Jonathan Birch, creative director at SEO and digital marketing agency Glass Digital, shares his top tips for boosting ecommerce sales and encouraging loyalty from customers.

 

Unfortunately, a lot of retailers are struggling at the moment due to the UK-wide lockdown. As high street shops have been forced to close and everyone is staying at home, it’s likely your company is relying on its ecommerce site more than ever. You could, therefore, be looking for ways to bag more online sales and retain the customers you already had.

Here, I’m going to take you through my top tips for boosting your ecommerce sales and encouraging customer loyalty. Hopefully, they help you to weather the current storm more easily.

Make sure your site provides a positive UX

It’s vital that your website offers the best possible user experience (UX). You want shoppers to enjoy browsing your ecommerce site, which means you’ll need to make it incredibly easy to navigate. The quicker people can find what they’re looking for, the more likely they’ll be to make a purchase. Plus, it will increase the chances of them returning for more.

Improving the user experience of your site should also be a priority if you’re trying to improve your Google rankings. The search engine giant says webmasters should “focus on the user and all else will follow”. So, if you look at improving things like your site’s navigation and page speed, it could just help you to bag more organic traffic.

Consider devising a loyalty scheme

Any seasoned ecommerce manager will tell you that attracting new customers is only half the battle; you also have to find a way to keep them coming back to you. Some retailers have devised their own loyalty schemes for this very reason, so why not follow their lead?

These schemes can come in many different forms. For example, some ecommerce sites have point systems where you accrue points as you spend, which can then be used as store credit. Others allow customers to build up money-off vouchers. Or, simply give them access to special discounts at certain times of the year, such as around their birthday.

Giving people an extra little incentive to shop with you can go a long way towards making sure they come to you for future purchases, rather than shopping with a competitor.

Invest in SEO to reach a wider audience

Most ecommerce businesses are always looking to reach a wider audience and one of the most effective ways of doing this is to boost your Google rankings. This will require you to come up with a strong search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy.

If you’ve done any research into digital marketing, you might have heard the phrase “content is king”. That’s because optimising your category content to include relevant keywords and inlinks, and producing high-quality evergreen content that is going to appeal to your target audience can seriously improve your Google rankings. But, you’re sure to see the best results if you combine this with outreach and technical SEO.

When it comes to the technical side of things, this is all about ensuring your site gives users the best possible experience. You also need to make sure that your site structure makes sense and that it’s incredibly easy to navigate.

Outreach involves securing links on high-quality sites that are relevant to your business and audience. Unfortunately, link-building has had a bad rap in the past due to black-hat SEOs using unethical tactics to bag as many links as possible. However, Google got wise to this and has started to penalise sites that try to take advantage of the system. Just make sure you stick to the search engine’s guidelines so you’re rewarded for your efforts rather than punished.

Summary

It’s an uncertain time for most businesses but, by putting some time and effort into improving the ecommerce element of your company, you can increase your chances of continuing to make sales throughout the coronavirus outbreak. Take these tips on board to reach new audiences and retain the customers you already have.

Jonathan Birch is creative director at Glass Digital, an SEO and digital marketing agency. For further information on Glass Digital, please click here.