ProductCart Blog

Category: Tips & How-Tos

5 Reasons Why Your eCommerce Site Needs a Blog

So you are up and running with your amazing eCommerce site. You have sales and clients and things are going great, but at some point, things may start to get a bit stagnant. depending on how often you get new inventory, it is possible that things can start to get stagnant. With any website, you want to be adding fresh content often to keep it relevant and showing up in search results. Adding a blog to your eCommerce store is an excellent way to produce fresh content and help improve your SEO ranking, along with so many other benefits to your business.

Blogging Helps Your SEO

First and foremost, blogging will help your SEO ranking. When maintaining a regular blog, you are showing Google that your site is being regularly updated and adding new pages, which makes Google happy! Along with making Google happy you are also providing numerous opportunities for internal linking, which Google also likes! You can use your blog to rank for new and different keywords related to your business as well. Create posts related to your business, that answer questions people who would purchase your products may be asking, and get those people on your site and their eyes on you!

Blogging Can Make Extra Income

While blogging can help you rank and get more eyes on your goods… It can also be a great way to earn even more income! Depending on the direction you want to go with your blog, you can run ads where you can earn some extra income simply based on your views and click through… Or you can even grow your blog to the point you are taking on sponsored posts ( related to your niche of course). There is never anything wrong with diversifying your income streams, and a blog can be a great way to do just that!

Blogging Tells Your Story

One of the best ways to increase your sales and really retain clientele is to make sure they are invested in you as a brand. Utilizing your blog to tell them your story can lead to them feeling more connected to you and wanting to support your brand through return patronage. Stories tend to give people an emotional reaction, and when they feel an emotional attachment to you, and when they are emotionally invested, they want to support you in any way they can.

Blogging Helps Your Clients

You don’t have to just feature your story though. A blog is also an excellent way to help your clients and teach them important lessons. Make sure what you help and teach are all relevant to your products. You can answer frequently asked questions for your industry, explain the uses of a particular product, or even have tutorials on the proper use of your products. Not only will these posts greatly benefit your client base, but they are also excellent ways to help your SEO ranking!

Social Sharing!

Blogs are more likely to get shared on social media than direct links to your products. People like to share funny or useful posts, so having well written blogs on your eCommerce site can help increase your circulation and expand your social media presence ( of course, just make sure you have social sharing icons installed).

If you are still on the fence about adding a blog to your eCommerce store, I really encourage you to go ahead, jump off that fence and dive right in! Blogs are wonderful for SEO, connecting with your clients, getting your social media presence up, and so much more!

Don’t forget to stay up to date with all of our exciting eCommerce Tips and Tricks on Facebook and Twitter

If you want to talk about adding a blog to your eCommerce store, the experts at ProductCart are here to help you every step of the way!

November 27, 2018
Handwritten Thank-You Notes for Lifetime Customer Loyalty

The Holiday season is upon us! There is a distinct chill in the air signaling the coming of the winter and the start of the busiest shopping season of the year. You have probably been marketing like crazy and preparing for Cyber Monday. Your stock is ready, your marketing is live, and you are ready for the influx of sales that comes with the season… The sales are coming in, but how can you convert those one-time sales into lifelong loyal customers? You want these sale shoppers to keep coming back and buying from you the rest of the year, and the easiest way to win customer loyalty is also the must understated. Handwritten Thank-You notes! Yup, these inexpensive and simple handwritten notes sent out to with each order can mean the difference between a one time sale, and repeated sales throughout the rest of the year!

Why Handwritten Thank-You Notes Work

In this digital age, there is still something to be said about handwritten personalization. If you want to win over customers, you are going to need to go a little above and beyond to show that you truly do appreciate their purchase. The easiest, and most cost effective way to show your customers how much you care is to send a personalized handwritten thank-you note with every order that you ship out.

Your customers want to feel special. They want to feel like their purchase meant something, and a simple thank-you note can really evoke positive feelings which the customer will remember. Remembering those positive feelings will make them more likely to purchase from your store in the future. I will say it again, people like to feel special and appreciated. A little bit goes a long way when it comes to earning customer loyalty.

What Should I Write?

Your handwritten notes do not have to be super long and elaborate. Short and sweet is the way to go! A few things to remember though: use the customer’s first name, mention something specific to the products they purchased, and add in a little something extra. You can see a really simple example of what to write below. In this example the customer named Jessi purchased a Christmas Sweater from your boutique.

