommerce” theme=”style1″]
In other words, the B2B world is moving to eCommerce. And it’s choosing PaaS over SaaS.
For B2B decision-makers, the time is now to begin pursuing a new B2B eCommerce solution. As more and more companies roll out their own highly customized B2B eCommerce machines, companies without a competitive solution will be ill-equipped to meet the market’s new expectations. They’ll be stuck with old processes that don’t work and customers who can’t get a seamless, personalized front-end experience.
PaaS solutions are beginning to lead the B2B eCommerce services market. As one of theTop eCommerce Development Companies, we believe that the trend will only increase. PaaS solutions offer the right balance between customization and an affordable foundation to build on. Where SaaS is too constraining for modern B2B eCommerce, the sky is the limit with PaaS. Where in-house, proprietary eCommerce solutions uselessly reinvent the wheel, PaaS offers a client-agnostic, reusable foundation for an infinite variety of eCommerce businesses.
Fast-loading product pages could make or break your conversion rate.
As an independent ecommerce retailer, you know how tough it is to compete with the big boys. Amazon can outsell us all, and they can afford fast-loading mobile functionality at scale. Luckily, independent e-retailers can optimize their experiences to compete—and it’s cheaper than you might think. With the increasing growth of mobile shopping, Google’s AMP project offers a unique opportunity for ecommerce stores to load product, category, and home pages instantly for on-the-go mobile customers.
[clickToTweet tweet=”#AMP for #ecommerce means lightning-fast product, category, and home pages. @216_digital” quote=”#AMP for #ecommerce means lightning-fast product, category, and home pages. ” theme=”style1″]
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an open-source project that aims to kick the mobile web into high gear. AMP was originally intended for publishers, whose sites often load slowly on mobile due to multiple JavaScript queries for numerous ads. But AMP is great for ecommerce, too.
Slow mobile load times can kill an ecommerce store. The first pages in the conversion funnel MUST load lightning-fast. You don’t want to blow the customer’s moment of expectation. AMP is the perfect solution.
So what does AMP for ecommerce mean? Let’s break it down.
What is AMP?
AMP is an open web standard that cranks up page load on mobile. It uses a limited subset of HTML. It does not allow 3rd party JavaScript, only the AMP JavaScript library, which must be pulled from the AMP CDN (content delivery network). AMP pages are cached and served from a free Google CDN. This combination produces lightning-fast load times on mobile.
In mobile search results, AMP pages appear in a carousel at the top of search. They are notated with the lightning bolt symbol and the word AMP. AMP results may also appear below the carousel.
“AMP pages are highly distilled versions of the corresponding HTML page,” says 216digital developer Justin Sims. “They’re not as media-rich or as heavy as other pages.”
[clickToTweet tweet=”#AcceleratedMobilePages are highly distilled versions of the corresponding HTML page. @216_digital” quote=”#AcceleratedMobilePages are highly distilled versions of the corresponding HTML page. ” theme=”style1″]
Why is this important?
As AMP picks up momentum, we fully expect it to become the new standard for mobile development in certain environments.
Google reports that it has indexed 150 million AMP pages, and that 4 million new AMP pages are added every week. That’s a fast-growing trend. Since AMP represents a new competitive edge for those sites that use it, it’s critical to adopt this standard early.
How do I get AMP on my ecommerce store?
“With any large-scale, widely adopted platform, there will be easy 3rd party solutions implemented,” says 216digital developer Justin Sims. “WordPress and Magento already have premade AMP solutions. At the end of the day, though, there will be a huge difference in quality and effectiveness between manually developed amp pages and those generated through plugins.”
In other words, AMP plugins will work for simple situations, but they may not offer the full control which more complex ecommerce stores require. In that case, an experienced developer can help you get the most out of AMP, either with or without a plugin.
How can I tell if AMP is doing its job?
AMP supports A/B testing. That means you can gather real data on two or more versions of an AMP page to see what drives conversions and what doesn’t.
As Search Engine Land reports, you’ll want to set up Analytics to monitor four dimensions of page performance. Ideally, you would compare these stats for AMP pages against non-AMP versions of the same products on your site. If you can’t do that, you can compare your AMP pages against different products that generally perform the same as your AMPed products.
Here are the four dimensions to monitor:
– Traffic– Engagement– Conversions– Revenue
Is Google giving AMP pages a ranking boost?
Not directly. “To clarify, this is not a ranking change for sites,” says the Google Webmaster Central blog.
But think about this. Google DOES consider load speed and engagement/CTR (click through rate) metrics when ranking a page. As more and more users surf the web on mobile, mobile engagement data will make up a bigger slice of the overall engagement data for a page. And as knowledge of AMP spreads, users will likely prefer the results that are marked with the AMP lightning bolt, ⚡.
Will Google give AMP pages a ranking boost? No. But users will.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Will @google give #AcceleratedMobilePages a ranking boost? No. But users will. @216_digital” quote=”Will @Google give #AcceleratedMobilePages a ranking boost? No. But users will. ” theme=”style1″]
What does Google Cache mean for onsite traffic?
AMP pages are served off a free Google CDN, not off your server. For many of us, that may sound like a red flag.
But wait. This is actually a win.
Think of it like this: you give up increased traffic to your domain at the very top of the conversion funnel. In return, you get super-fast load times, and you’re still displaying your product and branding. The conversion funnel still leads to you. Google doesn’t get the money; you do.
Even better, your domain-level bounce rate *could* go down. People are more likely to abandon your site because the product they landed on wasn’t what they wanted. Now, if they abandon your AMP product page, the bounce happens from Google’s AMP cache domain, NOT from your domain.
Once you transition customers to your domain, which you should do at the add-to-cart stage, they are actually much closer to buying if you’ve offered them a value proposition that meets their needs.
Plus you’ve already wowed them with a lightning-fast product page.
To capitalize on the value which the speed of AMP offers, you need to optimize your onsite checkout for fast load time and seamless UX on mobile.
Two versions of the same page? Isn’t that duplicate content?
In this case, no. Will Critchlow explains on Distilled.net: “You should always link to the canonical version (which is the desktop version). That should have a rel=”amphtml” link to the AMP version (and the original AMP version and all cached versions should have a rel=”canonical” link back to the original).”
In other words, proper AMP markup tells Google, “There are two versions of this page, the AMP version and the desktop version. The desktop version is the canonical (original) version.”
Duplicate content issue solved!
What pitfalls should I know about?
A misconfigured AMP page shows an AMP error in Google SERPs. It’s important to hire a developer who understands AMP.
Make an annotation in Analytics so you know when you published your AMP pages. If your stats take a dive, there might be something wrong.
Do I need to AMP my entire ecommerce store?
Luckily, no. AMP will only help your business when it’s applied to pages that might show up in SERPs or in social media feeds. In ecommerce, that means your homepage, some product pages, and major category pages. If you’re practicing content marketing with a blog, you could also apply AMP to your content marketing articles, since you want these to be discovered in SERPs and on social media.
You do NOT need to AMP your cart or checkout pages, since these lie farther down the conversion funnel. The main purpose of AMP is to secure the customer’s commitment higher in the funnel, at the stage when many people abandon mobile pages because of slow load times.
Note, however, that your checkout process MUST still be fast and painless. Cart abandonment is a real problem at checkout. AMP can’t help you with that. If you don’t optimize your checkout experience on mobile, all that AMPing will be in vain.
We recommend trying AMP on a few select product and category pages, as well as your homepage. If you begin to see a higher conversion rate on your AMP pages, you can start rolling it out to more pages.
The best part? You can move as fast or slow as you want in building out more AMP pages for your site. We recommend faster, though, especially for products which will have high demand this holiday season.
AMP is so stripped down. What ecommerce functionality is left?
Again, AMP is really only appropriate for use on homepages, category pages, and product pages. You can’t build every page of your purchase flow with AMP. But the fact that it doesn’t support the usual bells and whistles doesn’t matter. The goal is not to build the entire conversion funnel in AMP, but rather, to use AMP to serve up product pages—fast.
AMP is well-suited to these 3 types of pages because it DOES support product carousels, though they have to be hand-coded in AMP markup. AMP also supports social sharing, with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google+ coming preconfigured. You can also manually configure any social network that isn’t preconfigured.
A thumbnail carousel with large image display is still under development. See the GitHub thumbnail carousel documentation for more.
AMP also allows you to display different content depending on whether a user is logged in or not. This has obvious applications in ecommerce.
The Bottom Line
The mobile ecommerce experience doesn’t have to be slow. AMP offers the perfect solution for slow-loading product, category, and homepages. If you’re interested in exploring the possibilities of AMP for ecommerce, get in touch today. Let’s start talking about your next big thing.
Ecommerce design is a unique beast in the web design world. Multiple factors–aesthetics, usability, brand message, and value proposition–must come together to create conversions.
That’s hard.
How can web designers serve their ecommerce clients better? How can designers work strategically, with conversion rate in mind? We asked 14 expert ecommerce designers to share their best tips through four questions. Here are the questions. Their insightful answers follow.
1. Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google Fonts to create great typography?
2. Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
3. Category pages can be a bit of a no-man’s land as far as UX. What are your favorite techniques for sprucing them up?
4. Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be?
Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google Fonts to create great typography?
Typefaces communicate feeling and emotion through their glyphs. This emotion is what gives a visual design character and a sense of purpose. The ‘web-safe’ (default fonts installed on windows / OS X) are limited and leave much to be desired when compared to what is available elsewhere.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Typefaces communicate feeling and emotion through their glyphs. #designthinking @radiatorstudios @216_digital” quote=”Typefaces communicate feeling and emotion through their glyphs. #designthinking”]
If great typography is an art, then typefaces are your palette. The typeface is the design of the lettering. The font is the implementation of that typeface for use (for the web or in print). And learning how to pair typefaces and use fonts correctly is an important skill for every designer to have. Understanding the nature of typefaces and how they play together will make or break a design, regardless of the source of the font. There are plenty of great fundamental resources out there that can help train your eye on what to look for in typeface, its weight, its x-height, etc. I like this article from back in 2009 on Smashing because the fundamentals of typography have been consistent for a long time. Trends have changed, not concepts.
Google Fonts are a great resource for designers, as many of their typefaces are wonderfully designed, and the fonts are optimized really nicely for the web. Google Fonts abstract away a lot of the complexity of implementing and managing font files for use on the web. As we know, different browsers / devices prefer different formats and Google Fonts makes this invisible to the designer. No more @font-face, just a one-line script and you’re good to go.
Once the typefaces are chosen and the fonts are technically implemented, the fun is just getting started. It’s important to have legible design, especially in a responsive context. Use of modular scale for meaningful hierarchy is a good place to start to determine the relationships between headings, subheadings and paragraphs http://www.modularscale.com/. For more complex control, there are concepts like vertical rhythm which are a bit more involved to implement, but do a great job of maintaining consistency in your overall design. http://zellwk.com/blog/why-vertical-rhythms/ And also, for responsive design, using relative units (rems or ems) can help your hierarchy and rhythm flow and resize nicely across various screen sizes and devices.
Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
Cart abandonment is always an issue when it comes to ecommerce. We’re out there fishing for customers on the web and an abandoned cart is the one that got away.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Cart abandonment is always an issue when it comes to #ecommerce. #designthinking @radiatorstudios @216_digital” quote=”Cart abandonment is always an issue when it comes to #ecommerce. #designthinking”]
Our first bit of advice is simple: relax. Many users add to cart with no intention to purchase. Sad but true, better to get over that early on and focus on customers that did have intent to purchase. Users who made it to checkout then hesitated. These are the ones we want to try and recover, and there are some good and not-so-good ways to approach this.
The first step is to identify what you consider to be cart abandonment. We want this to be a meaningful metric. Adding to cart is not a good place to look, necessarily, as mentioned above. A better place to look is someone who added to cart, clicked checkout, and gave you some information—hopefully at least an email address, something we can respond to.
Many ecommerce platforms have their own way of determining what defines an “abandoned cart,” and for custom implementations, it’s up for you to decide. Now we’re talking about what to do once we A) know a user made it to a point we consider a potential customer and B) our response to that.
Sending out a friendly reminder can be very useful. Keep it light and simple. “Looks like you left something in your cart, we’re holding these items for you if you’d like to come back.” Try not to be pushy in your abandonment reminder emails. Use the tone and voice of your brand. It also helps to show what was in their cart to give them a reminder of what they almost bought. Take the time to apply your branding and design to these templates so that it is a direct reflection of your site.
The timing of the cart abandonment email is also important. This is something I urge shop owners to experiment with. But we’ve found that 4-6 hours after abandonment is the sweet spot. And please don’t try and hammer them multiple times at 4hrs, 12hrs, 24hrs all in a row—that can have the reverse affect, and may actually deter people who don’t want to buy today but may have bought in the future. Knowing a site is going to blow up your inbox every time you browse is not a good look.
