Ecommerce - 1.1 Online Merchandising Flashcards
improvise, adapt, overcome.
Marketing Strategies - Omnichannel
available in literally every touchpoint that a
customer wants to interact with the brand. This likely includes a brick-and-mortar presence, website, social, phone and more. This also includes the notion of a customer being able to easily switch channels through their buying process
Marketing Strategies - Multichannel
non-integrated touch points. A customer cannot
switch channels through the buying process. This more has to do with silos of communication than anything else.
Ex: If customer buys online then cannot return in brick-and-mortar store.
Marketing Strategies - Affilate Marketing
using incentives such as cashback and other
rewards to encourage people to recommend your brand.
Marketing Strategies - Social Marketing
The use of social media (Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc) to spread the word about your company and interact with customers.
Marketing Strategies - Email Marketing
The use of email to continue brand awareness. This remains as one of the most effective means of communication.
Marketing Strategies - Word of mouth marketing
The most effective marketing strategy. A customer loves your brand so much that they tell others about it.
Basic steps of setting up a new online store - Strategy
(90%) Who is your competition. and what will set you
apart? What are you offering that your competitors will not offer? Why do you want to get into this business?
Basic steps of setting up a new online store - Technology
(10%)
Determining the platform to start with. If this is a small
company with limited funds, Magento is likely not the best option. A SaaS platform is likely to be the best option. It has a low cost of entry (monthly fees) and has many features.
- Hosting: We like MageMojo, but there is a plethora of hosting options on the market. It is good to talk with the hosting company to determine the server specifications necessary to find the right balance between computing power and paying too much.
- Deployment: getting the site going. Launching a new site is much easier than migrating existing websites. You just have to point the domain name at the store, remove any temporary protections (such as a password entry present during development), and you are good to go.
• Maintenance: the basic level of maintenance (from a
developer’s point of view) includes patching. From a store
owner’s view, they need to keep the products up to date,
fulfill orders, and follow their strategy for growing the
company.
Search Strategies - Keyword Search
Customers need to find things on your website. Hopefully
the search bar is very visible. They will type in a query.
Removing the cruft (“and,” “the,” etc.), you are left with likely the keywords of their search. These are the important words used to find products on your website.
Search Strategies - Auto-suggest
Based on the keywords and phrases used, smart search
engines will be able to find other keywords and phrases that are similar to the one that the customer entered.
• This will help guide them to the answer that they are
looking for.
Search Strategies - Guided Navigation
• This implies helping the customer reach the decision you want them to reach (likely resulting in a purchase).
• This technology is still up and coming and relatively
expensive to do right.
Upselling, cross-selling in ecomm - Upsell
• Visible on a product page.
• This tells customers of more expensive or (hopefully)
alternative choices to what they are looking at. This provides awareness of other options on your website.
Upselling, cross-selling in ecomm - Cross-selling
- After the customer has added the product to the cart, we do not want to show choices to what they have purchased. Doing so might lead them to reconsider their options.
- Cross-selling involves showing the customer complementary products: ones that will make using the original product easier or more satisfying.
SEO in Ecommerce - Quality URL Structure
Don’t use numbers or IDs in the structure. Instead, use words. Not too many, but 75 characters or so in the url.
SEO in Ecommerce - Good information Architecture
- This describes how your website is constructed.
- What are the paths to the categories? How do they relate to the products? Is there any correlation? What about breadcrumbs? How do you expect people to flow through your website?
- Are there well-organized sections of content?
