Tips On Turning Your Brick & Mortar Store Into An Online Success

If you’re a retail store owner that hasn’t made the leap into eCommerce yet, it might be considerably more straightforward than you think. The barriers to entry for starting an online store have become considerably lower in recent years, especially with powerful platforms like Shopify. 

As you probably know, the retail industry has been rapidly changing over the past decade due to online shopping, big box stores, and mobile technology. So if you’ve been thinking about bringing your business online, now is as good a time as any to take the plunge.

To help you get started, we’ve compiled some helpful tips to help first-time eCommerce store owners. 

Do Some Market Research

Before you start building your store, it’s good to do a little market research.  Look closely at what the top online retailers in your space are doing. Focus on how they are organizing their websites, what the websites look like, and any areas where you feel you may have a competitive advantage.

You should also spend some time researching different eCommerce platforms, digital marketing platforms, and digital marketing case studies in your industry. The eCommerce platform you choose must work well with the third-party services you intend to utilize once your site is live.

One of the reasons that so many website owners choose Shopify as their eCommerce platform is because of how easily it integrates with services like Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and eBay, to name a few. 

Once you better understand the eCommerce landscape, the next thing you’ll want to do is pick an eCommerce platform. 

Pick An eCommerce Platform

There are a few popular eCommerce platforms available today.  The top 4 platforms are Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, and WooCommerce. However, when it comes to launching your first website, the Shopify platform is one of the easiest to get up and running quickly.

When choosing a platform, you should consider your need for product organization, eCommerce capabilities, and any special features you may need on your website. Read reviews on the platforms, watch review videos on YouTube, and schedule platform demos. 

If you’re unsure of the right platform for your needs, you can also reach out to a few website design companies to discuss your project. Typically, web designers offer free consultations and can make helpful suggestions for your project planning. 

While you may not realize it, changing between eCommerce platforms is no easy task. Make sure that the platform you choose meets your long-term needs and will be capable of growing with your business. 

Create A Website Hierarchy

Once you’ve decided on the eCommerce platform you’ll be using, the next thing you should do is develop your website hierarchy.  Plan out a category structure that logically breaks down your product catalog.  

You can use programs like Microsoft Excel, Mac Numbers, or even Google Sheets to make your category planning a little easier. It also helps to use industry-leading websites as inspiration for organizing your site.

Depending on the size of your catalog, you may want to have one or even two levels of sub-categories beneath your top-level categories. It’s good to segment out categories with more than 100 products to ensure that no products get buried too deep within any category group.

Once you’ve finished establishing your category structure, you can start building your product content and data feed.

Compile Product Content  

No matter what kind of products you’re selling, it’s important to provide your potential customers with plenty of product information to help them make purchasing decisions. This means that at a bare minimum, you should have well-written product descriptions, product features, product specs (when applicable), and excellent product photos. 

Write Website Content

The first thing you should do is create all of the content you will need for your website. This includes any text content you’ll need for your home page, about page, category pages, and product pages.   

Whether you realize it or not, having all of your website content written ahead of time will streamline the website creation and product creation process. When writing the text for pages like your home page or about page, it’s good to aim for about 400 – 500 words minimum. Product descriptions and category descriptions can be shorter but should still be at least 250 to 300 words.  

Compile Product Photos

You’ll also want to make sure you have all of your product photos shot, edited, and optimized before getting too far into the web design process. Great product photos are integral to eCommerce success, so it’s important to have this piece of the puzzle figured out ahead of time.

If you have the budget for it, it’s always best to hire a professional photographer to shoot your photos. This will save you time and ensure you end up with a great final product. However, if a professional photographer doesn’t fit into your budget, here’s an article to help you shoot quality photos yourself.

Create Product Spreadsheet

Now that you’ve compiled your product details, photos, and other relevant information, it’s time to build your product data feed. 

No matter what eCommerce platform you end up moving forward with, it’s a good idea to build out a product data feed in a spreadsheet. Most modern eCommerce platforms have easy-to-use import and export features and will provide you with a spreadsheet template to make things easy.  

Here are import templates for a few of the more popular eCommerce platforms.

Shopify Import Template

BigCommerce Import Template

Your product data feed should include data points like product title, product description, product price, page title, page description, product image file name references, product inventory, and any other relevant product information.