Then there is abandonment prevention. Keeping users in the checkout flow through conversion. This is where the UX of the checkout flow really plays an important part.
There are many great philosophical discussions around the web on what converts best, a one-page checkout, a multi-step checkout, etc. Regardless of your preference (or limitations your ecommerce platform), we have always believed it’s more about how information is presented to make the process seem as simple as possible. If you have a one-page checkout, don’t show every field at once, because it looks like a lot of work. Try using an accordion style so users can focus on one thing at a time—billing info, shipping info, payment info and review. For a multi-step checkout, keep it clean with a clear view of the steps involved so people can understand the process as a whole from the get-go.
Having multiple payment options also helps. By having your preferred gateway plus another option (like PayPal, Apple Pay, etc.), you give users an opportunity to use a method that may require less work. They may have autofill for their PayPal, for example, which makes it easier for them to checkout.
There will always be abandoned carts, but using beautiful cart abandonment reminder emails, proper timing of those emails, and having a clean checkout flow will help to reduce your drop-off rate.
Category pages can be a bit of a no-man’s land as far as UX. What are your favorite techniques for sprucing them up?
Category pages are as much a utility for the user to browse your catalog as they are an opportunity to tell your brand story.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Category pages are a chance to tell your brand’s story. #designthinking for #ecommerce @radiatorstudios @216_digital” quote=”Category pages are a chance to tell your brand’s story. #designthinking for #ecommerce”]
Having meaningful filtering that fits your brand is important. If you have thousands of products in dozens of collections, a faceted filter can help users find what they are looking for quickly. Amazon, albeit not the best design in the world, does faceted filtering very well, and that pattern fits because of the sheer size of the site.
If your site has only a few collections with a couple dozen products each, try a simpler filtering UX like a dropdown for size or color, as well as a sort so users can re-arrange the category page by what’s new, best sellers, etc.
Product grids don’t have to be boring, either. If applicable to your brand, try inserting some brand of lifestyle content into your category pages. Maybe after 4 rows of products there is a sales proposition or entry point to another similar collection. Done well, this can make a boring product grid turn into a brand experience.
With the products themselves, above all else, try to have the best photography you can. And don’t try to cram 10 thumbnails into one row. Space them out and let the users see your thumbnails clearly. If a product is on sale, is new or is a best seller, try designing a little badge or icon that indicates this. Keep your typography clear and your pricing visible. If a product comes in multiple colors, try adding swatches to show that it comes in multiple colors. Whether that is appropriate depends of course on the nature of your catalog. Often times, it’s best to show each color way in the product grid so users don’t have to have an extra click to see it in another color.
Also, keep your page length manageable. Infinite scrolling makes a lot of sense on sites like Instagram and Pinterest, but when you’re scrolling through products, clicking on them, and clicking back, infinite scroll can cause some headaches unless you put your user back to exactly where they were. Try 30-40 products per page with clear, easy to understand pagination. This helps to give users a sense of direction in your site.
Last but not least, the header of your collection page is a great opportunity to design a banner that explains the collection, provides a lifestyle image, or adds some additional information about that collection.
Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be?
Above all else, I would have to go with something higher level than educating on a particular topic and recommend establishing meaningful trust with your client. They came to you to help them solve a problem because they do not have the time or expertise to do so. They chose to work with you because they like your portfolio, your personality, your track record, etc. By building trust, you can work with your client more efficiently to help guide them through many of the moving parts of an ecommerce site. When the client trusts you, they will listen to you and your advice, and gives you the ability to educate them in all areas from UX, UI, design, content strategy, and marketing.
2. Sarah Yeager –– Lead Web Designer, 216digital
Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google fonts to create great typography?
[clickToTweet tweet=”In web design, everything comes down to brand message and legibility. #designthinking from @sarahmyeager @216_digital” quote=”In web design, everything comes down to brand message and legibility. #designthinking from @sarahmyeager”]
Your first objective is for your audience to be able to read what you have to say. I get so frustrated when I come across a beautiful website design but I have to squint in order to read their content. A nice rounded sans-serif font like Open Sans is a great go-to for body copy.
As far as brand message goes, what kind of story are you telling with your typographic choices? Find a font that reflects your brand and then find a great contrasting font. Some examples of contrasting fonts are condensed paired with expanded or italic paired with normal. The key is to find a font that carries contrast out elegantly while reflecting your overall message.
Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
Take down a barrier to entry. Creating an account before they purchase items in their cart creates more time spent on not buying the item. Let them achieve their goal first and then invite them to create an account.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Want to reduce #ecommerce cart abandonment? Take down a barrier to entry. #designthinking @sarahmyeager @216_digital” quote=”Want to reduce #ecommerce cart abandonment? Take down a barrier to entry. #designthinking @sarahmyeager”]
Limit the amount of steps to achieve a purchase. The simpler the transaction, the faster it takes to purchase the item, the happier customer. This means, pair down the steps it takes to get from visitor to newly paid customer.
Include trust builders. People are more likely to be hesitant to purchase from an ecommerce store that does not prove their value. Reassure that they are in good hands.
Category pages can be a bit of a no-man’s land as far as UX. What are your favorite techniques for sprucing them up?
As far as user experience goes, you want the user to find what they need as quickly as possible. Sometimes I play around with the number of categories that I feature on a page or highlight a larger section to show off featured products. Know your users’ analytics to see how they navigate or click around on the page and adjust accordingly.
Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be.
Know that a designer’s role isn’t just to make things look pretty – it’s about telling your brand’s story, to achieve your business goals, and to create something elegantly functional.
Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google Fonts to create great typography?
Google Fonts is a great tool because it opens up a world of typeface options to you for website design. I start with browsing typefaces, pick the pair that I like for a project, and insert the code. It’s easy and provides a great workflow option.
Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
The first step is to reduce clicks. Make the site almost too easy to use. Why do I have to log in to view my cart? Poor UX is the reason I abandon the cart more often than not. It happens when something just does not work. If you aren’t sure how to structure your cart, look at some of the most successful ecommerce sites—Amazon, Nike, Gap—and note how flawless the process seems to be.
Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be?
Go back to the basics: “Show, Don’t tell.” Use great pictures to sell online. If your imagery is not good, and I mean absolutely professional, I won’t shop on your site. Everything about your site needs to be clean, crisp and polished. There can’t be spacing or grammar mistakes. Handing over my credit card information is about more than what you are selling, it’s about trust in you as a business and in your interface.
Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google Fonts to create great typography?
The way we see it, Google Fonts are very popular and commonly accepted. Ecommerce sites use them freely. Backup fonts are addressed, but that’s basically it. Fresh fonts are very popular these days!
Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
There are a zillion reasons why carts are left abandoned. Many of these reasons are hard to fix. Think of shipping expenses, the use of shopping carts as a wish list, or comparing total expenses in two shopping carts on different stores. With that said, web designers see a lot of shopping carts! Thus they should be experts on the best experience. Many web designers limit themselves to just the styling, but web designing companies should have specialists in usability. Cart abandonment is one of the top priorities when concerning cart usability. The specialists should be in house if the agency wants to serve the bigger ecommerce companies.
Category pages can be a bit of a no-man’s land as far as UX. What are your favorite techniques for sprucing them up?
Category pages are often used as high performance SEO landing pages. They are often optimized for search traffic or for distributing search engine ‘juice’ to the right pages. With these priorities in mind, category pages are hard to master as a UX engineer. The conflicts of interest make these pages hard to optimize. Personally we do have some demands. For example, category pages often have many products. Will you use lazy-load, view more buttons, or split them in several pages?
Another thing to think about is to give category pages extra user info. Often these pages only contain an overview of products, but category pages are ideal to publish some extra general information on about the kind of products. For example, if you show fishing products: show the intro of a blog about fishing, write about what kind of fishing your shop has expertise in and have nice images for eye candy and inspiration instead of just a plain grid of products.
Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be?
Inspiration is king. Many ecommerce companies look at statistics. What works in SEO? What brings views and how to get the conversion percentage to a higher level? In the short term these two factors are always top of mind, but in the long term you should be working on inspiration. Without inspiration you cannot be a brand. Without a brand your company won’t become top of mind. Not being “top of mind” means you have to keep on spending money on marketing and on getting sales because customers will never come back by themselves.
Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google Fonts to create great typography?
There are over 650 Google Fonts available. These are an excellent source for web designers to create free, web-safe font combinations. I pair Google Fonts the same way I would pair any font combination. I tend to choose complementary fonts, like serifs and sans serifs, to create contrast. I also prefer sans serifs for paragraphs, due to their simplified letterforms that display clearer at various screen resolutions. There are great online resources like Typewolf for inspiration and font recommendations as well.
Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
Looking at user analytics throughout the checkout process can give some insight into areas or pages where users seem to be dropping off. However, analytics won’t tell you the reason “why” users are dropping off in specific areas. This is where user-testing, interviews, and research can really help find those pain points and allow you as the web designer to design solutions to reduce that friction.
Category pages can be a bit of a no-man’s land as far as UX. What are your favorite techniques for sprucing them up?
To spruce category pages up, add a category specific header image with the category title as well as some form of “bread crumbs.” You can also add a “Featured” or “New” section at the top of each category page.
Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be?
It has become crucial for ecommerce sites to have a great mobile experience. The amount of time spent on mobile devices as well as the number of people who own mobile devices continues to increase every year when compared to desktop. If you are not able to reach your user audience through mobile displays, you will miss out in comparison to competitors who are.
Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google Fonts to create great typography?
When approaching the design phase of a site, we incorporate our client’s existing brand standards and carefully select web-safe fonts that align with any current brand assets and fonts to ensure the web experience aligns with every brand touch point. Google Fonts are our preferred font library, but it’s easy for designers to fall into the rut of using their favorite 5 Google Fonts. To capture the essence of the brand and create a unique digital experience, we select fonts (style, sans-serif vs. serif, weight) based on several facets (e.g. the client’s brand mark/logo, target audience, industry trends, the brand’s personality and voice).
Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
Many of our clients come to us with the issue of cart abandonment. When enhancing the user experience (UX) of a current or new site, our approach is to reduce the number of clicks to cart. We ask ourselves, “What does the buyer’s journey to conversion look like?” One way we do this is by implementing a one-page checkout with a reduced header and footer to eliminate any distractions that can cause cart abandonment. We ensure that all pertinent information has a place within the UX. We encourage store owners to show shipping costs and customer testimonials which add trust and assurance.
Category pages can be a bit of a no-man’s land as far as UX. What are your favorite techniques for sprucing them up?
We often add marketing banners that feature the storeowner’s various promotions/deals at the top of the page to entice the user to convert. We create and/or utilize high impact custom imagery that enhances the user experience and captures the brand’s essence. By including any other relative content, whether video or animation, we help differentiate from the standard category grid. These micro-conversions offer additional ways for users to experience and interact with the brand.
Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be?
Less is more. What we mean by that is, the buyer’s journey through the UX needs to be clear and concise. Our overall goal with an ecommerce design is to increase traffic, average order value, and conversion rate. Utilizing white space and page layout, we make sure content and imagery is displayed in an easily digestible format that drives users to conversion while maintaining the integrity of the brand.
7. Ben Johnson –– Founder and Creative Director, Elegant Seagulls Inc.
Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google Fonts to create great typography?
Fonts are key to communicating a brand’s personality. Your design should work with almost any decent font pairing. The fonts really just elevate the overall design. Font size relationships and details can have just as much impact as the actual selected typography.
Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
First look at data to see when and where the carts are being abandoned, then try to work backwards and adjust your design to better convert. Simple changes can often make a huge impact.
Category pages can be a bit of a no-man’s land as far as UX. What are your favorite techniques for sprucing them up?
Attention to detail on these pages is key. You want a simple seamless experience. The right balance of white space, subtle design elements, interaction and motion can elevate these pages.
Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be?
Break the mold! There are a ton of best practices we can use as guideposts, but tell your own story. There needs to be a balance between users’ expectations and making something memorable.
8. Martijn van der Does –– Managing Director, Wonderland
Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google Fonts to create great typography?
When it comes to fonts, we’re a big fan of mixing a classic serif with a more relaxed sans serif—although the most important factor is ensuring the combination aligns with the brand we are designing for. We actually don’t really use Google Fonts. We find it quite limited and there’s not much space for creativity. However, if we were to use it, the process is all about making a selection that aesthetically complements the brand. There are also a lot of external articles about the best fonts Google has to offer.
Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
It’s all about immersing yourself in each step your user takes and paying close attention to how they approach the cart/checkout process. Checking out should take a minimal amount of action from the user. The process should be as effortless as possible. From a web design point of view, we like ecommerce sites that play with hover interactions. For example, when hovering over your basket with the mouse you are given two clear options: view the bag or checkout. At this stage the user hasn’t even clicked their mouse and the option to checkout is already accessible.
The checkout process itself should require as few steps as possible, we’d say no more than three. Also, be sure to guide your users through each one and indicate the subsequent steps at each stage. We also suggest indicating the progress of your customer throughout the process. Don’t force them to register with your site, either. If they’re interested enough, they’ll do it themselves.
Category pages can be a bit of a no-man’s land as far as UX. What are your favorite techniques for sprucing them up?
We love sites that use innovative interactions and animations to bring the content to life within each category. Spice things up and don’t be afraid to stand out—you want to create a site that people want to visit every day.
Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be?
A lot of clients come to us and simply say, “We need a website.” Our standard response is to ask, “how do you know you need a website?” We like to start with our clients’ business goals and what they want to accomplish. It’s far more than just design.
We want clients to realize how the role that strategy plays in achieving their goals. Design alone is rarely enough. Yes, you can have a fly website built with all the latest trends and techniques, but you need to innovate within your strategy if you really want to stand out. If users are faced with a pretty website but no clue how to approach it, they are likely to turn to competitors instead.
9. Steve Krueger –– Co-Founder and Creative Director, The Jibe
Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google Fonts to create great typography?
Google Fonts are a great resource for clients on a budget who still want the benefit of not having a site look like it was built in the 90s. While most Google Fonts have pairing recommendations, they’re not always the most complimentary. We’ve used http://fontpair.co/ in the past, which is a beautiful collection of user-contributed Google font pairings for any application.
Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
You need to think like a user. Make the experience as engaging and simple to use as possible. Check out our helpful tips on how to reduce cart abandonment.
Category pages can be a bit of a no-man’s land as far as UX. What are your favorite techniques for sprucing them up?
You want to let your content shine but still be easily digestible and accessible. Don’t overpower the page with sidebars or alternative call-to-actions. Outlining content in a grid or by using a masonry style layout allows you to retain style while still providing links to category specific content.
Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be?
Keep it simple and stay in the mindset of the client. It’s easy to want all the latest and greatest visual features, but if they are too overpowering and distracting, it will quickly deter your client to look elsewhere.
Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google Fonts to create great typography?
Google Fonts have been a game changer for designers! With hundreds of font options, we can finally have great typography without sacrificing SEO. Before Google Fonts, designers would have to flatten non web-safe fonts into images, which of course are not “readable” by search engines. Google Fonts allow us to keep text as HTML helping keywords be found by search engines. With all the different font options available on Google Fonts, designers have been able to push the boundaries of typography. My current favorite font combination is Lora and Open Sans Condensed!
Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
Getting your customers to hit that Place Order button is an ecommerce web designer’s main goal! Here are a few tips to help get the customer to purchase by reducing cart abandonment:
1. Eliminate Distractions—Make sure your checkout process is simple, easy, and fast. Don’t have the user fill out unnecessary form fields—if the information isn’t vital for completing the transaction, don’t include it! Remove anything that is not relevant to the user completing their purchase.
2. Allow Guest Checkout—Users already have online accounts for so many different products (banks, email, schools, etc.)—don’t frustrate them by forcing them to create an account with you just so they can purchase your products. Eliminate all roadblocks getting in the way of allowing your user to checkout.
3. Design for Mobile—At the very least, your site should be responsive. More and more users are shopping directly from their mobile or tablet device. A responsive site allows your content to be shown easily on different devices. If your site isn’t responsive, you are missing out on a large audience of potential customers. Go a little further and audit your content and the behavior of your site to really cater for the mobile user. For example, BBD Dakota adjusted their ‘Buy Now’ button to stick to the bottom of the mobile device to users can easily add to cart no matter where they are on the product page.
Category pages can be a bit of a no-man’s land as far as UX. What are your favorite techniques for sprucing them up?
1. Display Extra Information on Hover—Don’t force your users to click on a product page to get additional information on your products. Why not let them have extra details appear on a hover while they remain on your category page? For example, on Nixon you can view different styles of the same watch while remaining on the category page. Even having simple hover that shows an alternate image of a product will go a long way in the user’s experience, like Cute+Broke Just remember to think through how you want this to behave on mobile devices as there is no hover—maybe using the tap behavior?
2. Provide a Good Filtering Experience—Help your users explore your products by providing clear and commonsense filtering options while they shop. For example, make sure you have category-specific filters so users can filter within the chosen category (i.e. Having a “style” filter when a user is shopping a bathing suit category.) Another good practice for filtering is providing recommended/common filtering choices on top of the product list on the category page. I really like how 3 Sixteen shows the category filters at the top of the page.
Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be?
I think it would be the importance of product photography. Don’t just take photos of your products with your camera phone and expect users to appreciate your products. Hire a professional! If a local photographer isn’t available, there are many online sites that allow you to ship your products to them and they will take great photos. Make sure you get different angles so your user can truly understand your product. Shooting on a white background will also make your designers lives a lot easier when they want to create promotional graphics with your photos.
Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google Fonts to create great typography?
We do not use only Google Fonts. Therefore, such problems do not exist. However, before using the font, you need to check out how it works in the environment and how it looks like on the website.
Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
We work with BASOVDESIGN BUREAU. They have an extensive experience in ecommerce. An individual approach to design makes it possible to reduce all the anxiety to a minimum. Abandoned carts are a worry not only the owners of sites, but to buyers as well. Using proven technologies helps ecommerce owners, clear and easy for understanding design solutions simplify the life of customers.
Category pages can be a bit of a no-man’s land as far as UX. What are your favorite techniques for sprucing them up?
Ecommerce does not give a variety of options. And it’s not the best place for experiments. There are proven solutions that work. If there is a choice between an unusual artistic decor of the page and familiar and user-friendly page, preference goes to the latter, although there are exceptions. It already depends on the specifics of the site and type of activity.
Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be?
Do not spoil it. Usually, the client is given a good ready-made solution. The goal is to use it. There is nothing to “overthink.” The client needs to understand that everything has a purpose. If the item is there, so it should be there and nowhere else, so it has some semantic or decorative role.
12. Viacheslav Ponomarov and Yvette Mosiichuk –– UI/UX, SteelKiwi
Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google Fonts to create great typography?
Google Fonts are great and they give us a lot of possible combinations to try. You can just check this resource to see how beautiful web type can be: http://hellohappy.org/beautiful-web-type/
Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
Ecommerce store users are unstable. They often need to check a lot of different resources to find the product which they want to buy. Often, they add some products to their cart on the website, forget about this and go away. If you don’t remind them about yourself, they could never return to your website. So, if you have an opportunity, always send them reminder emails (and ask for email during the checkout process, of course).
Category pages can be a bit of a no-man’s land as far as UX. What are your favorite techniques for sprucing them up?
Make a clear call-to-action on category pages for the user to understand what actions are available to do. Always keep left-hand column navigation. Show feature banner and introduce the tastiest products, sale offers, and new arrivals.
Also, mobile view is one of the biggest challenges for a category page. Now a lot of users use their smartphones for online shopping, so you need to think about them.
Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be?
If we could educate ecommerce clients to think about their customers, and not about their own preferences, it would be great.
Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google Fonts to create great typography?
In years past, we didn’t have many font choices to use from Google Fonts. But nowadays, I believe there are plenty of good fonts. They come with various different styles. I try to use the most suitable fonts for each new project and I usually use Google Fonts in terms of saving the client from additional spending and making the product faster.
I generally try to make a stylish combination by using two or at most three different fonts or font styles for visual diversity. I always keep in mind that readability is the key. So I test my font choices on many font sizes.
Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
Cart abandonment is a common problem these days and I recommend a few easy solutions to my clients about this issue. Do not distract users with meaningless popups or messy design. Give users clear and correct information. Nobody wants to be confused or cheated. Offer free advantages, such as free shipping or small gifts. In case of abandonment, remind them that they added products to their cart but did not buy them yet. Always optimize your site.
Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be?
I’ve worked in this field for a few years now. As a newbie, I was so upset when a client criticized my work badly or told me some illogical things about the process. Years have taught me one thing: that everyone can be persuaded. You just have to trust your knowledge and make them listen to you. But sometimes their know-it-all personalities are a big obstacle for us.
Let’s face it, web-safe fonts don’t give us many options. How do you use Google Fonts to create great typography?
We use a combination of Google Fonts, Typekit, and also purchased fonts if the project requires it, where they are hosted on the server and used via Font-face. We try not to limit ourselves with typography as we are a design studio first and foremost. We like to have as much freedom and creativity as possible.
Google Fonts collection has improved over the years with a greater diversity. We try to limit a site’s use to no more than 2 complimentary typefaces.
Ecommerce store owners are always stressing about cart abandonment. How can web designers reduce cart abandonment for their clients?
We always strive to streamline and simplify the checkout process for users with as few steps as possible, simple instructions and clarity of delivery costs. We always make the next step in the process have the greatest hierarchy and dominate in tone or color, with as little distraction as possible.
Category pages can be a bit of a no-man’s land as far as UX. What are your favorite techniques for sprucing them up?
When products are listed on a page, we have found that section dividers work well. Within the parameters of the dividers, we have the design freedom to create something that is in-tune with the site’s design and tailored to be clear and informative. Imagery can be used to great effect, particularly to show the context of a product in use. Image-based category dividers define product ranges and help bring them alive.
Let’s be honest—design clients don’t always know as much as we wish they did. If you could educate ecommerce clients on one thing, what would it be?
Content is key. Content and product ranges need to be defined before the design process. Otherwise, the design is compromised and as designers, we are flying blind, hoping that the site we design will work with the unknown content and imagery supplied at the final stages. Content needs to come before the design process can begin. Product descriptions need to have consistent sections, dimensions, descriptions and specifications. Photography as content is hugely important. It needs to be a true reflection of the product and consistent in style and tone. Professional photography is a must.
Whether it’s in the blogosphere, at conferences, or on social media, we’re hearing a lot about the growth of B2B ecommerce this year. B2B sales are moving from the phone line to online, and that has profound implications for both the B2B industry and the ecommerce solutions industry.
To facilitate this discussion and help educate professionals in the B2B and ecommerce services industry, we interviewed 9 experts on the emerging trends in B2B ecommerce. We asked some pointed questions, and we got an array of intelligent, informative answers. We hope this article will help B2B ecommerce developers, designers, and industry professionals.
Here are the questions we asked:
1. How might an ecommerce model streamline the world of B2B sales?
2. What types of innovation would you like to see in B2B ecommerce functionality?
3. Where does a professional sales staff fit into a B2B ecommerce business plan?
4. How can B2B ecommerce managers encourage their customer base to transition from phone orders to web orders?
1. Bill Osteraas – Vice President, Channel Development, Four51
How might an ecommerce model streamline the world of B2B sales?
There are huge benefits when it comes to an ecommerce solution – one of them being automation. By integrating your ecommerce solution with your ERP, CRM, analytics, and other current softwares, you are streamlining your processes and removing the manual steps that used to take place. This cuts down on costs, reduces order errors, and frees up your personnel to work on larger issues. In fact, we’ve seen companies like Turtle Wax go from a 6% order error rate to less than 1% after implementing a B2B ecommerce solution. Additionally, you remove the 9-5 barrier by allowing customers to order 24x7x365.
[clickToTweet tweet=”By integrating your ecommerce solution with ERP, CRM, & analytics, you streamline processes. @Four51inc @216_digital” quote=”By integrating your ecommerce solution with ERP, CRM, & analytics, you streamline processes. “]
What types of innovation would you like to see in B2B ecommerce functionality?
We face this topic with a different approach: flexibility over features. Many ecommerce softwares are rigid and companies must have a “you get what you get and you don’t have a fit” mindset. With an API-first platform, you open up the possibilities for your users immensely. Not only can they utilize the features already available, but they can customize them completely to their business. Integrations become easier than ever, allowing businesses to personalize their platform to their specific processes.
Where does a professional sales staff fit into a B2B ecommerce business plan?
Many people have proclaimed that B2B ecommerce will replaces sales reps. However, ecommerce will free up employees from monotonous, administrative tasks and allow them to have a greater impact on the company with consultative selling or working closer with customers. It’s important to have at least one employee dedicated to your ecommerce solution, especially as ecommerce becomes the main go-to-market strategy for many businesses. Adding or upgrading your online channel requires a company-wide digital transformation, which includes all employees.
How can B2B ecommerce managers encourage their customer base to transition from phone orders to web orders?
