How to Create the Best Ecommerce Experience

There are many factors that go into creating an engaging website, but without question, the starting point must be content creation.  Your website is just a content delivery system, even if you choose the best ecommerce website builder and use the best theme available or create your own bespoke stunning website, none of it matters if your content isn’t right.  In order to get your content right and to build the best ecommerce website experience, you need to know your audience.    

What Makes Your Content Good or Bad?

Simply put, content that converts is good whereas content that does not is bad.  How you choose to communicate what you offer is central to success.  This is one common area businesses go wrong.

The Human Factor.  Impartiality is Crucial.

Anyone willing to risk becoming an entrepreneur has to have a certain amount of self-belief and a willingness to take risks.  This same risk-taking trait can lead to problems that can be terminal for any business.  The good news is that this can be avoided by introducing a little external perspective.

Do Your Due Diligence and Test Your beliefs.

Have you ever wanted something so badly that you have suffered from wishful thinking?  This is often a problem when decision makers are heavily invested, (financially and emotionally).  Business leaders often overlook the obvious.  A typical example of this is when a CEO of a small startup truly believes they know their market and their customers, or that they have done enough.  The worst among them are those believe they can’t afford to fail, – desperation is all too obvious.

It’s never enough, if you can do something more you should, every chance you get you need to test your assumptions about customers.  Consider failure is a stepping stone to success.  The trick is to fail fast and iterate in a way that doesn’t break the bank.

How to Write Your Content

Let’s say this CEO is right, he has a great product or service, this leads us to the second biggest failure point.  Explaining the value of what’s being offered. 

Now you might think “Who better to communicate what you are selling, product or service, than the person who knows it best”.

WRONG!

Just because they know the product well doesn’t mean they know how to sell it.

Just explaining what your product is and what you consider the benefits to do not necessarily match up with what your potential customers are looking for.  You need to know how people, – your potential customers solve the problem which your product or service solves.

Ask yourself, – what do they search for online to solve their problem.

You need to write your website from your customers perspective.  Moreover, over time you will be able to segment your customers into different groups and refine your content to target each customer group individually.  Here you are personalizing your content to meet their needs.

Once you have identified how your different target groups search for solutions, those which your product or service could provide. You should define steps to educate your audiences about how your solution can help them. 

Tips for Creating Content for CRO

Content is not just text, but also the context in which it is situated.

1. Define your USP and structure your choice architecture around it.
2. Define consumer journeys with a multi-device consumer journey in mind.
3. Define your conversion funnel + variations with differing personas in mind.
4. Break your messages into two parts, the before and after.
5. Communicate emotion through images. The pain points associated with the before and then sell the joy of resolving those problems.
6. AB test all of your personalization content, and set the correct triggers, to be in the moment, -immediate to their needs.

Conclusion

While your website graphic design is vital, it is worthless without good content.  Only content that converts is good.  Content even if it is well written, is not good content if it doesn’t convert.  The first step to fixing your content is to accept that your content needs changing, often decision-makers and product owners have had significant input into the website content, therefore it is sometimes difficult for them to accept they are the problem.  While your professional website design may also need a facelift, make sure to AB test all of your content prior to changing the design.  Test color, style, and other element change via popup overlays prior to altering your website by using the simple drag and drop editor of OptiMonk.  In the same way test content variants to find the best versions.