How to Boost E-commerce Business Using Content Understanding how your website is performing is key to understanding the overall strengths and weaknesses of your operation

Good content marketing is like a swan: seemingly effortless and graceful to the naked eye, but under the surface, there is a lot of work happening to keep things moving.

When it comes to your content marketing strategy, there is a lot to consider and the latest trends and tactics are forever changing. So what are the 10 most important things you should be doing right now to make your e-commerce business as successful as possible?

Website analysis

Before you can improve things, you need to get a realistic idea of what is working and what isn't. Understanding how your website is performing is key to understanding the overall strengths and weaknesses of your operation.

Some things to look out for when analysing your website's performance are:

• Conversion rate - How many of your site visitors end up actually buying?
• Bounce rate - How many visitors leaving your site soon after they arrive?
• Unique visitors, repeat visitors and total visitors - how loyal are your customers? Do they return?
• Traffic sources - where are your visitors coming from? Which marketing tactics bring in the most visitors?
• Which products or pages receive the most traffic and make the most conversions?
• What day of the week does your site receive the most traffic?

Competitor research

Knowing what your competitors are up to is essential in business. It not only helps you stay competitive in the market but can also help you improve your own campaigns by analysing what works and what doesn't work for your competitors.

But browsing your competitors' websites and seeing what kind of products and prices they have is just the tip of the iceberg. Pricing intelligence, competitor keyword analysis and competitor Facebook ad auditing are also key.

Competitive content

Once you know what your competitors are doing, it's time to use it to your advantage. Capitalize on their weaknesses by highlighting your strengths with content marketing. So for example, if your main competitor is selling the same or similar product to you, advertise your's for a lower price. If they don't offer one-day delivery, have a free return shipping policy or offer gift wrapping services, make sure all your PPC ads and website banners highlight the fact that you do.

Optimize page speed

According to research, 40 per cent of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load and as little as a 1-second delay in page response can result in a 7 per cent reduction in conversions.

Having a website that loads quickly and effectively is, therefore, essential to your bottom line. You could devise the best content marketing strategy in the world, but if your visitors don't convert into customers, it means nothing. Don't lose out on customers over something as silly and easy to fix as page loading time.

Inbound marketing for millennials

Millennials are now the dominant generation when it comes to consumerism. And millennials don't respond well to pushy, over-the-top, direct sales tactics. Instead, they respond to useful, insightful and valuable content they can engage with. So when it comes to your content marketing, don't be afraid to rely on a steady in-bound strategy. It will not deliver overnight but slow and steady wins the race.

Prioritize video content

Video is the quickest and most effective way to get information out to your potential customers. In fact, hearing information accompanied by moving imagery helps us retain 65 per cent of the information, rather than the average 10 per cent we retain by just reading or hearing something. Some research also shows that customers are 64-85 per cent more likely to buy products after watching a video.

Video is also fantastic for search engine optimization. Sharing video content on social media is more likely to attract likes, shares and visitors to your site while posting videos on sites like YouTube helps build back-links and traffic to your site.

Don't forget outbound marketing

Keep past and recent customers engaged and up to date about your products with e-mail marketing. After all, past customers already know about and already bought your products once, which, in theory, makes them the easiest type of customer to convert again. You don't even have to spend extra budget on creating new content as you can recycle articles and video content from your inbound marketing campaigns.

Stay social

When it comes to your content marketing strategy, don't rely on one method alone to drive traffic to your site. Use various social media channels to engage new and established audiences by posting relevant content and running competitions.

Re-marketing

Why work hard trying to get new customers to your website when you can make money by re-engaging people who have already visited your site? Whether it's someone who has visited your site once without making a purchase, a person who has viewed a certain product several times without buying, or a past customer who might be interested in your other products, you can re-engage them with strategic ads tailored to their specific experience.

Whether you are running a small business or a huge e-commerce operation, re-marketing should be a staple part of your content marketing strategy.

Up-sell at every opportunity

One simple way to increase your revenue without having to acquire new customers is by encouraging your customers to buy more things. There are several ways you can achieve this without appearing too pushy. For example, you can use AI-powered image analytics to identify the characteristics of a certain product and use that information to recommend similar products or related items to boost your customer's spend.

There are many other ways to achieve this but the main goal is to try and encourage your customers to buy more products every time they head to your website's check-out.

Content marketing is forever changing and there are always new trends and techniques emerging that change the way we do things. But the fundamental things will always remain.

Analysing your competitors as well as your own performance and encouraging past and current customers to re-engage regularly with your site will maximize your revenue and help your business go from strength to strength.