Comprehensive online store promotion

Introduction An online shop is the most effective way for a business to achieve high economic performance in e-commerce. But to achieve results, you must first run a quality online shop promotion. It is worth pointing out that this is not a one-off action but a long-term project requiring constant attention and support from specialists. It is worth considering promotion at the stage of setting up the online shop.

Online shop promotion: how to increase the sales of an e-commerce project

Promoting your online shop is a responsible and time-consuming process that helps you attract more customers and increase sales. Different strategies and tools can be used for this purpose, such as SEO, context, social media, email marketing and more.  Promoting an online shop requires creativity and constant analysis of the results. It is important to take into account the needs and preferences of the target audience, the competitive situation on the market and the specifics of the product.

Where to start promoting an online shop

Like any large-scale project, online shop promotion at the initial stage requires a well-crafted plan of action, in accordance with the goals and objectives of the online business. What is included in the action plan? Let’s take a closer look at the most important points.

Setting goals and objectives for promotion

The SMART method is used to set objectives for the promotion of the shop, according to which the objective should be

• concrete;
• measurable;
• achievable;
• realistic;
• is limited in time.

An example of a SMART goal: “I plan to sell more than 1000 units of goods worth at least 200 thousand UAH every month in 1 year”. Such a goal is a practical tool, not a formality. Having set it, you will clearly understand how effectively online promotion works and when you need to adjust your strategy. What challenges can be met when promoting an online shop:

• Finding new clients;
• increase in sales
• gaining a competitive edge;
• improving brand/brand recognition;
• expanding the target audience;
• entry into new markets;
• sale of related goods/services.

Analysis of market, target audience, competitors

Market analysis involves collecting, researching information in a market segment of interest to better position a marketing strategy and assess the viability of one’s products. The analysis can be conducted to understand whether the chosen niche is promising for the business or to find markets in principle. The analysis also provides a picture of the feasibility of the objectives, taking into account the demand for the product and the existing supply. Target audience analysis is needed to identify the category of people who are interested in your product, i.e. who are potential customers. First, a general portrait of the target audience is collected: gender, age, social status, place of residence, interests, etc. Then the target audience is segmented into groups, and each segment can be targeted more precisely. Competitor analysis is carried out to identify their strengths and weaknesses: prices, service, feedback, payment and delivery conditions. By identifying the subtleties of your competitors and their mistakes, you can build off their strengths by offering your customers a better price or service. In addition, the information obtained is the basis for developing a promotion concept and compiling a unique selling proposition that will set your business apart from competitors. Competitors can be analysed using keywords or special services.  Identifying direct and indirect competitors in the e-commerce niche will require an analysis of the market and consumer demand. Direct competitors are those online retailers that offer the same or very similar products or services as yours. Indirect competitors are those online shops offering products or services which may replace or complement yours. The following methods can be used to find direct and indirect competitors:

1. Keyword analysis. Using special tools such as Google Keyword Planner, you can determine which keywords internet users are searching for your products or services. You can then see which sites rank high in search results for these keywords and highlight them as direct or indirect competitors.
2. Link profile analysis. Special tools such as Ahrefs or Majestic can be used to determine which sites are linking to your online shop and to your competitors. This will help you find out which of them have more popularity and authority on the web, as well as identify potential partners or indirect competitors.
3. Social media analysis. Using specific tools such as SMMRank or BuzzSumo, it is possible to determine which online retailers have more activity and engagement on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram. This helps to find out which ones are doing a better job of reaching their audience and creating unique content, as well as identifying indirect competitors or opinion leaders.

Strategy development

It is an important step in the development of an online business. A promotion strategy defines the goals, audience, communication channels and marketing tools to be used to attract and retain customers.  The development of a promotion strategy is based on an in-depth analysis of the market, competitors, the needs and behaviour of the target audience, and consideration of the characteristics of the goods offered by the shop. Effective strategies for promoting an online shop should focus on achieving specific indicators, such as traffic, conversion, loyalty and profitability.

