5 Content Types That Actually Get You Sales For Your E-Commerce Business

The power of content in driving sales on an ecommerce site is uncontested. Product videos are a crucial tool for online shoppers. Unique and powerful product videos can vastly improve your brand credibility, build consumer trust, and inspire customer loyalty – all while targeting your specific audience and showcasing your specific products. But in the current milieu of multiple content formats and cluttered content pieces, how do you know what content types for ecommerce s can drive sales for your ecommerce business? Let’s find out.

Top 5 Content Types for Ecommerce That Bring More Sales

Ecommerce businesses can develop strong relations, weave interesting stories, and create magic by offering quality products from reputable brands. As marketing god Seth Godin said, “People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories, and magic.” A well-planned content marketing strategy can help showcase these aspects and attract customers.

But it is important that you choose the right type of content, such as blogs and videos, to tell your story on the topic of blogging. So, what kind of ecommerce content, such as videos, can help you achieve your goal of driving up sales for your products?

Here are the top five types of ecommerce content pages on a website that can convert online traffic into sales leads on any given topic.

1.    User Generated Content

User-Generated Content (UGC) is perhaps one of the most potent weapons in your ecommerce content marketing arsenal. It helps to drive traffic to your topic pages, build trust in your brands, and engage with your audience. Consider this – ecommerce website product pages that featured user-generated content registered a 29% increase in conversion rates of online purchases. This is great news for brands looking to engage their readers and boost sales. User-generated content has proven to be an effective type of content that drives conversions. That’s a pretty good upswing.

Here is an ecommerce content marketing post by ASOS – using a post by a customer who bought one of their brands’ products.

UGC helps establish brand reliability by providing quality content, making it a valuable tool for ecommerce content marketing. It utilises the most credible source of information for new customers, enhancing the web content. It also helps in spreading brand awareness through word-of-mouth, making it an effective ecommerce content marketing strategy for web content and website content. You can build a loyal community of ecommerce readers for your website using user-generated content. By incorporating ecommerce content marketing into your website content, you can engage your readers and establish a trusting relationship. This can ultimately improve your bottom line and customer acquisition.

You can utilise user-generated content on your ecommerce website, in the review section of your product listing/page, on your social media, and just about anywhere to engage readers.

Thanks to numerous social media platforms, sourcing UGC for ecommerce content and website content has become easier than ever before. This is great news for readers who are looking for engaging and relevant content. You can curate and create a wealth of UGC to use as a part of your ecommerce content marketing strategy anytime. This will help attract more readers to your website.

Pro Tip: Actively encourage your readers to share their experiences with your website content and ecommerce content, even if you are a well-established brand. UGC is an inexpensive, scalable, and high-yielding form of content that can work wonders for your ecommerce business. It can attract more readers and boost your online sales with Savv Digital Agency. You don’t want to miss out on this.

2.    Branded Product Guides

Today’s ecommerce customers are not just looking to buy a product, they are carefully considering the value of website content. Readers put in hours of research before seroing in on a purchase, whether it’s for website content or ecommerce content. Why not give ecommerce content readers what they seek in the form of a branded product guide? This website content will provide them with the information they need.

For one, these guides will enhance your brand awareness. It’ll also help your ecommerce content readers easily navigate the research stage of the sales funnel while positioning your product as the best resolution for their needs. You can also tactfully include user-generated content in the review section of your ecommerce product guide, as a testimonial, to gain trust from your readers.

On the whole, you can deliver added value to your ecommerce content readers by providing them with branded product guides.

Pro Tip: Be thorough with the content in your ecommerce product guide to engage readers. But also remember to make your ecommerce content interesting and appealing to your readers and customers. Readers of your ecommerce content are not going to spend an enormous amount of time reading through your product guide if you drone on about the features. To make your ecommerce content product guide attractive to readers, you can consider going with a video format. Ecommerce is interactive, fun, and has a better retention value for readers.

3.    Content that Showcases Community Support

Do not shy away from showcasing the humanitarian side of your ecommerce business to your readers. Instead, you should consider actively highlighting it for your ecommerce readers since it helps build a positive brand association. Customers in the ecommerce industry show a discernible preference for responsible and ethical brands. In fact, 55% of ecommerce consumers are happy to pay more for brands that have a social mission or work towards social, ethical, and environmental causes.

