How To Drive E-commerce Sales With Content Marketing

What we’ll cover:

1. How do customers shop? Nearly 90% of consumers do their research before making a purchase, and the number is still increasing.

2. Why is it important to connect your content with products? The benefits of creating a long-desired seamless omnichannel shopping experience for your customers are tremendous.

3. The key takeaways to drive your e-commerce sales!

How do customers shop?... They do research first!

What exactly do consumers do before making their final purchase decision and placing an order? These are the big and mysterious questions all business owners are dying to find out.

Over the past several years, numerous studies have found out and confirmed that it is increasingly common among consumers to do pre-purchase research before making a purchase. The eCommerce Foundation research strongly indicates that up to 88% of consumers tend to research about products they are interested in before making a final purchase, either online or in-store. Similarly, Dansk Erhverv - Digital Handel’s latest statistical report on e-commerce in Denmark found that almost all consumers do product research before buying. And as shown in the figure below, 87% of Danish consumers do their research purely online.

The key point to note is that consumers are getting smarter and demanding more information before spending their money. Previously, another report pointed out that costumers preferred to research about products online, and then purchase them offline later in physical stores. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed consumer shopping habits dramatically as everyone has adapted to the New Normal. The option of offline shopping has been gradually replaced by online shopping. After all, the New Normal has changed contemporary consumers' behavior from ‘research online, purchase offline’ to ‘research online, purchase online’.

So, now the question is: What does all of this mean for your e-commerce business now? With consumers conducting their pre-purchase research online and the increase in online shopping due to Covid-19, the content you have created (such as blog posts and articles) is of great value to consumers at this point of their shopping journey and can result in a sale! However, it's crucial to immediately present relevant products on these landing pages before customers shift their attention away to another site to finish their shopping journey.

How to provide a seamless omnichannel shopping experience: Connect content with relevant products!

Let’s first look at the illustration below to understand how customers shop step by step and what happens if your content is not connected to relevant products and categories.

Assuming you don't want to lose your customers at the very last step, you must connect your content with relevant product recommendations to create an omnichannel shopping experience.

Here's a refresher on what does omnichannel means:

'Omnichannel is a cross-channel strategy focused on giving customers seamless and integrated experiences to empower their engagement with your business.' -  Outsystems

So, how can you connect your content with related products, categories and further content to create a smooth shopping experience for your customers? Using our Content Recommendations feature, you can make use of your existing content to help customers from the research stage to the purchasing stage without leaving your online store. This way customers that land on your blog posts can continue on their shopping journey navigating to relevant products seamlessly once they are ready. Doing so improves your customers' general online shopping experience, increases the time they spend on your site, and ultimately increases your conversion rate, growing your business.

Moreover, it is also beneficial to synchronize relevant content to your product pages. This helps frame the problem this product can solve and further convince customers to purchase the product. As the illustration above shows, our Content Recommendation feature enhances your control over the customers’ shopping journey enabling you to smoothly guide them each step of the way to make the final purchase. So, start maximizing the ROI of your content marketing and increase e-commerce conversion rates today!

To wrap up, the key takeaways are:

• When customers do pre-research, make the most out of your existing content by connecting to relevant products.

• Increase your e-commerce sales by providing a seamless omnichannel shopping experience.

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If you want to know more about the omnichannel strategies and our Content Recommendations solution, you can read more about it in our product announcement, or contact our e-commerce experts for personalized assistance!