The main methods of promoting an online shop

Promoting an online shop is a set of activities aimed at attracting a target audience and increasing sales. There are many promotion methods, but each business is different. The specifics of the niche, competition, demand, budget and goals need to be taken into account.  Some of the most effective and popular promotion methods include: SEO optimisation, online shop advertising, social media and others. All methods can be combined and combined. Let us dwell in more detail on the methods that are used to promote a web resource.

SEO promotion of an online shop

In 2023, it is considered the main tool for increasing the flow of visitors. In this case, SEO promotion does not require paying for clicks like in context (PPC).  But there are some drawbacks associated with attracting potential customers from search engines. The main one is the long time frame. Once the SEO work is started, the search engine must index the site for it to appear in the search engine results. Further, regarding SEO, the site needs to be constantly maintained, which means it is not a one-off event but an ongoing process.  Therefore it is recommended to use other promotion methods in parallel with the SEO promotion of the website in search engines, e.g. PPC for your online shop, which allows you to attract traffic from contextual advertising immediately and generates income.  Let’s look closer at the front end of the SEO promotion work.

Competitor and niche analysis

This is an important step in the development of a website optimisation strategy. This analysis identifies the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, their target audience, keywords and traffic. Competitor and niche analysis also help to find vacant or under-exploited market segments that can be focused on more closely.  To carry out competitor and niche analysis you should use special tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs and others. You can use them to collect and analyse data on competitors and the niche and compare your online shop with them on various parameters, highlight the strengths of your resource and develop them in the first place.

Structure analysis and keyword selection

The structure of an IM should provide easy and logical navigation for visitors, distribute link weights between web pages and be quickly scanned by search engines. The latter fact is particularly important for large online projects with a large range of products and a choice of categories/subcategories. The following requirements apply to the structure of the IM:

• a clear and logically structured system for visitors with categories and subcategories of product groups;
• Minimum nesting of web pages (if possible);
• Good quality page re-linking without errors (cyclic and broken links).

Usually online shops have a tree structure: from the home page, a visitor can get to the category, and subcategory and find the product of interest without unnecessary and incomprehensible navigation. Example of a good shop structure: tech shop (Home) -> Laptops (1st level) -> Asus (2nd level) -> Aspire (bottom level). In order to get your shop’s pages to appear in the top positions for search queries, you need to create a semantic kernel (SN). It includes a list of keywords and some topical LSI queries for which you plan to get users. All keywords are divided into relevant groups and each of them should be used in the text of a separate IM web page with the corresponding intent. The more complete the semantic core, the more queries the page will be shown in search results, i.e. the web resource’s visibility will increase. Competitors’ websites and Google Planner are the main sources of the semantic core. SEO specialists use various tools such as Ahrefs, Serpstat or Google Planner to identify competitors’ keywords, which they use to attract traffic to their resource.  It is important to avoid irrelevant queries when compiling your SN:

1. Merchandise categories that are not present in the IM range.
2. The name of models and brands of goods that are not on sale in the shop.
3. Branded queries from other shops, for example: “buy laptop outlet”, “lefard crockery”.
4. Words in search queries that drive untargeted traffic (e.g. ‘inexpensive’ if it is a luxury perfume IM).
5. The names of competitors.

Important: irrelevant keywords on online shop webpages only have a negative impact on SEO promotion, reducing behavioural factors and “blurring” the page.  Once the semantic core has been collected, the SEO specialist allocates the key groups to the site, according to the structure developed.

Technical website optimisation

Technical errors are a common cause of low positions of an online shop in search results. Errors have a negative impact on the ranking and display of the resource for visitors. This is why analysis and technical optimisation is an important step in the promotion of a shop.  During technical optimisation, experts analyse the presence of errors, in particular:

• incorrect redirects;
• duplicate web pages;
• broken links;
• missing CNC (URL of the page written in Latin characters in a human-readable form);
• sitemap and robot files filled in incorrectly;
• non-functional buttons;
• poor page load speeds.