But remember to invest in an ecommerce ethical commitment only if you genuinely care. Putting up a socio-environmentally conscious front in the ecommerce industry just to attract customers will not work. Customers in the ecommerce industry can see through phony practices. So create ethical content that is well-aligned with your brand voice and identity.

On the other hand, if you’re genuinely dedicated to a cause, your customers will appreciate you for it.

Having a humane side to your brand image also helps in establishing a sense of authenticity that most customers appreciate.

Ethical and community-based content is also naturally very engaging and keeps your customers hooked.

But, you don’t always have to do something big. Begin by involving yourself in smaller, more manageable commitments. You can always maximise your ethical efforts as your business grows.

Pro Tip: Encourage your customers to get involved and contribute towards social causes that you support. This way you establish an excellent rapport with your customer and also inspire customer loyalty.

4.    Social Stories

No doubt that content marketing is not complete without social content, especially ephemeral content. Ever since the introduction of short-lived content in 2011 (on Picaboo, the older version of Snapchat), it has had a massive fan following. Currently, there are 500 million daily active Instagram and Facebook story users.

You can use this popular content format to sell your products on social platforms. Since these platforms are highly democratic, work on offering exclusivity to loyal customers. Think exclusive previews of new launches, contests, limited-period offers, or sales using social stories.

While social stories are short-lived, they enhance brand visibility, drive user engagement, and create the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) in your customers, making them convert faster than other traditional content formats.

In addition, it is very easy to create, post, and schedule social stories. There are many applications that can help you sort out your content, suggest engagement ideas, and help you enhance your social stories. You also get measurable results without investing an exorbitant amount of time, effort, and money.

Pro Tip: When posting social stories, choose your social media platform with care and stick to a schedule. Consistency, without overwhelming your audience, is key to the success of ephemeral content.

5.    Shoppable Content

Unfamiliar with the term shoppable content? Well, it is content that allows customers to directly add products they like to cart or takes them to the product page where they can make a purchase. It gives customers what they want, right there and then. Little wonder then that the popularity of shoppable content has grown exponentially.

There are many reasons why you should consider creating shoppable content. Some of them are listed below:

• It makes shopping an easy, fast, and effortless experience
• It allows you to showcase and sell more than one product in related categories
• You can easily measure your conversion rates
• It helps in quick product discovery
• It offers an easy-breezy UX that customers enjoy

Given that social media has 3.78 billion daily active users, shoppable content offers an opportunity for massive customer outreach. So, consider using shoppable content to convert a browsing user into a paying customer for your e-commerce business.

Pro Tip: There can be shoppable posts, ads, articles, pins, and videos. Choose the format of your shoppable content in accordance with the social media platform of your choice to maximise sales. Customisation is key and a one-size-fits-all approach will not work here.

Bonus: Interactive Content

A great way to amplify your content to drive sales is to make your content interactive. Instead of a one-way conversation, interactive content allows your customer to interact with you, giving you plenty of insights and leads.

It could be as elaborate as hosting a live session on Instagram or Facebook, playing a simple quiz, having a website widget, etc.

At a time when consumers are inundated with various types of content, interactive content can become the key differentiator for your brand.

You’ll be pleasantly surprised to know that good visual interactive content can result in a 70% conversion rate! Isn’t that incredible?

Interactive content always works because it involves your customers at a very personal level. They feel invested in what you have to say and therefore stay on your page longer.  And that makes all the difference.

Now that you know which types of content sells, let’s discuss some of the major hurdles you might encounter while creating content and how to overcome them.

What are the Major Roadblocks in E-commerce Content Creation?

Despite its verifiable contribution to the success of e-commerce, content is often overlooked or dismissed in strategy. That alone is one of the biggest challenges of e-commerce content creation. But what else stands in the way of e-commerce content creation? Quite a lot.

1.    Not Knowing Your Customer

If you do not know your customers well, you will have no idea of the kind of content that will click with them. Consequently, you’ll be unable to reach your ideal customer. In the long term, this can prove to be an expensive mistake for any e-commerce venture.

Therefore, know your customers inside out. Create a Customer 360 and match your unique offerings to your customers’ pain points. This way, you’ll be able to create stellar content that tells your customers exactly what they want to hear. And content that convinces your customers to hear what you have to say, will also speed up their conversion into paying customers.

2.    Not Have a Content Marketing Strategy

Good content does not happen by accident. It takes time, research, and development. You must extensively split test your content to understand what’s working and what is not. With a solid content marketing strategy in place, you can get all of it done effortlessly.

