Content ideas for your ecommerce store

Published on May 26, 2012 Content ideas for your ecommerce store

Both of the major search engines, Google and Bing, have signalled their intention to promote quality content as a major factor in search engine rankings in the future. So if you’re opening an online shop, your success in the search engines will be partially dependent on how well you can create a website that’s more relevant to end users than your competitors.

An online store is different from a text-based website that relies on advertising to earn money. Click-throughs to your products and getting your customers to add them to their carts is an essential element of success. How do you do that, when you and your competitors sell the same products?

There are a number of ways you can build good quality content for your ecommerce store even if you sell the same products as others. Here are some ideas that you could use for your store:

• Write unique and powerful category descriptions
• Include additional images – multiple angles for example – to give the visitor a good sense of the products they are buying
• Write unique and useful product descriptions. You can’t change the manufacturer’s specs but you might want to mention or highlight a key benefit in your product description that will make the product more appealing to your particular target audience.
• Use featured products that change regularly, and write interesting content on your featured content pages.
• Find an unusual way to use a product that you have in your store and write a content page about it. Use photos, embedded videos from You Tube and other rich media in the page to attract interest from your potential customers
• Write a how to guide that’s different from what your competitors write. For example, if you are selling clothing there are plenty of size charts and measurement guides on sites but could you approach things in a different way. If you sell US based clothing for example, could you create a guide for how Australians can work out their ideal US based size to buy the right one from you?
• Make sure that your content and policies are complete and thorough. But don’t overload your customers with legal babble – write clearly and make your policies into benefits where you can.
• Identify the areas where you have an advantage over competitors and write articles highlighting the topics that are the competitor’s weaknesses. If you can get your products to customers faster than your main competitors, then write about how frustrating it is to wait forever to get an item from an online store and how you do it differently. If you have a particular innovation in your products then focus on that.
• Multiple articles about the same things are okay, provided each has its own different angle. If someone read all of your similar articles in a row would they get bored? If so, then you have not written something unique enough and should review your content.
• Include Reviews in your store and encourage your customers to review the products on their Facebook pages. If you’re an Ozcart™ customer, you can use the automated email follow up tool in the cart to email customers and ask them for a review after they buy. The worst they can do is turn you down or ignore you after all. If you believe in your products, don’t be scared of reviews.
• If you’re a wholesaler who publishes your registered distributors, write features on each of them – they’ll appreciate the plug and probably promote it to their customers too. If you don’t publish distributors, you should check before implementing this strategy as your distributors might be upset to let their competition know they’re buying from you.
• Publish special offers and coupon codes on your blog – or start a contest that can be entered via a blog page. Drive advertising traffic directly to your content page.
• Create landing pages for promotions that you are running – your landing page may be a category page in your store if the promotion is about a specific category of products, or a standalone content page using your store’s content pages editor.
• Write product comparisons. People may have trouble deciding between a number of products you sell, so a focus on the pros and cons of particular products could be particularly useful for you.
• Ask an authority figure, business associate or supplier in the industry to contribute a guest post on your website. They might promote the article to their own customer base, in turn growing interest in your business.
• Publish store news – if you’re launching a major new campaign or doing something special tell the world about it in your blog. It will also be on your specials page on your website but in the blog you have another chance for your customers to find out about it – especially if they are searching Google’s “blog pages” posts.
• Include profiles on yourself or your key people – people love stories and the more personalised and real you can make yourself, the more you will connect with your audience.
• Start a club using the group pricing discounts tool on your website and encourage customers to apply for it. Write club news on to the blog. Those who are in the club will keep reading it to find out what’s going on, and those not in the club might be enticed to sign up an account with you rather than just be “guest” buyers.

There are many more content ideas that you can implement in building up your site. The techniques that work well for radio stations can also be put to good work on an online shop website to build up interest – like sponsorships, giveaways, community involvement, polls are just a few. The key thing is to produce unique, interesting and relevant content on top of your products to drive interest in your site and improve the chance of click-throughs to the cart.