Based on the discrepancies identified, a specialist develops a ToR to correct the errors and draws up a technical optimisation plan – a technical site audit. This work is implemented by the developer and the SEO specialist, depending on the qualifications and complexity of the work.

Internal (content) page optimisation

Internal optimisation is a set of measures aimed at improving the quality and relevance of content for search engines and users. The goal of internal optimisation is to increase the site’s position in search engine rankings for keywords and to increase the conversion of visitors into customers. Internal optimisation includes work on:

1. Writing SEO-optimised, unique texts that respond to user queries and needs. SEO-copywriting is text that contains keywords and phrases that are relevant to the topic of the website and the search query, and that are unique in comparison to other websites. Such texts help to attract the target audience and increase conversion rates and brand credibility.
2. Linking pages to improve behavioural factors is a website optimisation technique in which links to other IM web pages are placed in the text. This helps improve behavioural factors such as time on site, browsing depth and refusals. Linking pages should be logical and useful for visitors, not just a collection of random links.
3. Product optimisation is one of the most important aspects of internal optimisation of an online shop. It consists of making each product as attractive as possible for search engines and potential buyers. To do so, it is necessary to correctly fill in the meta tags, headings, descriptions, characteristics and product reviews. It is also important to use unique and high-quality images, select relevant keywords and follow the structure of categories and subcategories.

Applying all the relevant promotion tools in combination, you can significantly increase the number of visitors to your website and, consequently, your sales and profits.

External optimisation of an online shop

In order to promote your website in organic search, you need to constantly build up your link mass, especially if you prioritise promotion in Google. This process involves creating and placing links to your shop on third-party web resources on the internet. The purpose of this process is to increase the visibility of your site in search engine rankings and attract more visitors.  There are a few things to consider when carrying out this work:

1. The number of domains linking to the site is important, but not the most important parameter in external promotion.
2. Thematicity of third-party resources – backlinks should only be placed on those donor sites which are related to the shop and where your target audience is. Otherwise, the links will not have the desired effect and may even cause the site to be subject to search engine sanctions.
3. Link building dynamics – it is advisable to do this organically, as a drastic increase/decrease in backlinks can get filtered by search engine crawlers.
4. Maintaining a proportion of different types of backlinks: anchor, unanchored and mixed.
5. Donor site traffic. The more users visit a referring site from organic search, the more effective the backlinks will be from it.
6. Link mass allocation is the process of determining the importance and relevance of each page in your online shop based on the number and quality of external and internal links pointing to them. The purpose of link mass distribution is to increase the site’s visibility and attract more traffic to the most valuable pages.

Promoting an online shop in Ukraine is impossible without link building, but the right approach is important. First, an analysis of competitors is performed to determine their external promotion methods and effectiveness. From the analysis you can find out:

• the dynamics of link building;
• the proportion of different types of backlinks;
• types of donor sites where competitors are hosted;
• sources of backlinks.

An analysis of competitive resources will allow you to develop a quality promotion strategy, taking into account the mistakes made by competing sites. It is important to examine your existing link profile and reject backlinks that could have a negative impact on the promotion of your resource:

• from donors not thematically related to your IM;
• from websites that have been filtered by the search engine.

Next, you can work towards building link mass by using:

• Crowd-marketing – backlinks placed on near-thematic platforms (forums, etc.);
• content marketing – publishing articles on third-party resources with links to the shop;
• sambits – posting company information in online directories, directories, services (e.g. Google My Business).

You should not build up your link mass drastically from the start of promotion – the number of backlinks should increase gradually every month by analysing your competitors. It is very important which web pages of the shop are backlinked to. The main focus is on the Home page and pages:

• with high engagement and conversion rates;
• responding to high-frequency HF queries of the commercial type price, buy, order;
• goods with a large average receipt.