Luckily, many customers will naturally transition to web orders, as they have grown accustomed to it in their own personal lives. Many are already using their web devices to search for products – according to Forrester, 74% of B2B buyers are researching at least half of their business purchases online. For those who don’t naturally transition, set the right expectations. Tell them why it’s good for them – for example, faster fulfillment time, automatic delivery updates, and the ability to order anytime, anywhere and from any device.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bill Osteraas is the Vice President of Channel Development at Four51. Four51 offers OrderCloud, a customizable, flexible B2B ecommerce platform that’s entirely cloud-based. Bill has 20 years of experience helping customers with complex ecommerce solutions. Find Four51 online, on Facebook, or on Twitter.
2. Marcel Nanning – Founder, B2BMarketeers
How might an ecommerce model streamline the world of B2B sales?
Ecommerce is a serious channel in B2B sales these days, and it’s still growing. I have seen customers generating 10% extra revenue the first year a B2B shop opened. That is 10% extra business they would not have had without the shop. It is exciting to see how it is used in different applications. You see some companies selling complex products online, while other companies choose just to sell parts or maintenance products with their website. There is also a difference in how customers and potential customers are served. Some companies use a B2B ecommerce channel just to take in new orders from existing customers. Others try to sell products to the whole world. B2B ecommerce is a way to increase sales, find new markets, and serve customers fast and easy. It is also a field to be further explored. Every case is different—there is no ecommerce template that fits all B2B companies.
What types of innovation would you like to see in B2B ecommerce functionality?
All the B2C innovations will be useful for B2B shops. I think we will see lots of innovations with big data and connectivity. Lots of new possibilities emerge if data is connected to the shop. If a B2B machine company uses sensors to measure the lifetime of certain parts, it could give the owner of the machine a signal if it needs to be replaced. The company could also set up the order in a shop, with some complementary products or services like a mechanic to install the product. The customer just has to approve the order and wait for the product + mechanic to arrive. Everybody wins. That’s just one example of the range of innovations that is going to take place.
Also important: we will see more shops in professional services markets. Services, like consultancy, will be productized and sold through online shops as well.
Where does a professional sales staff fit into a B2B ecommerce business plan?
Sales provides all the input for the ecommerce activities. And good B2B salespeople with deep knowledge of products and markets will always be important in sales and marketing. Call it sales, call it marketing; it is about adding value, making the connection, and being of importance to the customer.
How can B2B ecommerce managers encourage their customer base to transition from phone orders to web orders?
By helping them experience the fun and ease of it. And by giving them an essential role in the process. Most importantly, include them in the B2B ecommerce projects from the start.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Include your customer base in your #B2B #ecommerce project from the start. @b2bmarketeers @216_digital” quote=”Include your customer base in your B2B ecommerce project from the start. “]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marcel Nanning is founder and editor of the digital magazine b2bmarketeers.nl, one of the biggest b2b marketing blogs in the Netherlands. He is also Campaign Manager at GAC Business Solutions, a Microsoft partner in The Netherlands. GAC Business Solutions serves customers all over the world with smart Business Software solutions for ERP, CRM, Office 365 and B2C/B2B e-commerce. You can connect with Marcel on LinkedIn.
3. Tim Peter – Founder, Tim Peter & Associates
How might an ecommerce model streamline the world of B2B sales?
It really depends on your product or service. If you’re offering a subscription-based SaaS tool that customers can configure on their own or aftermarket parts for your products, you can easily lower your costs and streamline your customer’s purchase journey by offering self-service purchasing.
I’ve seen Fortune 100 companies sell components and, in some cases, complete systems online, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue by focusing more clearly on understanding that customer journey and where ecommerce activities actually improve the process.
I recommend B2B marketers look at their process in terms of “tracks,” helping customers follow the most appropriate track for their particular purchase path: “fast track” (i.e., heavily ecommerce focused) for self-service or simpler purchases; a “standard” track, featuring some hybrid of person-to-person, for the typical purchase path; and a bespoke or advanced track for more complex, customized solutions, perhaps using a product configurator or something similar to start the conversation and show what’s possible—and to generate leads.
Where does a professional sales staff fit into a B2B ecommerce business plan?
It’s really important to remember that B2B sales often are much more complex than B2C transactions for a variety of reasons. First, unless you’re selling to SMB (and even then…) you’re likely dealing with multiple stakeholders within the organization. B2B offerings often feature complex and customized implementations. And, they’re often at least one step removed from the actual end-user of the product.
[clickToTweet tweet=”#B2B #ecommerce sales are much more complex than B2C transactions for a variety of reasons. @tcpeter @216_digital” quote=”B2B ecommerce sales are often much more complex than B2C transactions for a variety of reasons. “]
If these cases apply to your business, your sales staff plays a key role in addressing objections among those stakeholders, walking prospects through each step in the process, and helping stakeholders realize the benefits their customers will see from your product or service.
In these situations, it’s really about finding the right place in the customer journey to hand-off to a sales professional who can close the deal and assist prospects with—or, where appropriate, upsell prospects to—your more customized services.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tim Peter is the founder of Tim Peter & Associates, LLC, an internet marketing, ecommerce, and consulting firm. Before launching his own company in 2011, Tim worked in the luxury hotel and resort industry, where he helped companies achieve more than $2 billion in online revenue. He has written extensively in the digital marketing industry, and his blog, Tim Peter Thinks, has a large monthly readership. Connect with Tim on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
4. Melissa Buening – Director of Marketing, Apruve, Inc.
How might an ecommerce model streamline the world of B2B sales?
An ecommerce model can streamline the world of B2B sales by reducing the total cost to serve and sell to customers. It can help with reducing the time it takes to find products, improving order accuracy, reducing payment friction, and reducing customer service questions. Ecommerce also allows customers to order products on their own schedule, make repeat purchases, and go paperless.
What types of innovation would you like to see in B2B ecommerce functionality?
We would like to see B2B ecommerce sites better enable buyers to apply for credit and pay on terms in an online way. Much of this process is still being handled offline with a phone, a fax machine, and a traditional A/R process, which is inefficient and costly.
[clickToTweet tweet=”#B2B #ecommerce sites should enable buyers to apply for credit and pay on terms online. @apruve @216_digital” quote=”B2B ecommerce sites should enable buyers to apply for credit and pay on terms online. “]
Where does a professional sales staff fit into a B2B ecommerce business plan?
A professional sales staff can fit into a B2B ecommerce business plan through new customer acquisition, customer retention, answering specific product questions, and ongoing customer support. B2B sellers can continue to commission a sales rep for orders no matter how they come in. Sales people can spend more time selling and less time processing transactions, which should lead to an increase in sales attributed to each sales person.
How can B2B ecommerce managers encourage their customer base to transition from phone orders to web orders?
B2B ecommerce managers can simply outline the benefits to their customers. Most people say they want to order online (75% according to Forrester), so it shouldn’t be overly difficult for most companies to convince their customers. Another option would be to build incentives for their customers to move online, such as better payment terms, discounts, or online-only product specials.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melissa Buening is the Director of Marketing at Apruve, Inc. Apruve allows B2B ecommerce businesses to stop acting like a bank toward their customers. Invoices created in Apruve are paid within 24 hours, and the company also offers credit approval, financing, and account setup. You can connect with Apruve on Twitter.
5. Chris Guerra – Chief Marketing Officer, Blue Acorn
How might an ecommerce model streamline the world of B2B sales?
The B2B sales process is extremely antiquated. In many cases buyers are still using paper and fax machines. Ecommerce provides a 24/7 mechanism for buyers to learn, build purchase orders and easily reorder items. No longer does a buyer need to wait for a sales rep to get back to them. Buyers have an “on-demand” experience.
[clickToTweet tweet=”In #B2B #ecommerce, buyers have an ‘on-demand’ experience. @blueacorn @216_digital” quote=”In #B2B #ecommerce, buyers have an ‘on-demand’ experience. “]
What types of innovation would you like to see in B2B ecommerce functionality?
Once companies take the first step to establish a B2B presence online they will quickly learn how valuable the analytics beyond purchase data are. From understanding what categories, product and content buyers are interacting with it helps build a deeper profile and understanding of buyer interests. This data can empower sales reps or be used to personalize the buying experience.
Where does a professional sales staff fit into a B2B ecommerce business plan?
Ecommerce will never replace “relationships”. However, it can help build them. Sales staff can use the ecommerce site during various stages of the buying process whether it is to build lookbooks, bookmark items, or propose purchase orders. Again, the analytics allow for a smarter sales rep making calls more targeted and productive.
How can B2B ecommerce managers encourage their customer base to transition from phone orders to web orders?
B2B ecommerce managers should explore features like loyalty point, promotional pricing, exclusive content. Building strong “My Account” functionality and treating it like a repository for orders, communication and contact information can turn what is typically a boring portion of a website into the highest trafficked destination.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Guerra, chief marketing officer, joined Blue Acorn in 2012. Chris has over 10 years of experience working with IR500 merchants. Extensive knowledge in replatforming, digital marketing, ecommerce operations, and financial planning has led Chris to hold several leadership positions throughout his career. Connect with Chris on Twitter.
6. Dr. Sam Bayer – CEO & Cofounder, Corevist
How might an ecommerce model streamline the world of B2B sales?
How has ecommerce streamlined the buying of books, clothing, jewelry, electronic equipment and beauty products? It has removed the need to walk to a store, speak to a person or do either only when businesses are open. B2B ecommerce will have the exact same benefits. Only the impact on the economy will be much larger because the flow of B2B products around the world far exceeds the volume of B2C sales.
What types of innovation would you like to see in B2B ecommerce functionality?
We don’t need any more innovation in B2B ecommerce functionality than we already have. We already have way more than the vast majority of B2B companies can take advantage of. The real innovation that we need is to figure out a way to make B2B ecommerce websites quicker to implement and more affordable. Frankly, the vast majority of B2B ecommerce transactions are still phone/fax and email. FAXES in 2016! Corevist is focused on disrupting the B2B ecommerce technology space by innovating on the adoption of these projects without sacrificing functionality.
[clickToTweet tweet=”We need to make #B2B #ecommerce websites quicker to implement and more affordable. @CorevistInc @216_digital” quote=”We need to make B2B ecommerce websites quicker to implement and more affordable. “]
Where does a professional sales staff fit into a B2B ecommerce business plan?
Either on the bus or they become extinct. If your value as a saleperson is delivering information that is easily available on a website and accessible via a smartphone, than your days are numbered. Salespeople need to reinvent themselves to not sell products but to help their customers become more successful from a business perspective. Websites will replace transactions but it’s a lot harder for them to offer advice. That’s where salespeople should evolve.
How can B2B ecommerce managers encourage their customer base to transition from phone orders to web orders?
By making it easier to do business on the website than it is by speaking to a human being for routine transactions. You can promote by offering discounts to kickstart traffic on the website, but at the end of the day, if life isn’t better for your customers on the website, they won’t use.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Sam Bayer received his PhD in chemistry at age 23. Career highlights include connecting IBM to a new market segment (laboratory information management systems), introducing the first B2B ecommerce website for SAP® manufacturers, and launching Corevist, which focuses on the convergence of cloud-delivered services and the consumerization of B2B ecommerce. Connect with Dr. Bayer on Twitter.
7. Brian Massey – Cofounder, Conversion Sciences
How might an ecommerce model streamline the world of B2B sales?
You can easily streamline your B2B sales by NOT implementing a B2B ecommerce model. Your competitors will take care of the orders for you!
[clickToTweet tweet=”Streamline sales by NOT implementing #B2B ecommerce model. Competition will handle the orders! @bmassey @216_digital” quote=”You can easily streamline your B2B sales by NOT implementing a B2B ecommerce model. Your competitors will take care of the orders for you!”]
In a recent Conversion Sciences webinar, Jeff Philipp noted research showing:
1. 74% of B2B buyers perfer to buy through a website2. 93% of B2B buyers prefer to execute a buy the moment they find what they are looking for.
A B2B ecommerce site can be expected to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty while reducing the cost of selling. This means higher margins and more repeat business, a powerful combination.
What types of innovation would you like to see in B2B ecommerce functionality?
Unfortunately, the ecommerce innovation that B2B companies lack is having an ecommerce offering. According to Forrester’s Peter Sheldon, only 25% of all B2B companies sell online today. This is an opportunity.
However, there are some challenges unique to B2B ecommerce. Blue Fish Development Group CEO Jeff Philipp summarized thirteen of them on our webinar. Here are seven of the most common:
1. Highly complex, customizable products2. Importance of delivery dates and ordering backlog3. Complicate pricing formulas4. Complex sales tax issues5. Multiple buyer accounts and multiple locations6. Shipping options can be complex7. Integration with backend systems
Watch the on-demand Lab Coat Lessons webinar for all thirteen.
Where does a professional sales staff fit into a B2B ecommerce business plan?