Dear Jessi,

I hope you absolutely love your Christmas sweater! We would love to see it on you. Share a picture on social media, tag us and use (our hashtag) and we would love to feature you! Have a wonderful season and don’t forget to keep checking back for all of our end of the year sales.

– Sincerely,

(Your name here)

See, short, sweet and too the point! The customer will feel special, and you may even have them sharing and promoting your business on social media now!

It Doesn’t Need To Be Expensive

Handwritten thank-you notes don’t need to cost a ton either! You can easily pick up some really cute blank cards at your local Dollar Tree, Walmart or Amazon that will be perfect for your business use. If you want personalized ones with your logo and letterhead, then by all means you should do that but don’t feel the need to go all out and make these cards a large added expense. People will appreciate the thought, and the fact they are handwritten no matter what the stationary looks like.

Lifelong Customer Loyalty

In summation, if you want to win long term customer loyalty, make your customers feel valued and appreciated. Handwritten notes can go a long way when it comes to making your customers remember you and want to purchase from your shop again in the future.

November 15, 2018
Cyber Monday Marketing to Explode Your Sales

The way people shop is changing. In today’s digital society, people are starting to forego the traditional Black Friday shopping experience in favor of online shopping on Cyber Monday. Due to this shift in the way people shop, it is important that stores get on board with new marketing techniques and make sure your website is fully prepared, in order to really grab the most amount of sales during this pivotal Holiday season.

Make Sure Your Site Is Ready

One of the worst things that can happen on Cyber Monday is that your site gets an increased amount of traffic, but crashes your site because you can’t handle the capacity. In order to avoid this huge pitfall that could potentially cost you quite a bit of sales, you may want to speak with your hosting company and increase your bandwidth. Trust me, you do not want your site to crash on this most important of sales days.

You will also want to test everything a few days ahead of time and make sure EVERYTHING is properly working. Check your site speed, make sure everything is in stock and your payment system is properly working… This is the best time to talk to your hosting company, web designer, site manager and anyone else you need to to ensure everything is up and running and ready to handle excess amounts of traffic.

Cyber Monday Marketing Ideas

If you want to bring in the big sales on Cyber Monday, you need to do some serious marketing. Starting today, you should be pushing and marketing your sales and specials to get people interested and start collecting e-mail addresses.

Run a Giveaway

Want to build some serious hype? Run a giveaway! This can be for a product or a gift card to your shop…Anything that will get people excited about what you sell and offer. You can encourage people to share your post, tag a friend, or sign up for your e-mail list as entries into your giveaway. This will get people excited and will expand your reach at the same time!

Offer a Free or Low Cost Trial

If you are running a subscription service, it is highly advisable that you offer a free or low cost one month trial of your service. People love to try things before they commit, so this is an excellent way to get customers in and wow them so you can retain their business for the future!

One Day Only Sales

Offer and promote one day only sales! Customers don’t want to feel like they are missing out, so making a sale a one day only special will entice them to buy right now to avoid missing out on a killer deal. You should begin advertising these deals as soon as you can via your e-mail list and paid Social Media promotions.

Upsell

Of course you want to offer amazing discounts on Cyber Monday, but you should also be trying to upsell at the same time. Offer your customers something of value to improve upon something they are already ordering.

Fight The Abandoned Cart

The largest issue facing online retailers, especially on Cyber Monday, is the abandoned cart dilemma. You can fight this though! You can see our full post here that will really help you fight the abandoned cart and redirect your campaigns!

Make Your Offer Scarce

This may seem counterproductive, but limit the amount of coupons accepted, or only do the sale for a certain amount of hours… Psychologically, people don’t want to miss out and if they thing something is exclusive, they want it even more! One good tip is to add a “sales countdown timer” to your site as well as in your marketing e-mails. This will reiterate that there is only a short amount of time these deals will be available.

Turn One Time Sales Into Life Long Customers

You can turn one time deal shoppers from Cyber Monday into lifelong clients by offering just the right incentives. I would highly recommend some sort of rewards program that rewards customers for spending money at your shop. For every so much they spend, they can earn a coupon code for a percentage off or dollars off.. This encourages people to actually spend more than they initially would have in order to hit a threshold.