Design/usability analysis and optimisation after receiving traffic

An intuitive interface and user-friendly website navigation push users to buy and improve product promotion. Ease of navigation is determined by the structure of the online shop, the presence of breadcrumbs, small micro-markup components, search tools and filters. Particular attention should be paid to users accessing the website from mobile devices, so it’s important to make a good adaptive design (a mobile version of the website) so that the online shop pages display correctly on small smartphone displays. Post-traffic analysis and design/usability optimisation assesses how well users are interacting with the site, what problems and needs they have, and how the user experience can be improved.  To carry out design/usability analysis and optimisation it is necessary to collect and analyse user behaviour data such as dwell time, frequency of visits, conversions, refusals, etc. It is also useful to conduct usability testing with real users to get feedback and understand which aspects of the design need improvement.  Based on the findings, hypotheses and recommendations for design/usability optimisation can be developed and then their effectiveness can be tested using A/B tests or other methods. This approach helps to increase user satisfaction and achieve business goals.

Internet advertising for an online shop

Online shop advertising (contextual advertising, context) is an effective way to attract the attention of potential buyers and increase sales and conversion rates. However, it does not exclude the need for SEO promotion, but only complements it by providing an opportunity to compete with websites that are still out of reach and in the first positions of organic search.  Unlike SEO, context enables rapid sales results, but requires constant investment. And sometimes the cost of advertising (especially when competition is high) makes it impossible to compete with the market’s flagships. But you can’t do without it either, especially if the site is still young and the SEO promotion work has only just begun.  Context has different formats and channels, which need to be chosen according to the specifics of the product, goals and budget. Let’s focus on the main types of advertising for an online shop.

Search advertising

Google’s search engine advertising provides “warm” leads with a specific search query – ad units appear at the top or bottom of search results marked “advertising”. But is there a 100% guarantee that the advertisement will be noticed by potential customers, even though competitors are working on a similar query? This depends on how the system evaluates the ad against the parameters set by users in their queries. It also takes into account the quality of the web pages and the highest price per click set by the specialist in the ad cabinet settings. Based on this data, the system will determine the winners and losers of the imaginary “competition” (auction). The winners will be shown at the top (the highest quality ads) or at the bottom (less relevant ads). Advertisements of losers will not be shown at all. It is not necessary to invest huge budgets and compete with the market leaders in order for your ad to appear in search results. It is more effective to fine-tune advertising for an online shop, for example, to promote products using low-frequency keywords. And it is imperative to get busy with the website, because the search engine prefers resources that load quickly and are regularly updated, i.e. that are user-friendly.

Media advertising

Helps to attract attention with the help of visual elements – banners:

• video;
• animations;
• text, etc.

The format of the media ad is chosen at your own discretion. A media ad is placed in the contextual media network, not in the search engine. It is good for increasing brand awareness, as the ad is constantly “flashed” and the user sees the company’s logo, not just the name (as in a search engine listing).

Teaser advertising

These are the same text-and-graphic clickbait “yellow” ads that are displayed on other resources of the teaser network’s partners. They are characterised by eye-catching images, impactful headlines and emotional sentences with customer needs. Pros of teaser advertising:

1. Cheap price per click.
2. Huge user coverage.
3. Minimum ad content requirements when compared to Google AdWords.

But the pros of such ads are far outweighed by their disadvantages. First, many users no longer take teaser ads with headlines like “Bummer… Watch to the end” with a link to the video. Many such ads are ignored. Secondly, the teaser is very difficult to hit the lead accurately. Thirdly, there is a lot of bot traffic in teaser ads, which is not helpful, but only an unnecessary expense. Teaser advertising can be seen as a supplement to basic search advertising, but not as a separate, effective sales tool.

Google shopping

It’s a service from Google that shows advertisers’ product ads on the right-hand side of the search engine page. Google Shopping is effective for retail sales: the ads display images of products and their detailed characteristics.  Google Shopping ads are set up through Google Ads and Merchant Center. The advertising campaign is easy to manage, while providing a fairly high reach to the target audience. Relevant ads can be matched to search queries with common keywords.  Important: You can set up remarketing in any Google ad. This will bring back users who have already visited the IM before. 