Without proper project management, sales can be an obstacle to B2B ecommerce efforts. They may see the site as a threat. In truth, a B2B ecommerce site works well as a sales support platform. The site may actually increase phone calls for visitors that prefer the interaction of a sales person. It is not unusual for the B2B ecommerce site to be the choice of returning customers, while the sales team continues to excel at landing new customers’ first orders.
How can B2B ecommerce managers encourage their customer base to transition from phone orders to web orders?
In the words of Peter Sheldon, “Buyers are way ahead of the sellers.” Making the ecommerce site known to phone callers will be all that it takes to get customers to switch. A larger and larger portion of new customers will be looking for the ecommerce site first. In almost every industry, the fastest-growing segment of online traffic is mobile. All a business has to do is stop telling them they can’t order via the web and offer them a great online solution.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Massey founded the website optimization company Conversion Sciences in 2007. He is a bestselling author (“Your Customer Creation Equation: Unexpected Website Formulas of The Conversion Scientist”), computer programmer, and entrepreneur. He has written for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, the Content Marketing Institute, and others. Connect with Brian on Twitter.
8. Elan Sherbill – Corporate Blogger, cleverbridge
How might an ecommerce model streamline the world of B2B sales?
Even simple payment functionality goes a long way toward improving B2B customer experiences. Offering business buyers the ability to research and then pay for their items entirely online saves time and money for both sellers and buyers. The biggest boon for sellers is that digital shopping experiences increase overall revenue and let sellers focus on building better products.
[clickToTweet tweet=”#Ecommerce increases overall #B2B revenue so sellers focus on building better products. @cleverbridge @216_digital” quote=”Digital shopping experiences increases overall revenue and lets them focus on building better products.”]
What types of innovation would you like to see in B2B ecommerce functionality?
There needs to be a bigger focus on global markets. Most organizations are so focused on their existing customer base that they ignore millions of dollars from cross-border shoppers who are simply not afforded the chance to buy from them. This is because these organizations do not offer localized customer experiences that make it possible for international buyers to conveniently pay for goods or services online.
If businesses truly want to leverage digital shopping experiences for B2B buyers, they have to make sure they are offering all customers products in local currencies, at prices the local market can bear. It also means providing customers the option to use preferred local payment methods and ensuring that the entire customer experience complies with local regulations so far as issues like taxation, privacy and security are concerned.
Where does a professional sales staff fit into a B2B ecommerce business plan?
With digital B2B customer experiences, sales teams are going to have to pivot from order takers to expert consultants. The shopping experience is going to be increasingly self-managed on the buyer’s end. That doesn’t mean you abandon loyal employees. Digital shopping removes a lot of the face-to-face touchpoints between customers and businesses, so you still need a highly trained sales staff who understand their customers’ pain points and who helps them understand how to drive better business outcomes with the tools they sell.
How can B2B ecommerce managers encourage their customer base to transition from phone orders to web orders?
I honestly don’t think it’s going to take much encouragement. Every B2B customer is also an individual consumer who shops online at least once a month (if not more frequently), and they have high expectations for digital customer experiences. Business buyers want to be able to pay for their orders as conveniently as they do when they’re shopping on Amazon. And it’s not just about the payments. B2B customers want to self-manage all their customer account information, including upgrading and downgrading plans, adding and removing licenses, or updating payment information.
Think about your own shopping preferences. You don’t like taking time out of your busy schedule to make a phone call to renew your order when you could easily accomplish the same thing with a few clicks or swipes. And neither do your customers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elan Sherbill is a corporate blogger at cleverbridge—a global subscription billing provider that helps companies build long-term customer relationships and grow recurring revenue streams. You can connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.
9. Gareth Daine – Co-Founder, Content Sleuth
How might an ecommerce model streamline the world of B2B sales?
Well, according to Forbes, the B2B ecommerce market will be worth $1.7 trillion by 2020, so, I’m not sure it’s a case of ecommerce streamlining B2B sales, as it appears it’s already in full swing. Look at Alibaba as a B2B ecommerce marketplace. While it’s had its fair share of problems and controversy, it’s hugely successful.
Look at Littlewoods (the Shop Direct Group), who used to run catalogue services, but now are solely based online. The benefits to the business are huge. They save overheads in many areas, can automate a lot of the process, and it allows them to funnel those investments into expanding the model.
Whenever anyone comes to purchase products and services, whether businesses or not, usually, their first port of call is the Internet. This presents huge opportunities for B2B businesses, as providing their products and services via an online (usually account locked) platform, like Magento, for example, allows them to offer the convenience of online ordering and user account management, as well as features such as re-ordering, back-ordering and such.
Customers find these types of conveniences extremely helpful, and it helps them speed up their ordering, dispatching and delivery processes, helping them save time and money.
What types of innovation would you like to see in B2B ecommerce functionality?
I would love to see some solid innovation in drop shipping functionality and connections with marketplaces like eBay, Amazon and Alibaba. A sort of Software as a Service (SaaS) model would be great, where companies can sign up, and the service provider would handle the rest. Could be big money in something like that, especially if they linked in with suppliers, and provided checks.
[clickToTweet tweet=”We need innovations in #B2B drop shipping functionality & integrations w/major markets. @contentsleuth @216_digital” quote=”I would love to see some solid innovation in drop shipping functionality and connections with marketplaces like eBay, Amazon and Alibaba. “]
Where does a professional sales staff fit into a B2B ecommerce business plan?
Obviously, digital marketing and social media are key, but professional sales staff of the old-school variety still have their place. Contacting current and prospective companies to offer a streamlined service, perhaps offering discounted prices for onboarding on to the online platform.
How can B2B ecommerce managers encourage their customer base to transition from phone orders to web orders?
As mentioned above, offering discount pricing for online orders and account management, web only incentives to entice customers to use the online model, a great user experience by making it simple, fast and straightforward to use. Take the headaches out of the process by automating as much as possible. There are many benefits, including re-ordering previous orders, backordering, easy account management, fast ordering, etc.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gareth is a seasoned software engineer with over 19 years’ experience in the industry. He specializes in ecommerce design and development. He is also the co-founder of Content Sleuth, a new social media automation tool for content marketers. You can find Content Sleuth on Twitter, or read their in-depth, actionable tips for social media marketing.
Brands are joining the content marketing frenzy every day. If you haven’t started practicing content marketing yet, it’s high time you did. But where do you start? How do you work with available resources, affordable publishing tools, and strangers who don’t know your content exists? Worse—how do you turn this Mt. Everest of difficulties into a value-creating resource for your brand?
Glad you asked.
This article won’t turn you into a content marketing whiz overnight. It’s not even designed to do that. It’s just too big! Rather, we wrote this article to publish all of our greatest content marketing tips in one place. This is that big fat reference book that used to sit on your desk. That’s why we call it the Big Book.
Wherever you’re at in your content marketing campaign, we’ve assembled the ULTIMATE list of content marketing tips. We cover everything here, from setup to final promotional outreach. We’ve broken this massive article into 7 chapters. No matter where you’re at in the process, you can find actionable strategies to help you improve that step, right now, today.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Define your #contentmarketing objectives from the beginning. They dictate your #contentstrategy http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Define your #contentmarketing objectives from the beginning. They dictate your #contentstrategy”]
1. Define your content marketing objectives from the beginning. What are you trying to accomplish? If you don’t set clear goals for your content marketing efforts, you won’t even know what you’re striving for. Many companies make a half-hearted effort at blogging and social media and call it content marketing. In today’s highly-saturated content landscape, an uneducated and lackluster attempt just won’t cut it.
2. Define your primary audience and discover where they hang out online. You want to speak what they speak, and you want to speak where they speak.
3. Research your primary audience. What are their beliefs and values? What types of content do they like? You can’t succeed in a content market without knowing that market.
4. Create accounts in all the relevant social media platforms. Research best practices in those platforms that aren’t familiar to you.
5. Use BuzzStream. No excuses. This incredible service will automate the more tedious aspects of content promotion and outreach. In the research phase, you can add contacts and their information to BuzzStream with one click—including things like tagging the contact for niches, and noting what kind of opportunity the contact may offer. You can segment your contact lists, create email templates, personalize individual messages, choose when to send, and set follow-up reminders, among many other features.
6. If you’re not using BuzzStream, make a Content Outreach spreadsheet. Prepare for it to get HUGE! Every time you find a viable content outreach contact, you’ll want to log a variety of information. Record what niche the contact belongs to, as well as any relevant sub-niches and content focuses. Record their domain name, Twitter page URL, and Facebook page URL. Consider logging their follower counts and typical share counts for posts, as well. Make cells for logging ALL of your communication with each contact. When you go to do outreach, this information will help you to start at the top, reaching out to your most targeted and valuable contacts first. It will also help you to avoid awkward missteps from confusing different communication you’ve had with different contacts.
7. Break your outreach list into smaller segments by sub-niche. This will help you focus your outreach for specific content in the future. If you don’t know your niche and sub-niches well enough at this point to break them out, you can do it later, after you’ve learned more about your niches.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Explore similar accounts on Facebook and Twitter. #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Explore similar accounts on Facebook and Twitter. #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital “]
8. Explore similar accounts on Facebook and Twitter. After you Like a Facebook page or follow a Twitter account, explore all the similar accounts that appear at the top or side of the page. This will help you find audiences and outreach contacts related to your primary audience.
9. Explore the Twitter accounts of several people in your niche. Look at accounts that retweet these people, and look at which accounts these people retweet. This can lead you to accounts both in your niche and in related niches. Accounts in both niches are valuable contacts for promoting your content.
10. Find 10 fantastic pieces of content from other people in your niche. Paste the URL of these pieces into Facebook search and Twitter search. Where permissions allow, this will reveal accounts which have shared great content in your niche. If your content is this amazing (and it will be), these accounts will share your content, too. Find their websites and add them to your Content Outreach spreadsheet.
11. Make a list of the Top 5 thought leaders in your niche. Who publishes about them? These are individuals who consistently think ahead of the curve in your market. Google each person’s name—but look past their own websites and social accounts. Who publishes content about these 5 leaders? Who shares content about them on social media? This technique can lead you to outreach contacts and audiences which you hadn’t thought of before.
12. Research keywords with an eye toward organizational goals. Use a keyword tool like SEMrush to determine a) what keywords your brand needs to rank for, and b) what type of content currently ranks for those keywords. Note: in content marketing, keyword intent is critical. You need to focus on keywords which have at least some informational intent (as opposed to purchase intent). Find opportunities in which weak content ranks on the first page of Google for one of your keywords with informational intent. Schedule yourself to write a fantastic piece of informational content that is far better than the weak content that currently ranks for that keyword.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Create an editorial calendar to meet goals on schedule. #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Create an editorial calendar to meet goals on schedule. #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital”]
13. Create an editorial calendar. This is the backbone of magazine and blog publishing, and it will become your daily hangout. You can purchase editorial calendar software, but there are clever free solutions available, too. For those who don’t want to purchase something, we recommend using a calendar in Google spreadsheets, since multiple team members can assign tasks and edit them at the same time.
14. Determine the rules for your editorial calendar, and communicate them to your team. Empower your team to follow the rules by providing a simple, easy-to-remember procedure for marking tasks that need more time or didn’t get done at all. You don’t want content marketing tasks to get lost in the chaos of shifting timelines.
15. Prepare your WordPress site for thoroughbred performance. Whether you already have a WordPress site or you’re just setting one up, you’ll need to configure it to follow best practices. Set Permalinks to post names, create a public-appropriate nickname for your publishing account, and turn off comments if you won’t be moderating them manually and through plugins.
16. Speed up your WordPress site through caching. WordPress is notoriously slow, even on fast servers. Install a caching plugin, such as W3 Total Cache, to speed up your site.
17. Speed up your WordPress site with a CDN (content delivery network). Consider using a content delivery network to speed up the serving of certain content when users return to your site. CloudFlare offers a free CDN.
18. Optimize all imagery for web. Gigantic pictures will slow down your site. As a rule of thumb, for full-width blog posts, all images should be at least 1200px wide. For blogs that use a sidebar, you can usually get away with a minimum width of 800px. When you save your images as JPEGs in Photoshop, be sure to Save for Web, or else adjust the quality slider down. Your final file size should be 100-300kb maximum.
19. Install the Yoast SEO plugin. It will give you a quick look at how search-engine-optimized every piece of content is. It won’t help you rank higher directly, but it will show you problems with your onsite optimization for each content marketing piece.
II. GENERATING CONTENT MARKETING IDEAS (14 tips)
[clickToTweet tweet=”Read EVERYTHING — even content outside your industry. #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Read EVERYTHING — even content outside your industry. #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital”]
20. Read, read, read. Read everything. It’s been said that no one reads anymore. This simply isn’t true. Rather, the way we read has changed. Don’t read only within your industry or your personal interests. Get interested in everything. Read the New York Times, the just-launched blog in your industry, and everything in between. As you read, take notes, particularly questions you have that the article doesn’t answer. As you investigate these questions, you may find topics and angles that haven’t been covered yet—things which the content market is hungry for.