If you have questions about setting up your own rewards program, or want to go ahead and get your site optimized for this pivotal holiday sales season, the experts here at Product Cart would love to help you!

November 6, 2018
How To Use Influencer Marketing To Grow Your eCommerce Business

In this digital age, it seems that many facets of traditional advertising are being overtaken by digital advertising. One of the largest changes we have noticed in recent years is the shift towards Influencer Marketing. While some are still skeptical of this newly emerging form of advertising, it has shown exponential growth and has a high success rate when it comes to helping businesses grow. Influencer Marketing is not going anywhere, in fact, it is an industry that is growing at an impressive rate, and if you want to get in on this powerful form of digital advertising there are a few things that you need to be aware of.

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August 27, 2018
Building Hype Around Your New Product Releases

You have been working non stop. Creating your newest product to be released to the public. Your excitement level is at a 10, but have you thought about the excitement level of your audience yet? If you want to have a truly successful launch day and beyond, you need to hype your new release before it comes out. Get people ready and waiting your newest release, then be prepared to sell out on launch day! With these 3 simple steps, you can build hype and get the public truly excited and waiting with bated breath.

Blog About It

The easiest way to instantly build hype around your new product release, is to blog about it! If you already have a blog, then wonderful and if not, then I highly recommend you look into starting one. Having a good blog and social media strategy can exponentially explode your eCommerce business. By leveraging your blog and social media platform, you can begin to show your new product to your audience and get them excited. The trick is to not show too much. Keep them in suspense, showing just enough of the product to get them palpitating. That way when you release your first full promo ad, they will eat it up!

Having blog and social media teasers for new products seems to be the norm nowadays, and for good reason! It builds hype and excitement. People can’t help but be curious and when you give them just a little, it leaves them wanting more. If you aren’t super comfortable with blogging and social media, then you can actually hire a Social Media Specialist to manage your accounts, create blog posts and other content. That way your Social Media Manager can focus on content and building your product hype, while you focus on creating more and more products!

Make Use of Influencer Marketing

You may be asking, “What is Influencer Marketing?” Well, in the simplest of terms, it is using influencers, individuals with large followings online, to promote your products. Influencers will help you hype your new releases to their audience, and are typically much less expensive than traditional forms of advertising. When choosing influencers to work with, be sure to properly examine their social channels and blog to make sure they are a great fit with your brand. Just because they have a big following, doesn’t mean they are right to work with you. Honestly, I could go on and on about how wonderful influencer marketing is for the eCommerce business, but that is a post for another time. For now, just know that influencers can give your new releases some serious hype on social media!

Start Taking Pre-Orders

It is basic human nature that people want to feel special or like they are among a group of exclusive individuals. When you are contemplating your pre-launch advertising, consider taking just a certain amount of pre-orders. This way, people who really want your product can have a guaranteed spot on release day, you make money, and the hype builds even farther. If you start taking pre-orders, people may wonder… “Will this sell out fast?” “I want one, so I should pre-order just to be safe.” … Pre-orders are a win win when it comes to product launches.

Need help setting up for pre-orders for your next product launch? You should think about giving the experts here at ProductCart a call. No matter if you are a brand new business, or you are an established eCommerce shop wanting to expand, ProductCart has features that can help you grow your online business, manage your product launches, and build relationships with your target audience.

August 20, 2018
How To Start An Ecommerce Business While Working Your 9-5

We live in a digital age. The vast majority of people utilize technology on a daily basis for everything in their lives from working to shopping and even for education. Because of this digital age that we live in, it is becoming more and more common for people to start their own Ecommerce businesses, and these businesses are thriving! Creating an Ecommerce business can be tough, no doubt about it, but it is also a venture that has the potential to gift you with numerous rewards for your hard work. The biggest issue that tends to face most people is time. Working a day job, while still having that desire for the freedom of being your own boss… Working a day job does not have to stop you from pursuing your dream of owning your own business though. With some great time management, hard work, and dedication it can be done without leaving your old job behind right away. (more…)

August 10, 2018
9 Marketing Tips for Your Online Store

Having an online store is an accomplishment in itself. Whether you started as a brick and mortar or just introduced your brand and products to the world, having an E-Commerce store will take your business to the next level. However, achieving your business goals will take some effort on your part, and marketing is the best way to reach new customers and keep return customers coming back for more. We’ve made a list of our top 9 marketing tips for your PC store below. (more…)

February 22, 2017
SEO Tips: How to Optimize your Products

ProductCart has some great built-in tools to help you automatically optimize your products for indexing in search engines. Many of these tools work automatically behind the scenes for a solid base-line. Then you can take a step further for additional SEO benefits.

