| By: Brennan Heyde | Published On: 12/09/2007 |
Everyday more and more people are turning to blogging as a communication tool online. Individuals, companies, and websites all use blogging as a way to communicate with their visitors. If you own an e-commerce store, you too should be jumping on the blogging bandwagon. It is not just to be cool, or popular; Blogging has some serious effects on your websites traffic and sales.
Here are 5 reasons why you need a Blog for your e-commerce store.
In the internet world, “Content is King.” Search engines love content and people love content. Content is what drives the internet. Having a Blog gives you a medium to write content for your site. This has two positive effects. First, it gives the search engines something to index. I can promise you that a “how to guide” or a product review will rank way higher in the search engines that your typical product page. This is because Blogs are highly optimized for the search engines, and also content will always out weight a boring e-commerce product page.
Secondly, if you are writing good useful content people will read it. Content about your products is a great way to generate traffic to your website.
I recently worked on an e-commerce website which sold wetsuits online. One of the things I found really interesting is that they had a simple Blog which just consisted of a few well written articles about wetsuits, and a wetsuit buying guide. The Blog was a perfect complement to their website. It contained useful information about their product, how to use their products and how to buy their products. Maybe a mother is trying to buy a wetsuit for her son for Christmas and she knows nothing about wetsuits. Their Blog would be a perfect resource for the less knowledgeable shopper. A lot of e-commerce websites have a Blog, but the really interesting thing about this Blog is that it generated 60% to 70% of the e-commerce websites traffic. Because the Blog had articles which were ranked well in the search engines, it acted like a gateway into their e-commerce store. Visitors would read the article about how to buy a wetsuit, then click through to the actual e-commerce store and make a purchase. This is a perfect example of how to use a Blog to generate traffic.
Most likely if you are selling your own product, you are the one who know it best. After all you created it and you are the one who markets and sells it. This information about your products is valuable to your customers and a Blog is a perfect medium to share this information. This includes things like product reviews, buying guides, gift ideas, and how to guides. The more the consumer knows about their product the more they will be willing to buy your product.
Blogs are also a great way to communicate with you customers. Talk to them like they are right in front of you – They will listen. Share information on how your store in doing, ask them for advice on what you can do better; Get your customer involved. The more a customer connects with you and you products, the more willing they will be to buy.
Blogs are a great medium to offer sales and promotions. It is incredibly easy to make a post giving people a 10% off coupon for a certain product. Or maybe you want to do an online only weekend sale. Having a Blog really makes doing little promotions like these simple and easy. They work too. People love to save money, and if they feel like they are getting a deal, they will have a hard time passing it up.
Blogging is a great way drive traffic to your store as well as create customer relationships. The best part about a Blog it that they are simple to setup. You can be up and running in about an hour. Give it a try. What do you go to lose?
About the Author: Brennan Heyde is an e-commerce consultant working in San Diego, Ca. He specializes in online marketing and SEO for e-commerce. Have a struggling e-commerce website? – Contact Brennan today for a site analysis.