After completing your initial import, it’s good practice to create a new export file from within your eCommerce platform any time you plan to do a new product import. This will ensure that no product details or inventory counts are overwritten with incorrect information. 

It’s also a good idea to use product information management tools and catalog-management tools to better control your products. These types of applications will also allow you to synchronize your product data across multiple channels, saving you time as your online business expands.

Build Your Website

So by now, you’ve done your market research, sourced your website content, and created your product data feed. Now it’s time to get down to business and build your website. 

Like with your product photos, it’s always best to hire a professional to build your website if you have the budget. However, if you’re looking for a low-cost way to get up and running, plenty of excellent commercial theme options are available. 

Choosing A Theme

No matter what eCommerce platform you choose to build your site on, there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of commercial themes available for you to choose from. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a theme is a pre-built website layout that you can populate with your products and information.

You’ll have the ability to set custom images, your branding, custom navigation items, and display all of your products; however, further customization can sometimes be tricky. When choosing a theme, it’s best to pick something as close to “perfect” as possible so that you don’t spend too much time or money on website customization. 

There are several great places to find themes for an eCommerce website. Here are a few of the more popular options.

1. Shopify Theme Store
2. BigCommerce Theme Store
3. ThemeForest
4. Magento Themes
5. Template Monster

Setting up a theme is usually pretty straightforward. Still, if you’re not very tech-savvy or just want some professional assistance, you can typically have the theme professionally set up for a low, flat fee. 

It’s always good to set up your theme using demo data or demo product information when you’re just getting started. This will make it a bit more efficient to get all of the theme settings and options configured how you’d like them to be without spending too much time worrying about importing your data. 

Importing Product Content

Once you’ve finished setting up your theme with the demo data, it’s time to get your actual product data imported into the website. Before getting started, it’s usually a good idea to delete all of the demo product content first, so you’re starting with a fresh slate.

Depending on the size of your catalog, the process can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes.  After you do your initial import, take some time to browse through the front and backend of the website.

Ensure that all category assignments are correct, the images assigned to the products are accurate, and there are no strange characters or formatting in your product descriptions. It may take trial and error to ensure your import file is perfect, but it’s crucial to ensure your product information is correct before launching your website. 

Website Testing

Once you’ve finished importing and verifying your product content, you’re almost ready to launch your eCommerce store. Before you open your digital doors to the world, it’s essential to do some testing first. 

The first thing you should do is go through every step of the customer journey yourself. Search for products, filter through your categories, add products to the cart, and go through checkout. 

Try to identify bugs, bottlenecks, or anything else that may make it complicated for everyday customers to find and check out what they’re looking for. If you’re using a commercial theme, it’s less likely that there will be any significant bugs, but it’s always a good idea to test anyways. 

Once you’ve finished doing some testing on your own, you should bring in a few other people to perform some testing.  Having friends, family, and colleagues perform their testing will help uncover any user experience pain points, bottlenecks, and website bugs you may have missed in your testing.  

Build Brand Visibility

Once you’ve finished testing your website, it’s time to push your website live!  Unlike physical retail businesses, opening your doors does not mean that anyone will come to your website. You’ll need to build some brand visibility online to get people on your site. 

Be Active On Social Media

The first thing you should do is create profiles on the top social media channels if you haven’t already. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Depending on your specific customer base, there may also be a few industry-specific social media channels worth signing up for. 

Getting attention on social media takes more work than simply setting up a profile, though.  Do a little research into the content your competitors and industry leaders are publishing.  Think about ways to promote your products while still keeping the content engaging. 

It’s also important to stay consistent with your posts. You don’t need to post something new every single day, but it’s essential to set a reasonable schedule for yourself and stick to it.  If it’s easier for you to create a bunch of content at once, several tools are available like Hubspot, Hootsuite, and SocialHP that will help you schedule posts in advance.  

As you grow your audience on social media, give your audience a mix of different content. In addition to sharing your products and promotions, share relevant articles, videos, and other content that they may find interesting or valuable. 

Reach Out To Industry Influencers

Another great way to bring attention to your online store is to have industry influencers talk about your products or brand. 