A good content marketing strategy helps you:

• Drive desired traffic to your website/product listing
• Spread and enhance your brand awareness
• Increase your customer outreach
• Bridge the gaps in sales and digital marketing funnels
• Convert your visitors into paying customers
• Nurture leads in any part of the sales funnel
• Improve brand recall

Content marketing is a powerful tool at your disposal. So, make the most of it. Have a  strong content marketing strategy that is focused on driving sales. Hire a team if you need expert assistance. You most likely will. Every penny you invest in churning out good content will be well worth the investment.

3.    Not Creating Quality Content

All this while we have been talking about content. But simply creating content isn’t enough. One of the major mistakes marketers make is creating content that lacks focus.

Content can only show desired results if it is accessible, discernible, and appealing to your customers. Therefore, just creating content without caring for quality will not help you achieve your goals.

Incorporate SEO best practices, accuracy, value, and perfect your oeuvre until your content strikes the right chord with your prospects/customers.

You must also know when to scale up or scale down the volume of your published content. For example, you cannot bombard your customers with social stories in a very short span of time. They will lose interest in your brand or get annoyed with it. Similarly, do not go raving about your welfare initiatives all the time. Pick the right time. Content marketing, like life, benefits from good timing.

How to Create a Content Strategy That Drives ROI

Where there is a roadblock, there is also a way to overcome the roadblock. Let’s get cracking on how you can come up with a content strategy that delivers a great return on investment.

Step 1: Create a Buyer Persona for Your Target Audience

A target buyer persona will help you align your marketing goals with your content marketing strategy. Buyer personas help in market segmentation, in turn helping you create unique content that drives conversions in a specific demographic of customers.

After all, targeted content is the only content that converts.

You can create anywhere between three to five buyer personas for your e-commerce business and work on developing content around these prototypes.

Step 2: Find Out How Your Audience Interacts With Content

You need to know which channels your customers prefer to be able to publish content that reaches them. For example, if your target demographic does not use Instagram or Facebook, you will not have much use for social stories. On the other hand, you can plug in user-generated content just about anywhere to reach your audience.

Create content that is easy to consume on channels your customers prefer. And whatever platform you decide to go with, remember to keep your content engaging.

Step 3: Research, Research, Research

Like we mentioned before, your customers want value. So, do intensive research before publishing content. Make sure you know what you’re talking about and can sufficiently defend your claims.

Well-researched content adds a sense of validation to your brand and therefore inspires the trust of consumers.

While researching, remember to learn as much as you can about your customers as well. Researching customer habits is crucial to knowing their preferences and troubleshooting their problems.

Step 4: Share Content Depending Upon Where Your Buyer is in the Funnel

Every customer was once a visitor who completed the journey in your sales funnel. So, segment your content based on where a buyer is in their journey. Let me explain it this way: consider email content marketing for prospects who have shown interest in your product. But you will want to think about hosting a social media contest for your returning buyers.

You cannot use the same content to appeal to future prospects and satiate your old customers too.

Publish content that appeals to your customers in whatever stage of the journey they’re in. That’s where the trick lies.

Step 5: Analyse Your Results

Only then will you understand what has worked in your favour and what hasn’t. Having a dependable content strategy is the outcome of testing multiple formulas. It takes trials. Do not aim for perfection right at the beginning.

Instead, measure your results in terms of KPIs and then rightsize your content strategy accordingly.

Step 6: Ask Your Customers for Their Opinion

Always seek customer feedback. Without fail. The customer is king and you must listen.

Remember how we discussed user-generated content?

Customer reviews are an integral part of user-generated content. So, leverage it to drive tangible results with your content strategy.

Why?

Because in a saturated marketplace, you cannot force-feed content to your customers. Instead, give them only as much as is needed to keep them engaged and interested.

Good content will lead to social sharing and add more prospects to your pipeline.

Bad content on the contrary will drive your customers away.

Create Content that Helps You Build a Community

In the end, what matters is what you take away from this blog and how you implement it.

If you find the ideas overwhelming, take your time. Never rush your content strategy. A badly executed content plan is just as bad as not having one at all. In fact, it’s probably worse.

If you’re keen on correctly utilising content to drive sales for your business, I have one last thing to share. My biggest advice to you would be to know when to play your cards.

The purpose behind content marketing is to create content that helps build a community of loyal customers for your e-commerce brand. A community that grows with each passing day. So focus on community building. Make your content count.

Be simple. Be effective. Be relevant. Do not go overboard – you will be golden.