Quality Content Creation
A lot of ecommerce sites are thin and wide, by that I mean they have lots of products but no detail about them. Here is the product, here is the price, here?s a picture of it. You wanna buy?
If you desperately want that specific product at that specific time for that specific price then you will buy.
SEO can work wonders for the “desperate to buy crowd” You want something desperately, you tap into Google, go to the website, tap in the credit card and you have your purchasing fix.
But what proportion of the entire market is made up of product hunter buyers?
I have no idea. But I do know that most purchasing decisions are emotional and that people like to buy from organisations and people they trust, from people they have a relationship with.
So how the hell can you have a relationship with a site that is thin and wide, which is simply a catalogue site. Making little or no attempt to have a relationship with customers?
Particularly in a crowded market. What will differentiate a new catalogue website from the older, more established sites? In a market that is not crowded a thin, catalogue site may have a chance.
Most of the sites in this area I look at treat SEO as an after thought and even then, SEO is simply not going to be enough.
It is not enough to be number one in Google anymore.
People have moved on from the wonders of the WWW and now treat it as a tool to get what they want. Being on the first page of Google will help, but what happens when you get to the site and all you find is a collection of things to buy.
Having quality content on your site which is useful and solves prospective customers problems will earn trust and build your brand. It will eventually earn you sales.
You may think people only use the Internet to buy stuff.
You are wrong!
People use the Internet to have an experience, for the possibility of experiencing something wonderful. If you are a regular reader of this blog you probably already knew that.
Ways an ecommerce site can add experience.
- Providing articles that solve problems
- Include customer reviews
- Allow a community to grow on the site.
- Allow customers to build wish lists
- Provide a blog for people to give feedback to the sites announcements
- Make available articles which enhance the pre sell experience
- Have a blog where the passion and knowledge of the staff shine
No one does this better than the Daddy of ecommerce sites, Amazon
This week I had the classic, “I don’t want no bloody free community of wasters on my website, they can buy the stuff or piss off”. Sadly, I come across this attitude far too often.
Lego have got rid of their R & D department, they let the “free community of wasters” on their website provide cutting edge design ideas. Passionate customers who have ownership of the company provide free product development. Amazing.
Of course going the quality content route can cost money, but then so does most effective marketing solutions. But if you run a business, you are usually knowledgeable and passionate about your products or services and will usually have a lot to say to your customers. Setting up the systems to allow communication between the seller and the buyer, once set up, can be very effective.
I see a need for helping ecommerce outlets in areas of online marketing other than SEO. Not to denigrate SEO in any way, but it’s just another tool in the toolbox.
I am thinking offering a service for blog marketing, social media marketing, linkbaiting (which I do already), copywriting and article creation.
There are such services out there already, but they tend not to concentrate on cutting edge marketing techniques like “How to use youtube to sell your business”, or which social network is best to get leverage, and which social media to target linkbait to.
Sometimes all a business needs is a good, solid article a week. It fills out the site, gives people a reason to return, provides Google food, communicates to the customer, can pre sell specific items.
I think the reason it is hard for most ecommerce outlets to invest in such marketing is education, they simply do not understand the power of such techniques.
How much is quality content creation worth?
It’s worth a customer.