21. Think like your reader. You’ve already done the market research. You should have a general notion of who your audience segments are and what they care about. And while thinking about segments is good, it can also hurt your efforts. A segment is a concept; a reader is a human being. Take a step back and imagine yourself in your reader’s shoes. What are you dying to know? What information are you hunting for that you can’t find anywhere else? Respect your readers, and they’ll love what you publish.
22. Keep a running notebook of ideas. It’s been said that genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration—and that’s true—but you don’t want to drop the ball on that 10%. When an idea comes, get it down, and never doubt that it’s a great idea. (You’ll vet your ideas later.) Use a spreadsheet to track your ideas. That way, you can add new ideas at the bottom of your list and move ideas toward the top as they mature after a little editing and research. That way, you know your best idea is sitting at the top of the list, ready to be written, and you know you have some great rough material to work out farther down.
23. Use BuzzSumo. This fantastic tool will show you the most-shared articles on any topic. Now, you can’t just use the same ideas which BuzzSumo shows to be successful; they’ve already been done. But these successful topics and angles can give you a starting place. You just have to add that extra edge that hasn’t been covered yet. This might be a new angle, a new extension of the topic, or a connection between two popular topics that no one has thought of yet.
24. Use AllTop.com to discover popular content. This site gathers the most popular articles on every imaginable topic. AllTop doesn’t get too specific with sub-topics, so it’s a good way to discover what’s rising to the top within a general topic area.
25. Use the Google Top 40 results. The first four pages of Google will show you a lot. You can get a quick sense of whether a topic has been covered recently, or if the best coverage is now out of date. You can also find outliers, articles from sites you’ve never heard of. These surprises can give you new ideas.
26. Use YouTube. Not all content is written! YouTube is a great resource for topics and angles that are popular. View counts and subscriber counts give you an instant pulse on how hot something is. In particular, YouTube can give you ideas that have appeared in video form, but haven’t appeared in written form yet. As long as you cite your source (the video), you can write the first article on this topic.
27. Search for infographics on your topic. Infographics have exploded in recent years. This format is great for presenting data in an easy-to-digest format. But remember, Google can’t read text in an image. That means the best way to search for infographcis is a Google Image search for “your term + infographic.” Use your best judgment to determine the quality and relevance of the results you get.
28. Search hashtags on Twitter. Other people in your space are trying to promote their stuff, too. They’ll use the same hashtags you care about. A hashtag search can lead you to a just-published article, shared on Twitter, which you never would have found otherwise. In particular, pay attention to hashtag intent. Some hashtags have multiple meanings. For example, #NDT may refer to “nondestructive testing” or “Neil deGrasse Tyson.” Completely unrelated to each other!
29. Search forums that cover your niche. This is a way to find emerging topics—problems that haven’t been covered yet in your space. Forums are ideal because the readership is specialized, and the information is freely exchanged. You can get a fantastic read on emergent topics just from reading forums.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Read comments on articles by leaders in your niche to find new topic ideas. #contentmarketing http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Read comments on articles by leaders in your niche to find new topic ideas. #contentmarketing tip”]
30. Read the comments on articles by leaders in your niche. This is where expert readers call out things that a great article didn’t cover. If an expert writer in your niche didn’t cover something that readers are hungry to know, this is a prime opportunity to fill a content void.
31. Talk to your coworkers, especially “support” staff. They typically spend the most time with your customers, going over points of pain. These folks generally have a great sense for what problems exist in your space.
32. Ask for feedback from Twitter contacts. As you interact around your niche’s topics on Twitter, share your rough ideas with experts in your space. Ask them what they think. Of course, there’s a caveat: if you’re asking upstream, you don’t want to give away too much of your great idea. A Twitter contact with more resources than you may publish on the idea first.
33. Look into related (shoulder) niches for topics that matter to them. No topic or niche exists in a vacuum. In fact, all topics connect to all other topics in one way or another, even if it takes several connections to get from one to another. All that to say—branch out into related topics. If your main niche is custom web development, look into app development, ecommerce development, and WordPress development. These are shoulder niches that partially overlap with the content in your niche.
III. KEYWORD RESEARCH FOR CONTENT MARKETING (12 tips)
34. Use the Google Keyword Planner. It provides comprehensive data, and it’s free to use. If you’re on a budget, this should be your go-to tool. When you plug in a keyword, it will spit out groups of related keywords. Though not all the results will be relevant to your content marketing campaign, you will find keywords you hadn’t thought of before.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Use Google Suggest to find related keywords. #contentmarketing for #seo tip from @216_digital http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Use Google Suggest to find related keywords. #contentmarketing for #seo tip “]
35. Use Google Suggest. Type one of your keywords into Google and look at the suggested search strings in the dropdown. These are real keywords which other users have searched for—which Google believes are related to your search. Not all of these will be on point, but some will offer incredible opportunities that you wouldn’t have found otherwise.
36. Use Similar Searches at the bottom of a Google search results page. Much like Google Suggest, this will show you related keywords which you might not have thought of on your own.
37. Use a paid keyword research tool. Even if you’re on a shoestring budget, this is one of the best places to spend your money. In our opinion, the top paid keyword research tools on the market are SEMrush and Moz. Each one does things little differently. If we had to choose between them, we would choose SEMrush. It allows you to examine keyword competition from many angles, and it provides deep data insights.
38. Use “body” keywords. As Brian Dean explains at Backlinko, “body” keywords (strings of 2-3 words) are the sweet spot in SEO. You won’t rank for 1-word generic keywords; the big brands have these covered already. You could rank for long-tail keywords (4+ word strings), but these don’t receive a high monthly search volume, so they won’t bring you as much value. Body keywords offer the right combination of specificity (more specific than 1-word keywords) and traffic (more heavily searched than long-tail keywords). Use ’em!
39. Look at the table of contents in Wikipedia articles.This tip is also from Brian Dean at Backlinko, and it’s simply brilliant. Because Wikipedia is (usually) so well organized, the table of contents in a general Wikipedia article will show you many sub-topics under that general topic. This is a great way to find keywords and keyword groups that begin to branch out from the core topic in question.
40. Look at related keywords in the Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush, and look at discovered keywords in Moz. SEMrush and Google are especially good at showing you related keywords. Of course, any related keywords you find need to be vetted in SEMrush for monthly search volume, CPC, and competition.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Vet your keywords in @semrush. It’s a tough boss, which is good for #seo and #contentmarketing http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Vet your keywords in @semrush. It’s a tough boss, which is good for #seo and #contentmarketing”]
41. Vet your keywords in SEMrush. SEMrush is a tough boss. That means it’s a good boss. It will display “no data” for a worthless keyword. If your keyword isn’t listed in SEMrush, don’t even bother trying to rank for it. Throw it out, even if you have to go back to the drawing board.
42. Vet your keywords with the Moz Bar. Google your keyword and look at the top 10 results. With the Moz Bar turned on, check out the domain authority of the sites that are ranking on the first page for that keyword. If you’re going up against high-DA sites all over the first page, this keyword may not represent an opportunity for you. However, if there’s even one low-DA site ranking for your keyword, you should think to yourself, “that could be me.”
43. Understand the value that a keyword does or doesn’t bring to your campaign. Remember, real users are entering the search terms which we call “keywords.” They’re looking for things. Luckily, it’s easier than you might think to understand the intent behind a keyword. There are three dimensions to a keyword which you should pay attention to: monthly search volume, CPC (cost per click in AdWords), and competition level. A high monthly search volume means more traffic if you rank for that keyword. A higher CPC means that keyword is more monetizable—in other words, AdWords bidders are willing to spend more on it because it’s more likely to lead to a conversion in that market. Competition level (in SEMrush) or keyword difficulty (in Moz) are roughly the same concept: how many people are trying to rank for this keyword?
44. Don’t stuff exact-match keywords into your copy unnaturally. With the advent of LSI (latent semantic indexing), Google can now understand what a page is about. That means you can write naturally, for human readers, and Google will get it (if you do a good job). In other words, if your keyword is “dog allergy treatment,” you can write natural phrases like, “…offers great treatment for dog allergies…” or “…a great way to treat your dog’s allergies.” Google will get it.
45. That said… get your keyword into the title of your article, and put it as close to the beginning as possible. This tip is from the world of onsite SEO, which is all about optimizing small parts of your site (particularly metadata) to get big results. While LSI means you can write naturally in copy, you should still put the exact keyword in your title.
IV. CONTENT QUALITY (15 tips)
[clickToTweet tweet=”Set an organizational standard for content quality. #contentstrategy from @216_digital http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Set an organizational standard for content quality. #contentstrategy from @216_digital “]
46. Set an organizational standard for content quality. Even in obscure niches that don’t have high standards, your content must be the best that anyone is publishing in that niche. If you aren’t a professional writer or blogger, you need to get one on your team—maybe more than one. Look for people who have a wide variety of writing and blogging experience, as well as knowledge of editorial processes.
47. If you can’t hire, you need to train your existing staff on best practices. Consider giving everyone the same writing assignment and see how things go. The results will show you the strongest writers you already have on staff. You’ll also see what problems you need to address when you start training. Obviously, a baseline writing assignment for your candidates is critical if you’re hiring.
48. Maintain high editorial standards. If your writing staff doesn’t have a background in professional blogging, you’ll need to train them to help them develop an editorial eye. This applies to headlines, article body, and images, but it also applies to the overall impression which your content makes in its niche. How will the piece of content come across to a stranger who avidly reads in your niche? Does your chosen imagery reinforce the angle of the piece, or does it confuse the focus of the piece? The overall impression which your content makes, from the very first research to the tone of your final outreach communication, will make or break your efforts.
49. Don’t reinvent the wheel—use successful content templates! As the internet has continued to evolve, certain content templates have risen above the others as being easiest to read online. A content template gives you structure to work with. It makes the whole process easier, from idea generation to writing to promotion. Some of our favorite templates include long list posts (like this one), innovative infographics, best-of roundups, and expert roundups.
50. Consider adding a CTA (call to action) in your piece. Since this is content, you shouldn’t make it a hard sell; since this is marketing, you should still look for ways to bring value to your organization from the content. This could be an email signup bar that offers “more free tips,” a click-to-tweet widget that includes your brand @-mentioned in the tweet, or an invitation to respond by leaving a comment. Remember: content marketing doesn’t end with the final paragraph!
51. Train your staff on photo acquisition strategies that fit your budget. If you can’t afford to license 10 photos for every article you write, you’ll need a free alternative, and you’ll need to explain best practices to your staff. At 216digital, we use a combination of sites like Pixabay and “reuse allowed” search settings on Flickr and Google Images. Make sure you understand Creative Commons licensing when you pull reusable photos from Flickr, Wikipedia, and Google, and make sure your writers understand how to cite these images in their copy. NEVER allow your staff to republish photos which appear with an “All Rights Reserved” copyright statement without obtaining written permission from the copyright holder. More information on Creative Commons licensing from Wikipedia.
52. Vet your concepts thoroughly. Never move ahead with a content concept that you haven’t researched and self-critiqued. The moment of inspiration can be emotionally overwhelming, and those emotions can fool you. Sometimes, inspiration gives you junk. Sometimes it gives you gold. Give your ideas time to move from inspiration to fully-developed concepts.
53. Fact-check everything. This is especially important if you’re writing for a client in a niche that’s relatively new to you. Don’t be afraid to reach out to sources directly through email and social media. It’s better to ask for clarification now than find out after publication that you failed to state the truth.
54. Think like an entrepreneur. To succeed at content marketing, you need to bring something new to an information market. Why should a reader spend time on your work when thousands of other media entities have been publishing better than you, longer than you? If you don’t fill a need in an information market, you shouldn’t even try to do this. What’s your value proposition? You can’t be “Just another WordPress blog.” You need to fill a gap that currently exists in a niche—whether the readers in that niche know the gap exists or not. (Sometimes you’ll surprise them!) That gap-filling can take many forms: a unique angle on an existing topic; a topic that is extended beyond its previous dimensions; a mashup of previously unrelated topics (as long as your case for a connection is compelling); a topic covered in more detail than ever before; and a topic that is covered actionably, where actionable content on that topic has never been published.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Develop a writing process, but don’t get tight about it. #writingtip for #contentmarketing http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Develop a writing process, but don’t get tight about it. #writingtip for #contentmarketing “]
55. Develop a writing process, but don’t get tight about it. Include multiple revisions as part of that process, and leave room for startling ideas and inspired workflows which you didn’t anticipate. Sometimes, great content emerges complete from half an hour of work. Sometimes, it takes weeks of plugging away. At 216digital, we adhere to an exacting process, all the way from research to the approval of final copy. The more sets of eyes who sign off on your content, the better it will be.