Social media to promote an online shop

Social media allows you to communicate with potential and existing customers, showcase products and services, receive feedback and recommendations, and increase brand awareness and loyalty. A special feature of social media promotion is targeting, which is discussed in more detail later in the text.

SMM to increase customer loyalty

The main emphasis in social media marketing is on working with reputation and increasing the reach of the target audience. SMM makes it possible to form a loyal target audience for the shop, which is very important in the long term. In order to use social media successfully, the following aspects must be considered:

1. Choosing the right social media. Don’t try to be present on all the popular social networks, but rather concentrate on those where the target audience is located. For example, if the shop sells clothes for young people, Instagram and TikTok are suitable, and if it specialises in car parts, Facebook and YouTube are worth emphasising. Instagram and TikTok have the youngest audience, and Facebook has an older audience, around 25-35 years old.
2. Creating quality content. Content published on social media must be interesting, useful and relevant to subscribers. They can share news about the company, talk about the benefits and features of products, give tips and advice on their use, run competitions and promotions, and showcase testimonials and great customer results.
3. Interaction with followers. Social media not only allows you to spread the word about the shop but also to receive feedback from your audience. It is important to respond to comments, questions and complaints from subscribers as quickly as possible, to be polite and friendly, and to take customers’ opinions and wishes into account when launching new products.
4. Analysis of results. To evaluate the effectiveness of a social media promotion strategy, it is important to monitor various indicators, such as the number of followers, likes, comments, website conversions and sales. To do this, specific social media analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights or Instagram Insights are used. The analysis will help to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the social media presence and adjust the strategy according to the goals and strategy of the online shop.

Targeted advertising

Social media, in particular Facebook and Instagram, offer an excellent set of tools for advertisers to help directly market their products from advertisements. Targeted advertising is used to increase the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and achieve specific business objectives, such as increasing online shop traffic, attracting customers to your website, increasing user reach, etc. Targeted advertising allows ads to be shown only to users who meet certain criteria. These criteria may include demographic, psychographic, behavioural, geographic and other parameters. When setting up ads, it is important for the targeting expert to accurately identify the target audience and the timing of the ads, which will enable the ad budget to be optimised without losing effectiveness.

Price aggregators

These are large web portals showing the current price and range of products from online shops registered on a price aggregator. Hundreds and even thousands of trade resources are registered on one such platform, so for a buyer, it is an opportunity to quickly find the right product and compare its price from different sellers. Among the largest price aggregators in Ukraine are Hotline.ua., Price.ua., Metamarket.ua. and others. The benefits of promoting products through price aggregators:

• quick return on investment;
• involved visitors;
• small costs.

The disadvantages of such a client channel

• dependence on aggregator attendance;
• there is no instrument to influence the buyer’s choice other than the price of the product.

Price aggregators are effective in the initial stage of promoting a shop because they allow you to sell quickly, but later on their effectiveness will be inferior to sales from other channels.

Chatbots for an online shop

These are online assistants who take over a number of managers’ functions, thus freeing up their time for other tasks. Once the right options have been set, it will stick to them when communicating virtually with visitors.  The chatbot boosts conversion rates thanks to

1. Fast response to a visitor’s message (at any time of day or night). The chatbot not only gives prompt feedback, but also holds the potential customer’s attention until a shop manager gets involved.
2. User counselling. It will help to find the product of interest, provide information for making a purchase, delivery of the goods, etc. The user doesn’t even need to go into the shop – the chatbot will advise right in the social network. To set up the online assistant, a menu is added with the most relevant typical questions from potential customers. The virtual assistant is programmed so that after a couple or three guiding questions, a relevant product can be selected.
3. Sending messages. The virtual assistant can send messages en masse to a customer base. Thanks to excellent personalisation and detailed customer segmentation, such messages have good discoverability, which means the information reaches the recipient.