We’ll explore both levels in this article. (more…)

January 27, 2017
Social Media Marketing: Start with Strategy

As an E-Commerce business owner, you are probably aware that social media is an extremely useful marketing tool, especially for online retailers. However, creating social media accounts for your business will not improve your sales figures overnight.

Effective social media marketing takes constant research and a lot of work. But, if you’re willing to put in the effort, social media will be one of the best tools your online business can use to engage with current and potential customers.

Whether you already use social media and are looking to improve your efforts, or you’re new to the social media world, the most important factor you must consider is your strategy. Establishing a solid strategy upfront will help you stay organized and consistent in your marketing efforts, and allow you to focus on the interaction between you and your customers.

When developing your strategy, ask yourself these 7 questions before you ever make your first post:

1. What is my brand identity?

If you’re going to use social media to tell customers about your products or company, it’s important to know who you are and what you’re selling. In social media marketing, we often refer to a brand’s personality as their “voice.” Whether you plan on being lighthearted and humorous or descriptive and professional, having a consistent voice across all your social media platforms will help customers better understand your brand.

2. Who is my audience?

Defining your specific audience will help you cater your social media tactics to achieve the most engagement between you and your customers.

Before you start advertising your brand or products online, make sure you do extensive research on the customers you are hoping to reach. What are their demographics? What social media platforms do they use? What do they like to do in their free time? These are just some of the important questions that need to be answered.

To find out more about your audience, start searching online for topics related to your business. Find out what customers in your industry are talking about, and what is important to them. You can even go on Facebook, Twitter, or any of the social media platforms and search topics or hashtags (#) to see how your customers already behave on social media websites. The more you know beforehand, the better.

3. Who are my competitors?

Another helpful research tool is your competitors’ social media sites. If there are successful companies in your industry, go to their social media pages and see how they are effectively engaging their customers. Pay attention to what works, and what doesn’t. Seeing what’s already out there can help you think of new, creative ways to engage customers and make your company stand out.

4. What are my goals?

Before you start posting, you need to decide what you want to achieve. Are you trying to increase awareness, generate sales, or something in between? One of the best things social media marketing can do for your company is provide you with lots of data on the results of your marketing efforts. However, all the data in the world is useless without something to measure it against. Once you establish your goals and start posting, there are endless sources and analytics tools that can help you analyze your performance.

Facebook provides insights on all your posts.

5. What platforms should I use?

When it comes to choosing social media platforms, it all depends on your business and your audience. If your products are visually appealing, Instagram and Pinterest are great resources. For B2B companies, LinkedIn is probably your best option. Facebook and Twitter also allow you to engage directly with your customers and can be an excellent customer service tool.

Another factor to consider when choosing social media platforms is the type of content you intend to have. Although it may be tempting, you don’t need to have an account on every social media website. For example, if you don’t plan on posting videos, don’t create a YouTube account. Makes sense, right?

6. Who will be managing my social media?

Like we said earlier, social media marketing is no walk in the park. If you are going to be handling your social media in-house, you may want to designate one person who can dedicate a significant amount of their time to the cause. However, if you don’t have someone with enough time or knowledge, hiring a marketing agency to manage your accounts can definitely be worth the cost.

7. How much am I willing to spend?

Yes, social media accounts are free, but many of them give you the option to use paid advertising to increase your audience engagement. Before beginning your social media marketing, you should evaluate your resources and decide if paid ads will be beneficial to your company. That way, you can allocate part of your budget ahead of time to accommodate those future costs.

Now that you have your strategy in place, you can begin engaging your customers through social media. As long as you’re willing to put in the time and effort, social media marketing will help you reach new customers and ultimately make your business more successful.

January 20, 2016
Your 2015 Social E-Comm Guide

2015 is here and that means that we’ve got a new year to take a look at some new tactics to help grow our businesses. So let’s discuss some ways that you can take advantage of some Social Media tactics to gain customers.

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January 7, 2015