56. Ask for expert critiques. Early in your content marketing campaign, consider sending a few draft articles to link creators in your niche. Ask them for honest feedback, and explain that you’re trying to improve your work. You’ll get critiques from industry insiders, and you’ll start to build relationships from a place of humility. In the world of spam, those relationships are priceless. When you eventually publish an improved version of the article, those contacts will get a sense of satisfaction when they look at it because they know they helped you improve. (Hint: that means they’ll be more likely to share to it and/or link to it.)
57. Proofread, proofread, proofread. You’d be amazed at how many mistakes will slip past you. Consider printing your articles to proofread them, since mistakes tend to pop off paper better than a screen.
58. Don’t skimp on design. It’s just as important as writing. Today’s content consumer is highly visual and expects to be delighted. Even a long-form essay or article needs at least one strong visual at the top. Top-notch design is especially critical for infographics. The infographic as a form has exploded in recent years, and that has led to a lot of noise in the infographic space. Your infographic’s design (not to mention editorial angle) must be truly epic to stand out. Allow time and budget for multiple revisions to an infographic, and push your team to go beyond their comfort zones. The results will amaze you.
59. Communicate content values clearly to your team. Especially when you take on a new client or add a new team member, the prospect of doing top-notch content marketing for an unknown company looks incredibly daunting. Your team needs an in-depth understanding of each client’s brand and market. Communicate clearly from the beginning, and you’ll avoid expensive problems later in the process.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Manage your #contentmarketing team like a teacher. #contenstrategy from @216_digital http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Manage your #contentmarketing team like a teacher. #contenstrategy from @216_digital “]
60. Manage your content marketing team like a teacher. Respect your team. They’re people, and they’re trying hard. When their work doesn’t meet up, take it as an educational opportunity: not a lecture from you, but an open discussion. When you hit a content crisis, call a meeting. Open the floor with a non-accusatory statement that invites everyone present to solve the problem creatively—something like, “I’m a little concerned about the quality of our work. I’m turning this discussion over to you guys. How can we get better?” Be prepared to moderate the discussion and bring it back to organizational goals if it gets off track, and don’t allow team members to have the final word. When you facilitate education rather than force it on people, your team grows in their communication with each other, and they learn easily from their peers.
61. Know your space. Whether you’ve been working in your niche for years or you’re just starting, you need to know the people in your content network. This is an intangible asset, and it’s impossible to quantify or turn into data. Here, your intelligence as a reader, writer, editor, and marketer are invaluable. You need to have a sense of what’s appropriate in communications in your niche. Without this knowledge, you risk offending the very people you’re trying to network with.
62. Let your organizational goals inform your outreach. Return to our very first tip. Why are you doing content marketing in the first place? Your initial outreach efforts must further your goals, and only your goals.
63. Familiarize yourself with each individual contact or blogger. What do they do? What makes them tick? Get a sense for their values and personality, to the extent that they display these qualities on their website and social media. You need to respect the people you’ll be contacting.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Get on the phone. Seriously! #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Get on the phone. Seriously! #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital “]
64. Get on the phone. It sounds crazy, but sometimes, one phone call is better than a thousand emails. As long as you have a valid reason for calling and you manage the communication well, you can establish and strengthen valuable relationships this way.
65. Don’t be afraid to give up. If a blogger looks great until you find something that clearly rules them out as a good networking prospect, just move on. For example, some bloggers hate getting any kind of promotional email. (Hint: they don’t want yours.) Don’t waste your time on these folks. They’re doing their own thing, and that’s okay.
Just walk away!Bummer. Oh well, plenty of fish in the sea!
66. Get personal. Even in smaller niches, webmasters and bloggers get tons of email every day. If you’ve taken the time to familiarize yourself with the blogger you’re reaching out to, you’ve probably learned his or her first name. Use it! It shows respect, and it shows that you know who you’re talking to. There’s nothing worse than a cold-call email that starts with, “Dear Sir or Madam…”
[clickToTweet tweet=”Call out the contact’s existing work. #contentstrategy from @216_digital http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Call out the contact’s existing work. #contentstrategy from @216_digital “]
67. Make reference to the contact’s existing work. Call out individual article titles or values from an About page—but do it naturally. This shows that you know who you’re talking to, and that you really do share something in common with them.
Read their work. And let them know you read it!
68. Find a reason to get in touch. Remember, this is initial You may not have any content published yet, and that’s okay. We already mentioned sending someone a draft article for critique, but there are tons of other things you can do. For example, you can ask for a critique on your website as a whole. You can ask for tips on developing a social media audience in your niche. You can ask anything that a student might ask a mentor. Fundamentally, people enjoy helping each other out, as long as your question doesn’t take too much of time. Ask for a tip about one thing only, and keep your email short (2-4 lines total) while still demonstrating that you’re a real human and not a robot. If that sounds like a tall order, start practicing now, and take note of what kinds of responses you get with different strategies.
69. Don’t burn bridges. Some people don’t like getting emails from strangers. Other people will try and sell you services or offer to publish your “sponsored content” on their site for a fee. Even if you get responses that you weren’t anticipating, don’t respond with any kind of negative attitude. Keep it positive and professional. You never know when these same contacts might come across your content in the future, and you don’t want a negative impression to stick in their minds.
VI. PUBLICATION PROCESS (9 tips)
70. Work with WordPress. Don’t fight it. WordPress can’t do everything, and that’s okay. Play around with your theme’s limitations, and take notes on what produces acceptable results. Turn these notes into a best practices document and share it with your team.
71. Consider using a paid theme for your blog. Free themes look like a steal until you install them. They don’t offer the level of control that you’ll need to execute powerful content marketing. At 216digital, we’ve had great success with the Avada theme from Theme Forest. It offers near-total control of many aspects of your blog’s design, typography, site structure, and overall impression. Avada comes with the Fusion Builder, a tool that lets you build original, mobile-responsive layouts for your pages and posts. That means you get can implement unique designs for your content marketing pieces without knowing a lick of code.
72. Don’t invest in hand-coded custom development for your individual content marketing pieces. With so many human resources going to research, writing, design, and promotion, you most likely won’t see any ROI for custom development expenses unless you’re working for a big brand. When you can “outsource” beautiful custom layout to a WordPress theme like Avada, there’s no reason to pay for custom dev.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Assign publication tasks to your strongest editors. #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Assign publication tasks to your strongest editors. #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital”]
73. Assign publication tasks to your strongest editors. You’d be surprised at how many issues can arise when you prepare your content in WordPress. Ensure that you assign publication to team members who have a strong eye for quality as regards the final product. If your writers are also your WordPress publishers, get at least one more pair of eyes on their final work. It’s easy to miss problems in the finished product when you’ve worked at the center of a project through all its developmental stages.
74. Make sure all your embedded links open in a new tab. It’s easy to overlook this. When you create a hyperlink in the WordPress editor, it automatically opens in a new tab. Unfortunately, when you paste text with hyperlinks into WordPress from Microsoft Word, you’ll have to manually change each and every link to open in a new tab. If you don’t, a user will leave your page when they click a link, which creates lower average session times on your page. Google interprets low session times as equating with low-value content—exactly what you DON’T want.
75. Consider using Rich Snippets (Schema.org markup). While it isn’t essential, this technique provides search engines with a clearer picture of the structure and focus of your content. That leads to more relevant search results when users search for your keywords—which means you’ll show up, since you did heavy research and spent hours writing a great piece of content which is already highly relevant. Think of Schema.org markup as a way to make your relevancy crystal clear to search engines.
76. Install a social sharing plugin. We recommend Social Warfare, a paid plugin that not only tracks shares accurately, but gives you an incredible range of styling options. Social Warfare allows you to design your share buttons to fit seamlessly into the look and feel of your blog. You can also set a minimum share count for displaying numbers, control the number of decimals to display in share counts over 1000, decide which network share buttons show on your site, and more. Why is this so important? For better or worse, share counts demonstrate your content’s value at a glance. An article with 2.3k shares looks better to link creators than one with 60 shares. The best part? Social Warfare now has an option to start counting Twitter shares again. For content marketers whose niche uses Twitter heavily, this is a godsend.
77. Don’t publish until your piece has been thoroughly vetted in Draft mode. This ensures that no one will happen upon an incomplete or error-riddled live version of your piece. More importantly, it ensures you won’t begin showing a sloppy published version to link creators and publishers who you hope will link to the piece.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Don’t publish until you can spend the rest of the day on initial promotion. #contentmarketing http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Don’t publish until you can spend the rest of the day on initial promotion. #contentmarketing tip “]
78. Don’t publish a piece until you’re ready to spend the rest of the day on initial promotion. Newness really does make a difference. High-quality articles may continue to attract links and shares, but for whatever reason, content generally performs best when it’s promoted heavily right away–especially if it’s timely. Of course, there are technical benefits to coupling publication to promotion in the same day. If you’re using Social Warfare for share counts, that plugin updates share counts about once every hour for posts that are 21 days old. When you click Publish in WordPress, you should be ready to begin initial promotion of the piece on social media. That way, as new share counts come in throughout the day, a buzz will build around your piece.
VII. INITIAL PROMOTION (7 tips)
79. Know your niche’s preferred social networks, but try everything. Especially in the initial stages of building your content marketing campaign, you might be surprised at how your content performs on social networks which you might have overlooked.
80. Think outside the box to raise Facebook share counts on your content. Find Facebook groups related to your content niche, and spend time developing a respected presence there before you post your content. This is especially useful if you join an industry-insider Facebook group. You can post your content to get feedback from professionals in your space. All of those comments and likes will count as shares in your share count plugin, and that makes your content look more valuable when you start heavy promotion.
81. Consider Reddit for niches that have a subreddit on your topic. Of course, you need to be careful and respectful on Reddit. If you join and post your content the same day, you could get shot down. However, if you spend time building a reputable presence on Reddit—a presence related to your niche—it won’t seem out of place when you post your content for feedback and opinions. Make sure you put your post in the appropriate subreddit, and give it a title that fits the feel of that subreddit.
[clickToTweet tweet=”If your content is strong enough, pursue social shares from big publishers. #contentstrategy http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”If your content is strong enough, pursue social shares from big publishers. #contentstrategy “]
82. If your content is strong enough, pursue social shares from big publishers. Major media sources may not link to your content, but they may share it if it fits their niche and doesn’t harm their organizational objectives. At 216digital, we wrote a piece on top-notch graphic designers. We got retweets from AIGA (the American professional association for designers) and HOW Magazine (a major content brand in the design space). This jacked up the visibility of our article in the exact target market which we wanted to hit.
83. In an agency setting, cross-post your content to all appropriate social profiles. If you manage social media for a wide range of clients, and if you have your clients’ permission, consider posting your content to the social accounts of multiple brands. This tip only works when the content aligns with each client’s niche—but it’s easier than you might think. Say you have a client who sells high-quality furniture, and another who sells interior design services. A great piece of content on selecting the perfect furniture for your home is appropriate for both social media accounts.
84. Tweet your content to relevant users (in moderation). If you can’t find a contact on the blog or website in question, follow the brand on Twitter, retweet or favorite a few of their posts, and tweet your content to them with a short, engaging, and relevant message. Include 1-2 relevant hashtags to help related Twitter users find the post, too. Include a relevant, entertaining image in your post to ensure users take action on it.
85. Don’t ignore LinkedIn. Some niche content markets talk almost exclusively on LinkedIn. Post your content to your company profile. If any of your team members want to, they can post it to their personal accounts, too. This is especially effective for creators (writers, designers, etc.) who had a direct hand in creating the piece. Let your team take pride in their work.
VIII. LINK-BUILDING OUTREACH (9 tips)
86. Know your outreach list. Most content marketing campaigns will overlap several related content niches. Not every piece you create is right for every segment of your list. If you didn’t separate your list into sub-niches when you first assembled it (or if you didn’t tag your contacts by sub-niche in BuzzStream), do that before you begin outreach. Make sure you promote your content marketing only to the most targeted segments of your list.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Use outreach email templates, especially in @buzzstream #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Use outreach email templates, especially in @buzzstream #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital”]
87. Use outreach email templates. This is especially easy in BuzzStream, where you can save templates and select them with 2 clicks. Even if you’re doing everything manually, you should prepare your email templates ahead of time and put them through a comprehensive editing process. Your first email draft is never your best.