Email marketing in online shop promotion

An email newsletter is a marketing tool for replenishing and segmenting the customer base in the process of promoting an online shop, performing functions such as:

• encourages repeat purchases;
• increases the number of visitors who make a purchase;
• increases customer loyalty to the brand;
• focuses the attention of customers.

Email marketing can be used to inform the target audience about company news, product range extensions, promotional offers, seasonal discounts, etc. Email marketing increases audience engagement and loyalty to the online shop, but this marketing tool only works if you have a large customer base created through other engagement channels.  Email marketing is only a supplementary source of sales. It is not possible to promote effectively through mailing lists alone.

Common mistakes when promoting an online shop

At the start of an online shop promotion project, it is important not to make gross mistakes to avoid wasting time and money. Let’s look closely at common mistakes inherent in e-commerce project owners.

Lack of a promotion strategy

Preparing a promotion strategy is the most important stage, on which the success of further promotion of the resource depends. Without a strategy and work plan, it is impossible to achieve positive results. The best solution is to be clear about your plans for the year ahead:

• outline SMART objectives;
• choose your promotion channels;
• develop activities to achieve the main objectives;
• analyse the effectiveness of the promotion every month and make adjustments to the strategy.

This approach makes it possible to organise promotion properly and to understand when and what tools to use for this.

Promotion by unqualified professionals

It is important to find a reliable contractor for this kind of work. There are three options:

1. Hiring freelancers can save on fees, but there are high risks of poor quality, incompetence, missed deadlines and even project stoppage.
2. Forming a staff of specialists is more reliable than freelancers, because you can control their work, but it is very expensive and unprofitable to maintain a whole department at the initial stage of promotion of the shop.
3. Using the services of a marketing agency is the best option in terms of reliability and financial cost, if approached correctly.

When choosing an agency, you should pay attention to the following aspects of the contractor:

• competence;
• experience and portfolio;
• promotion prices.

Incorrect assessment of opportunities

The wrong assessment of opportunities when promoting an online shop can have serious consequences for your business. If you don’t consider the competition, demand, target audience and the specifics of the market, you risk losing money and customers. Promoting your online shop requires a professional approach and in-depth analysis. You need to define your goals, strategy, tools and success metrics. Only in this way can you achieve the desired results and increase sales.

Incorrect use of traffic channels 

Very often, specialists focus exclusively on one sales channel which gives the best results. This approach is fundamentally wrong, because each traffic channel can be quite workable at certain stages of promotion. It is better to use all available marketing tools, but it is also wrong to spend a small budget on all channels. A comprehensive, rational approach is important here. SEO promotion, for example, is more of a long term approach, so you can use PPC or fast-track targeting advertising to save time.

Lack of regular monitoring of analytics

It is important to make regular snapshots of key indicators in order to monitor the impact of promotion:

• the traffic to the web resource;
• page view time;
• depth of page view;
• conversion;
• refusals;
• return on investment;
• the average sales receipt.

Monitoring analytics will enable the identification of factors affecting each of the above parameters and options for improvement.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most effective customer engagement tool for an online shop? Each marketing tool has advantages and disadvantages, so in this matter you should start from the objectives and goals of the business, looking at each e-commerce project individually under the microscope. You need to use different channels to attract traffic.

How much does it cost to promote an online shop? The cost of promoting an IM depends on many factors, including the age of the site, the number of web pages and product positions, promotion methods, subject matter and competition in the segment, and so on. We are ready to permanently engage in the optimization and promotion of your online shop on favorable terms. To calculate the exact price we will offer to fill in the brief.

How long does it take to promote an online shop? Large-scale e-commerce projects require constant support and promotion in order to attract more and more customers and consistently generate income. The longer an online shop is promoted, the lower the cost of conversion, etc.

Conclusion

The promotion of an IM needs to be handled responsibly, relying on a different set of marketing tools. For guaranteed results, you’re best advised to contact the experts at Around web, a digital advertising agency. We provide comprehensive turnkey internet marketing services and are very good at developing and implementing an effective strategy for your business.