Start by identifying bloggers, Instagram personalities, and video content creators with an audience similar to your ideal customer. For example, if you sell jewelry and accessories, reaching out to content creators in the fashion and beauty space would make sense.

It’s usually a good idea to do your influencer outreach in a few steps. Start by building a spreadsheet of ‘target’ influencers. Make sure to include things like the influencer’s name, website or social media profile address, the size of their audience, and any other relevant metrics that you may have. 

Once you’ve finished building your outreach list, the next thing you’ll want to do is write a couple of email variations to use for your outreach. Include a little information about your brand, products, and what you’re expecting from the influencer. If you’re willing to send out free products or samples, include that in your email. 

Now it’s time to start reaching out to influencers. Remember, influencer outreach is a numbers game, so reach out to plenty of content creators. If you send out 100 emails and get 10-20 responses, you’re ahead of the curve. 

Keep in mind that depending on the influencer and the size of their audience, they may ask you to pay sponsorship fees or advertising fees and send them a free product. It’s a good idea to have a mix of influencers with small, medium, and large audiences to ensure many feasible opportunities. 

Invest In Digital Marketing

In addition to being active on social media and reaching out to industry influencers, you may also want to invest in digital marketing for your website.  Digital marketing is a term that encompasses a wide range of strategies and tactics. 

When developing a digital marketing strategy, it’s good to diversify as much as your budget allows. 

First and foremost, spend a little time optimizing your website for search engines. Ranking well in Google and other search engines is an excellent way to keep a steady stream of qualified traffic coming to your website. There are also no direct costs associated with ranking in Google, making SEO one of the most profitable and cost-effective ways to build an eCommerce store.

Even when you’ve done everything right, it can take anywhere from 6 months to a year to start ranking for your target keywords. If you don’t want to wait for your site to start ranking, there are several other ways to get qualified customers on your website more quickly.

One of the more popular ways to drive new customers to an eCommerce store is Facebook and Instagram advertising.  Facebook and Instagram offer a relatively low-cost way to share your content and product advertising with a broader audience you may not be able to reach with your organic social media posts. 

It’s important to solidify your sales pitch before you start paying for ads. Figure out your competitive advantage: low prices, fast shipping, exclusive products, or some other angle. 

Ensure that your ads are clear and concise when communicating the message with your audience. The typical attention span of someone scrolling through a Facebook or Instagram feed is pretty minimal. Hence, it’s important to put the offer in front of them as quickly as possible to maximize your ad spend. 

The Benefits Of Launching An eCommerce Store

Launching an eCommerce website can transform a traditional retail business. Doing business online allows you to promote your products to customers well outside your geographical location, operate with lower overhead, and move a lot more of your inventory if all goes according to plan.

If you’re thinking about bringing your retail store online, you should consider content marketing as part of your overall marketing strategy. If you’re interested in learning more about how we can attract thousands of new customers to your website every month with content, click here to contact us today.

8 Creative Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses (For Every Budget!)

What if you had the greatest idea in the world but no one ever heard of it?

You’re proud of your small business and know-how wonderful your products and services are. However, it takes good marketing to let the world know about everything you have to offer.

To truly stand out, you’re going to need some creative marketing ideas. Here are just a few of our favorites!

1. Kings and Queens of Content

If you’re reading this, you want ideas to advertise your business. However, customers don’t want “advertising”: they want content.

The key to bringing new visitors to your site and creating returning visitors is providing original content. And the best content offers actionable value to the reader.

Let’s say you sell furniture. Original articles about how to decorate a living room or safely move furniture into the house are invaluable for your readers.

Of course, there is subtle marketing magic going on with this content. By providing instructions on how to best use your products, you ensure that more people will feel empowered to buy those products.

2. Curating Content

As we’ve noted, customers want original content. In addition to creating your own, you should try becoming an online content curator.

The idea is simple. You create articles that collect links to other content that your customers might find valuable.

Customers’ love of curation is why we have so many “Top 10” articles and videos online. Simply put, people have the desire to experience awesome content but don’t often have the time to find it on their own.

Try to curate content that has few (or no) other curators. In this way, you can corner this particular market while building loyalty for your small business.

3. Google My Business

National and even international marketing are very important to your business. However, you will get the most results from robust local marketing.

