E-commerce – it’s time to start adding value.
I’ve blogged before at length about some of the things I personally feel e-commerce sites are doing wrong, and can do better. However in my opinion, one of the fundamental problems with e-commerce on the web is that retailers think about an online shop in the same way they do an offline bricks and mortar store.
Build it and they will come complacency
In the implementation of their e-commerce store they think in terms of “put the stock in the window, and people will come and buy it”. This sort of methodology doesn’t work on the web for a variety of reasons.
No promotional strategy online
Firstly – there is no traffic to a web store without promotional methods. With a traditional store, if you have a shop in the centre of a busy town or shopping precinct, you will get visitors who come in for a look out of pure curiousity. This just won’t happen on the web unless you are a well established brand and have direct type in traffic for your site.
Not prepared to work hard think again?
In the offline world, brands can throw money at advertising to gain exposure, but the great thing about the web is that in the case of Google at least, hard work tends to pay off quicker. With the majority of sites receiving their traffic from Google this is both a blessing and a curse, depending on how you look at it.
Many smaller retailers complain that they don’t have the time to put in the effort with a blog or creating content on their site. Well, prepare to fail online then, or at least fail to grow significantly. Running any shop is hard work, and an online one is no different. Add to that, the fact that comparision shopping websites are extremely accessible means that prices online are driven down to super competitive levels. So you need to bring something else to the table. For my own website, my blog is the biggest area of growth and accounts for 70% of my traffic. Go figure.
With an offline store there are two (main) variables to success.
1) Choice of products
2) Location Location Location
With an online store there are also a couple of main variables to success
1) Choice of products
2) Website visibility and Brand awareness
3) Added value compared to the millions of other e-commerce sites.
Your visitors are in the dark
Online, whilst there may be (potentially millions) of people milling around, they can’t see your store because you haven’t provided them with any links in order to find you. When you launch a webstore or any website for that matter, you can think of all of the potential visitors online as being analogous to being in the dark. You have to provide them with the lighting to follow to your front door. Some websites have brighter lights than others, and thus are found more easily.
The ones with the most links, and the great search engine presence are generally the ones which receive the most visits. Larger shops such as Topshop or Asos obviously have a bit of a head start here, as they have brand recognition already.
However, smaller independant retailers can still gain advantage over these guys by following the exact same strategy they do in the high street. By adding value.
Adding Value
I’ve read a great little blog recently about a retailer that quit their job, to start selling napkins online. If you think that this is just a small little niche that couldn’t possibly make money online, you’d be wrong. In that particular example, they added value by showing users various ways to fold their napkins in a unique and innovative way, via a blog.
It’s a great example of how to go about adding value to your store, in order to maximise profits, and traffic to your site. Sticking social media (see social media guide for e-commerce) bookmarking icons on a site isn’t going to set the world on fire either, if you’ve just got a boring old “here’s our products, and here’s the buy button” – strategically, you aren’t using the web to it’s optimum effect. You really need to dig deep and shake off corporate boring online. Some blogs in the retail world could do with a good shake. (Some have cleaned up somewhat since that post).
The real wins are to be had when you start creating useful content of your own, or indeed user generated content.
A couple of ideas
So what sort of content could you implement within an online store? Here’s a couple of mine
1) Write about the product acquisition process – how does your buyers decide what to bring in for next season. Ask your users opinion on trends.
2) Create a video of someone using the product in a unique way
3) Write about latest trends involving your product (i.e. fashion news)
4) Write about technology developments in the market your product exists
5) Write a tutorial to create something involving your product (see napkin folding blog mentioned earlier)
6) Create a competition to give away some of your products, ask a few bloggers to post about it
7) Ask your users for pictures of them using the product that other website visitors can rate
8) Post content about a subset of your business i.e. if you are selling gardening products, write about growing flowers
9) List the suppliers and other websites you use on a links page, these people may link back to you. You may even be able to drive prices down by offering a link.
10) Ask your employees to post their thoughts and interests (moderated) and turn it into a company ethos blog.
With every business model out there, there is additional scope for promoting your products further online. It is just a matter of sitting down and deciding which ones are worthy.
Brands adding value
I understand that Asos.com is in the process of creating a social network around their website. Their community blog is a perfect example of how they are adding value – before the social network is even built. Users get to see progress via the blog, and updates are being pushed out via their various Asos Twitter accounts. The growth of Twitter as a platform isn’t however something that they have kneejerk reacted to. All of the accounts are actively manned by James, Julia, Chloe, Fiona , Natalie, Nat and Carli. (If I’ve missed you comment me and I’ll add you in).
They are not however, some automated robot telling visitors they’ve posted something new. This is a mistake that some retailers have made in relation to Twitter. It’s not however- some magic bullet.
The new site design received a mention on Smashing Magazine amongst others, and the team took feedback on board directly from the visitors following them on Twitter. No doubt a link and boost in traffic as the result of active participation and adding value online. This is just one example of how brands and larger sites are adding value, but the principles could be applied to any retailer. Small indie or otherwise.
The seo value
So how does all this extra content help? Some might say it clutters the site and makes it difficult to make buying decisions, however I disagree. If you are trying to get visitors to make an emotional connection to a product and really want it, you are going to have to do more than just show – you have to tell the story as well. Amazon have done it with reviews of products, and Asos are a work in progress. But don’t take my word for it. Matt Cutts recently spoke about how to go about optimising an e-commerce site for more traffic from Google, which speaks volumes. You can watch the video below to see what Google’s opinion on added value is.
Ultimately you can’t expect to compete with the thousands of other websites selling the exact same product – without adding some sort of value to differentiate your brand and products.