88. Keep your outreach emails concise, and show value. Everyone is busy. Most people will take a moment to read an email that looks like it offers value. Don’t waste the precious time of bloggers and webmasters in your space. Keep your emails short (2-3 paragraphs, 5-8 lines total) and show the value you’re offering. If you’ve done your research, you’ll get results.
89. Give yourself a quick overview of each contact before you email them. You’ll avoid outreach bloopers, and you may discover new information that will help your efforts—i.e., a new blog post from the contact which you can call out in the email.
90. Flatter, shoot the breeze, and negotiate. You can’t write a cold-call email asking for a link. You have to sell. You have to make people feel special, and you actually have to mean it.
91. Offer your work as a guest post. Not every blog or magazine wants guest posts, so read the about page first! However, if you find an outlet that’s looking for guest posts, and if your piece seems like a good fit, go ahead and pitch it. Small- to mid-size blogs in particular are always looking for new content, and they’re less likely to balk because a piece has appeared elsewhere first. If you find yourself working with bigger hitters, be prepared to offer them exclusive content—something that you haven’t published elsewhere.
92. Call out existing posts and articles that would be even more valuable if they linked to your page. Many bloggers actually appreciate this. Linking to a resource backs up their point, and it makes their post more credible overall. It’s possible that they were too busy to find a resource to link to when they wrote the piece, or that they searched up and down and couldn’t find anything. Pitch your work as a resource!
[clickToTweet tweet=”Find #writers who are great marketing communicators. #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Find #writers who are great marketing communicators. #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital”]
93. Not all writers and creatives are marketing communicators. If you have trained marketers and experienced salespeople on your team, they are the best candidates to do successful link-building outreach for your content marketing campaign. Know your team’s strengths and weaknesses, and assign tasks accordingly.
94. Keep insanely detailed records on your communication with every single contact. Don’t rely on your memory or searching your inbox. If you’re using BuzzStream, you’re in luck. If you’re using a spreadsheet, you’ll need to log every single communication in that spreadsheet manually. Give yourself a cliff’s notes version of the emotional tone of each person’s response each time. (You can do this in BuzzStream too, with the Notes function.) Make a note about opportunities which you can’t follow up on right now, and schedule time for follow-ups. This way, you ensure that if anything is going to stop a link from being built, it won’t be your negligence.
IX. MEASURING YOUR RESULTS (12 tips)
[clickToTweet tweet=”Use Annotations in Google Analytics to mark important dates. #contentmarketing tip @216digital http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Use Annotations in Google Analytics to mark important dates. #contentmarketing tip”]
95. Use Annotations in Google Analytics to mark important dates. You may think you’ll remember when you launched your content marketing campaign, or when you started promoting a particular piece or project. You won’t! Annotations in Google Analytics can help you directly correlate your content marketing efforts with a spike in traffic, link building, or conversions.
96. Use Google Analytics to track how users react to your content pieces. This tip is rather elementary, but it’s worth saying. Under Acquisition, click All Traffic > Channels. Under Default Channel Grouping, click the dropdown box that reads Secondary Dimension. Click Behavior > Landing Page. Now you can see Sessions, Bounce Rate, Average Session Duration, and more for each content piece you’ve published.
97. Use Ahrefs to track links built. Of all the link-building analytics tools out there, we find Ahrefs to be the most consistently valuable. Simply plug the URL of your content piece into the Site Explorer. You’ll see the number of links built to that URL, as well as the number of linking domains. Ahrefs’ data is totally transparent, meaning you can see which links emerged directly as a result of your efforts, and which happened organically. With the ability to see when a link first appeared, Ahrefs lets you correlate links built directly with your efforts in time. However, take note: Ahrefs doesn’t always discover every link built through content marketing.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Use @Mention (mention.com) to track brand mentions. #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Use @Mention (mention.com) to track brand mentions. #contentmarketing tip from @216_digital “]
98. Use Mention.com to track brand mentions. This awesome tool emails you when your name is used, linked or unlinked. We’ve found links this way before they’ve shown up on Ahrefs.
99. Use Analytics to track which sites drive high-quality traffic to your content. Under Acquisition, click All Traffic > Channels. In the list, click Referral. Under Source, click the dropdown menu that reads Secondary Dimension. Click Behavior > Landing Page. Now you can see which domains are sending traffic to your content marketing pieces. This page can also show you “sleeper links”—great links to your content that Ahrefs hasn’t detected.
100. For link-building campaigns, calculate your success rate for every piece. Total up the number of sources to which you promoted the piece. Add 20% more sources to account for the unexpected linking opportunities which a good piece of content should generate. Divide the number of links built (from Ahrefs) by this slightly padded number of opportunities. (Alternately, you can calculate using only the link-building opportunities which you specifically found.) Express this statistic in percent, and track it for every content piece you create. Over time, this will give you insight into what works and what doesn’t in a particular niche.
101. Use Google Analytics to determine your most valuable social network. Under Social (left-hand panel), click on Landing Pages. Click on the content page you want to analyze. Take note of total sessions, total pageviews, and average session duration. Over time, as you track these stats for every content piece you publish, you’ll gain insight into which networks bring you the most value for the specific goals of your content marketing campaign.
102. Compare Analytics to your share counts. Divide Sessions per social network by total shares in that network. The result is your click-thru rate on that network, not generally available on social posts which you haven’t promoted. This metric will help you understand how users reacted to your content. Were they compelled to click, or did they simply like, comment, or share without even reading it? You can use this data to evaluate your content titles. Are your titles hooking readers, or do they tell the whole story already?
103. Know your demographic, and compare that to device sessions per content piece. In Analytics, under Audience, click Mobile > Overview. Under Device Category, click the dropdown that reads Secondary Dimension. Click Behavior > Landing Page. You’ll see Sessions, Average Session Duration, Bounce Rate, and more for all your pages, by device type. This can give you insight into your content marketing audience’s experience on tablet and mobile. If your target market includes a high proportion of mobile users (as it almost certainly does), this data can show you whether you’re hitting the mark for those mobile users or not.
104. In Webmaster Tools, monitor your search queries for new keywords. As your content marketing campaign continues to grow, branching out into new related niches, new search queries will start leading people to your site. Analyze these new keywords in a tool like SEMrush to determine what sort of value they have (or don’t have) to your organizational objectives. Allow this information to inform your future content marketing efforts.
105. Track the direct monetization of your content marketing. Using Annotations in Analytics, determine how many leads or conversions you got in the period of your promotion. Go deep, and think outside the box here: continue tracking this stat outside the period of direct promotion, and base your timetable on the amount of traffic still coming to your content piece after promotion has ended. (You can find that using Tip #58 above.) Triangulate this data with site referral data per piece (Tip #60 above), looking at conversions. This process will show you where your most highly-monetized traffic from content marketing is coming from. Use this information strategically in future content marketing efforts.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Monitor domain authority across the life of your #contentmarketing campaign. #seo @216_digital http://bit.ly/1poOzCy” quote=”Monitor domain authority across the life of your #contentmarketing campaign. #seo @216_digital “]
106. With the Moz bar, monitor your domain authority across the life of your content marketing campaign. Link-building is not the only possible goal of content marketing, but domain authority (which goes up as you get high-quality backlinks) is a great high-level metric on the results of your content marketing. If you’re creating valuable content that’s perfectly targeted to delight a niche and set of related niches, you will get links. Over time, as you follow best practices in other SEO areas as well as build high-quality links with content marketing, your domain authority will rise.
The Bottom Line
Content marketing doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With clear goals, a detailed plan, and dedicated work, you can establish your organization as a thought leader in your niche. We hope these tips help you on your road to content marketing success. Want to see how content marketing and link building can build real value into your business? Get in touch today.
The days of rocking SEO with spam links are over. Today’s SEO game is all about building high-quality, high-authority, contextual backlinks.
Google is smarter than ever, and that means webmasters need to get on board. Link-building services ensure that your site publishes great content marketing—the kind of stellar content that publishers in your niche actually want to link to. When your amazing articles and blog posts get high-authority links in your niche and related niches, your overall domain authority goes up—which means your sales pages (the money makers) start ranking better, too.
Over time, link-building services build real value into your domain. But how does this actually happen? How does “link juice” (the industry term for the authority that Google values) get passed from one website to another?
We’ve answered that question with this animated infographic. Check it out!
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Link-Building Services: Real Links from Legit Websites = Real Results.
How are link building services different from general SEO efforts? Glad you asked. SEO is a broad area of practice that encompasses many elements. Link building is a subset of general SEO efforts, but it’s one of the most important. After Google’s algorithm updates in recent years, white-hat link building is arguably the ONLY legitimate way to aggressively pursue higher rankings in Google search. White-hat link building works because it respects the needs of real human readers—something which the old spammy tactics didn’t do.
We’ve outlined our entire link-building strategy above in one diagram. But what’s happening here? If you’re new to the SEO game, that’s a lot to digest. We’ve broken down the link building process into 7 steps. Read on!
1 – Content Market Research
That’s not a typo. This isn’t only content marketing research, but content MARKET research. You’re entering a content market with its own unwritten rules. You need to know what you’re doing.
Any link building service that’s worth its salt will ground your project in data. That means finding out what types of content are ranking for your keywords already. With backlink analysis tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush, link builders analyze high-performing pieces of content to see who’s linking to them and where they’re ranking.
But this stage of research isn’t only about hard data. The best link builders are also highly-practiced readers and flexible professional writers. They pick up contextual clues and intangible qualities surrounding a content niche, and they file these things away so they can write in the same voice (but even better) when they write for you.
2 – Creative Brainstorming
After all this research, link builders take hordes of data plus intangible clues and start brainstorming topics. The goal here is fantastic content that will delight audiences. The key is knowing how to differentiate between audience types and write for multiple audiences in the same piece—a secret which few link builders will divulge to anyone but their clients.
3 – Writing and Revising
The writing process gives shape to the data findings and creative brainstorming which the link building team has developed. This is where ideas are crystalized into fantastic articles, blog posts, infographics, and more. The best link builders know not to rush this phase, as it can lead to bad copy, typos, and factual errors.
4 – Publication
Believe it or not, this isn’t a simple matter of copy and paste. Depending on the CMS (content management system) settings, a lot of things will need to be reformatted inside the blog editor. For example, an article composed in Microsoft Word, with images included in the copy, can’t simply be copied and pasted over to WordPress. Each image must be uploaded individually through the WordPress media uploader, and each image may need its HTML rendering manually adjusted so the image will resize on mobile screens. Publication is not a stage for skimping, either; no one wants to get partway through promotion and find that an image has broken the layout of the post.
5 – Outreach and Promotion
There’s an old saying: “the publish-and-pray approach is dead.” That’s more true than ever. As writers and marketers ourselves, we believe that a piece of content only deserves as much effort in creation as it will receive in promotion. A great piece of content is dead in the water without a plan to expose it to the audience that will eat it up.
Here’s where initial research of your content market comes in handy again. With all the research you did, you should have a vast list of webmasters, bloggers, and publishers who will be interested in your content. If you did your research right, this list is promotion gold. Of course, the list alone isn’t enough to guarantee success. You have to talk the talk. Professional link builders are quick at picking up the feel of a particular discourse space, and they’re also well-versed in best practices that ensure their emails get opened, read, and replied to. No step can be the most important step, but outreach is pretty darn close to that.
6 – Incoming: LINKS!
It’s true. If the content marketing strategy was executed properly from the beginning (including such stages as link creator research, topic research, and outreach communication style), your content pieces will actually get links. Real, contextual, high-value links from sites within your niche and related niches.
7 – A Rising Tide Raises All Ships… Generally… With a Caveat.
When links are distributed fairly evenly across a good number of articles and pages on your site, your domain authority will go up. Domain authority is one of the biggest factors Google considers when assembling rankings. However, note that links to a page don’t always equate with a higher domain authority. Too many links to one page alone, and Google will see that page as having more value than your domain as a whole. This is not necessarily a problem, especially if that page is the most important part of your website; however, in this situation, the concentration of links to that page will not help raise your overall domain authority as much as a distributed link profile will.
The Bottom Line
Link building services are the ultimate SEO strategy for the white-hat world. White-hat link building works, and it directly improves your SEO when it’s done right.
However, it’s not a simple solution. Researching a content market, writing high-value content, and maintaining relationships with link creators in your niche is an ongoing, time-consuming process. Many companies see great value in outsourcing their link building needs. At 216digital, Inc., we practice white-hat link building for a wide variety of clients. You can learn more about our white-hat link building services here.
Now that you have your website ready to go the next thing to tackle is your marketing strategy. To start, look at your past marketing data to see how your business performed during previous years. This will make it easier to plan a marketing strategy as you’ll have a better idea of what worked and what didn’t.
Once you have that data, you can start to plan for the future holiday season. And the following tips will help you put your best foot forward!