One of the best local marketing tools is Google My Business. And here’s the best news: it’s completely free!

This online tool helps make your business more visible when people are searching. Your business will now appear on Google Maps and its info will be on both the Knowledge Panel and Local Panel of a Google Search.

To get started, all you must do is fill out your Google profile. Be sure to answer each section as thoroughly as possible!

4. Calling to Action

Once you’ve crafted awesome online content for your small business, your task isn’t over. Your next step is to make sure each piece of content has a solid call to action.

You may be able to win customer loyalty and attention with helpful content. But this doesn’t help you until you steer them towards a relevant link on your website.

If you’ve written a guide to modern decorating, make it end with a link to your latest accessories. If done well, such a CTA is seamless: just as your content helped inform the customer, your link provides a solution they now know they need.

5. Guest Posting

Guest posting is one of our favorite ways of marketing via content. And it’s a marketing tool that works in two different ways.

When you write for other high-authority sites, it helps to build your brand. Furthermore, it makes your own business look high-quality because your content is appearing alongside the content of an established business leader.

You should also invite other thought leaders to write online content for your site. This builds up your authority while also inviting fans of the visiting writer to experience your website for the very first time.

6. Video Marketing

Once upon a time, video marketing seemed like a fad. Now, video is very clearly here to stay.

Your customers are accustomed to streaming video content whenever they want and wherever they are. Because of this, they now expect video to be a common part of other online experiences such as social media.

It’s true that video marketing takes more time and money than other forms of marketing. Fortunately, you can get a lot of mileage out of a single video.

For example, a well-shot video can be used as a commercial for local advertising. And it can be used to advertise your business via Youtube.

And you can cross-promote that video as well. Place it at the top of a relevant blog to add value, or post it on social media and watch it go viral!

7. Research the Trends

Does your small business have its fingers on the pulse? The best way to do this is to stay on top of both national and local trends.

For example, Google Trends lets you see the search frequency of specific terms and terms related to your query. This lets you analyze whether something is still hot and trending or if consumers have moved on to the next thing.

Be sure to leverage your research into local SEO. This helps you attract local customers who are most likely to become part of your sales funnel.

Finally, don’t forget to build local citations to your engaging content. These kinds of highly-specific citations help establish your authority to a local audience. And it further separates your original content from any similar (but more generic) content customers may find online.

8. Social Media Marketing

Our final creative marketing idea is one you can do right from the coach: social media marketing!

As we mentioned before, social media is a free and easy way to cross-promote your other content. You can share all of those videos and articles you have created with potential fans online.

Social media also creates a sense of community. Your biggest fans will share your posts and expand your brand.

Finally, social media lets people quickly message you. This kind of easy accessibility helps win customers over.

Grow Your Small Business With These Creative Marketing Ideas

Now you know some creative marketing ideas. However, do you know who can bring it all together for you?

We are a company specializing in SEO, web design, branding, and more. To see how we can grow your small business, just contact us today!

Generate A Google Review Link In 2 Easy Steps

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that Google Reviews are an important factor when it comes to your online success. Google Reviews not only give your business authority and trustworthiness, but they are also a ranking factor in local search results.

It’s not always easy to ask your clients or customers to review your business, so when you are able to, it’s always a good idea to make the process as easy as possible for them. Sending clients a link that will bring them directly to the review form is obviously the best bet, but unfortunately, Google doesn’t make this an easy thing to do.

How To Generate A Google Review Link

Generating a Google Review link is actually pretty easy to do, you’ll just need to follow 2 steps.

1. First, you’ll need to find your “Place ID”. Start by going to the Google Place ID Finder and searching for your business name. Once you find your business, click the name and verify the location on the map. The map card that points to your location will include the Place ID. Copy the ID.
2. Now just paste your Place ID into the link below replacing the placeholder with your ID.
   https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid={PLACE ID HERE}

Using our business as an example, the final URL would look something like this: https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=ChIJ8wdEEj2r2YgR-BS9gUBdK_k

Now, just paste the link into a browser to test it. When the page loads, a form should pop up asking you to review your business.

Once you’ve confirmed your Google Review link is working, you can now send it to your clients and customers to review your business.