"Basics of e-commerce" (part 1): How to take care of content marketing

In Merixstudio we develop e-commerce sites on daily basis, usually with the usage of Magento technology, and because of that experience we can share the knowledge we gathered for many years with our customers and readers .

Content in e-commerce - how to deal with it?

Content is both information carrier and a way to communicate with the client. In combination with other activities, relating mainly marketing, it builds the clear and coherent image of our brand in customers mind.

When creating content, whether it’s a website or online shop, we should always take under the consideration the consistency with which we perform all of the brand communication. Content can be categorize into two groups:

• graphical - all pictures, graphics, icons, movies,
• textual – all the naming, product descriptions, info about the company, messages.

Graphical content

The most important thing that we have to pay attention to is proper usage of product photos. If we have those, it is well advised to take a good look at them and rethink whether they are in good quality or are coherent with each other and pleasant to look at. If they are not satisfactory (or if we yet do not have them) it is worth the price to hire a professional product photographer. High quality and well prepared product pictures are the key in gaining trust in customers and encouraging them to buy our goods.
Some types of products, such as clothes, might need photos that are taken from variety on angles. It is a good idea to use videos in this situation – thanks to that our potential customer has a chance to fully familiarize with the product.

Despite the fact that graphical content is best in drawing the attention of visitors of our site, we can not forget about the importance of the written word.

Written content

Source: http://mrgugu.com

It is of great importance to properly take care of naming and describing the products. While names should include only the most important characteristics (for example wooden brown table 120x120cm), the descriptions should be written in the way of presenting their value for user (This table perfectly matches small rooms with insufficient lighting and can be used as dining table or small writing-desk. It’s a basic and comfortable furniture piece that everyone will love). What is important - unique and unrepeatable descriptions can greatly influence SEO of the site – Google and other search engines use sophisticated algorithms to display search results where unique content is one of the most important factors (more about what affects our sites position in search results in our next article).

Additional content marketing

Source: http://www.alabaster.no/blog/

Content is also used to encourage potential customer to buy our products, build a brand and develop the relationship with regular customer. Those goals can be achieved in many different ways of working with content – there are hundreds of ways to attract the attention of customers. Most popular and probably most important techniques are:

• writing a blog about subject related to our business or about products that we sell,
• social media presence,
• infographics,
• guidebooks and video guides,
• videos.

Apart from the content beeing strictly related to products, customers can stumble upon other content types while browsing our site. For instance, it could be information about company, delivery, returns, safety policy and contact. It is very important to ensure that these informations are transparent and easily accessible - their main role is to gain trust of customers. For the same reason it is really worthy to display data concerning amount of completed orders and customer reviews. User Generated Content (UGC), such as comment section, although beyond our control, can have a big impact on decision process among visitors of our site.

Source: https://trustpilot.com

First part of our cycle taught us that, while working in e-commerce business, it’s important to take care of every piece of content on our site. Everything that our customer can see has an impact on our brand image and can lead to success. Nevertheless, even the best content have to be first reachable for potential customer. That is why we are going to teach you about most important factors that have influence on website positioning in search engine results in our next article.