After 14 hours and 15,000 steps (not a small feat in dress shoes), we are back to the hotel full of ideas for eCommerce marketing upgrades for the clients and article topics for the next few months. Just a few quick notes about eCommerce marketing while they are freshly buzzing in the head.

5 quick eCommerce marketing hacks for any online store:

  1. Follow SEO best practices: fill out the default meta title, description and keywords for the home page, categories and products. Google allows 320 characters in the description now, make sure they look appealing to your customers. In Magento, disable the category name in the product URL because it will cause a duplicate content problem if a product is assigned to multiple categories.
  2. Integrate your store with a smart Email marketing system. Start with Mailchimp.com, upgrade to dotmailer, Listrak or Emarsys as you get comfortable with automation and segmentation. Setup Welcome email series with up to 4 emails sent to a new customer; email series for a non-repeat customer; one abandoned cart reminder; and weekly/monthly newsletter.
  3. Use strategic product sorting inside a category, smart search with suggestions, related and/or customers-also-bought products – make sure to set up those for every product manually or use an automated service like SLI.
  4. Setup social sharing and social logins feature because 80% of customers do not like creating new accounts on e-commerce websites.
  5. Setup a shopping feed. Google Shopping, Bing Shopping, Amazon, Walmart – setting up the shopping feeds take time but once done, your products will be published automatically.
Fun fact: by 2000, 50% of the workforce will be millennials who are big fans of social media.

eCommerce Marketing Tips from Paypal:

  • Mobile First concept is critical for emerging markets where up to 95% of traffic comes from mobile devices.
  • Use mobile browser’s data to pre-fill shipping/billing address at checkout to reduce friction.
  • Offer PayPal credit option because it’s popular with millennials.
  • Offer a subscription option at checkout for automatic weekly/monthly re-ordering if that works for your products
  • Amazon patent on One-click checkout has expired recently – implement it in your store to speed up the checkout.

B2B e-commerce notes:

Fun fact: by 2025, 75% of the workforce will be millennials and generation Z
  • they want to have a relationship with your website, not a salesperson.
  • get the entire B2B experience online as soon as possible and make sure your customers will get the same offers and discounts online as they get on the phone or in the store.

From Vegas with love!