The last few years have seen a sustained growth in the adoption of e-commerce. This has brought about a lot of changes in the industry – and there are many more to come.
Frederik Zietsman, chief executive officer, of Takealot.com.
Heightened consumer expectations – on all fronts
People don’t distinguish between different digital experiences, which means they expect the same experience no matter where they are spending their hard-earned rands. As more players enter the digital economy, e-commerce providers must step up to meet expectations that have undergone seismic changes. Across all touchpoints and digital channels, customers expect proactive service, personalised interactions, and seamless, seamless experiences.
This will extend to shipping too. With the maturation of e-commerce, customers will expect better, cheaper, faster and more transparent delivery, something we already see playing out. They seek a rapid response, especially considering that next-day delivery has now been expedited to next-hour delivery in some cases – think grocery delivery providers. This greater demand is positive for industry players who can meet expectations as it will drive innovation and ultimately, higher adoption.
People also expect to discover products more easily, and this is where hyper-personalisation innovation comes into play.
Shoppers want to feel special, personally catered to, seen and heard, and recognised and rewarded. Personalisation has elevated the shopping experience – and the customer expectation.
While the South African market is still finding its niche in creating custom and targeted experiences through the use of data, analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and automation, heightened customer experience is a pivotal trend going forward and simply cannot be ignored.
Broader product categories
When e-commerce first entered the country, the market predominantly sold consumer electronics and books. But over time, as businesses have matured, consumers are looking for a far broader range of categories including appliances, consumable categories, lifestyle products, and clothing, among others.
It is estimated that 86% of shoppers say product selection/variety is important to them when deciding which brand or retailer to buy from. Since the market is so crowded with other retailers, it is crucial that those who want to stay ahead of the curve carry an assortment of products that broaden categories so that they’re optimised to compete with other businesses.
As for the popularity of certain product categories, it is also important to monitor what buying trends are emerging as a result of lifestyle influences. Take for example load shedding. As uncertainty around capacity and stages increase, so are more people shopping for items to combat that uncertainty. Consumers are flocking to purchase backup batteries, inverters, UPS devices and generators, with one retailer reporting a 27% jump in sales over the 2022 period.
Retailers must increasingly broaden their categories to cater to the demands of a market looking for on-point variety in 2023.
Recession proof?
As macroeconomic pressure continues into next year, together with low consumer confidence and less discretionary income, people will be looking for value across categories. For retailers, this will see a trend of customers buying down into second or third-tier brands in an attempt to stretch their spend without having to make large lifestyle changes. If they can get the same product from a different brand at a lower price, they will.
Globally, e-commerce has been viewed as a recession-proof channel, as the majority of growth comes from consumers switching channels. And while I think this is true to an extent, we will continue to see the effects of more frugal spending. This means affordability will be one of the most important factors that consumers consider when deciding which products to buy, and which brands to stay loyal to.
Buy now pay later arrangements as well as other alternative payment mechanisms will also likely become more prominent in response to consumer needs.
Rather than see this as a threat to business, e-commerce should see this trend as an invitation to remain relevant. We should be asking ourselves: how do we continue to add value to our customers and retain their business?
Enabling smaller businesses
Something that is fundamental to the continued existence of e-commerce is that we continue to play our part as enablers of small businesses. This is a strong global trend and reflects one of the greatest strengths of e-commerce: democratising access to markets. This enablement will only grow over time and become something society expects from the market as consumers become more conscious of the impact of their purchasing decisions.
In a South African context, this trend is not one to simply watch.
Enabling small business enables our economy, which directly impacts our country’s growth potential.
Responsible retailers must jump firmly onto this bandwagon to continue to strengthen our economy in 2023.
Growth of ecosystem
South African e-commerce and its support structures are still in their infancy and remain underdeveloped. I believe this is set to change with the accelerated development of these ecosystems. By that, I’m referring to practical things such as delivery capability, with more platforms emerging that aggregate this service to expedite delivery.
We’ll also see more ‘super-apps’ starting to emerge. This will see banking apps take on more retail functions and vice versa as the division between verticals blur and fragment. Whether these app functions will be able to scale and allow for a good customer experience remains to be seen.
Social commerce, and live shopping, is also set to grow in prominence, in line with international trends. This is set to become an exponential growth channel as more people tune into live streams to learn more about products and take advantage of specials.
Growing a customer-centric ecosystem that is innovative, consistent, blended, and offers compelling experiences across multiple channels and touchpoints is no easy task given the extraordinary complexity of the retail space. But with that said, it is a must-do for 2023. Customers demand nothing less, and will happily move on to those who lead it.
Wrapping up
We at ShopShipShake have been working with businesses like yours with fulfilling experiences. We offer one-stop services, including an efficient supply chain, over 10 thousand of China’s suppliers, over 1,000,000 SKU and more. With a successful track record of over 100,000 clients, we are sure to deliver your orders requirements.
As an entrepreneur, you know that time is money. That’s why saving 20 hours per week is essential if you want to grow your business faster and easier. Discover three digital marketing automation strategies that will free up valuable time so you can focus on other aspects of your business.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Are you struggling to keep up with the demands of digital marketing? You’re not alone. Small businesses and entrepreneurs are often so busy that they don’t have time to focus on their marketing efforts.
Don’t worry, though! There are ways to automate your digital marketing so that it doesn’t take up all your time.
As a digital entrepreneur and marketing coach, over the past ten years growing online businesses, I’ve learned precisely how to save 20 hours a week with automatic digital marketing processes, which I’m here to teach you. By implementing the three following automation strategies, you can free up valuable time to focus on other aspects of your business. Let’s get started!
1. Social media marketing automation
Automating your social media marketing is one of the fastest and easiest ways to save time in digital marketing. There are many tools available that allow you to schedule posts, monitor engagement, and more.
At the beginning of each month, create a calendar by planning 30 days worth of social media content ideas. For example, each day of the week, you should vary your content by type (i.e., educational, entertaining, inspiring, tips and tricks, behind-the-scenes, etc.). This will help keep your social media audiences engaged and interested in your posts while making it easier for you and your team to create the content.
Similar to how manufacturing facilities streamline production processes by batching work, the same technique should be applied to your marketing efforts. Instead of creating marketing content from scratch and posting to social networks daily, batch your workload by producing content in one sitting and then schedule your posts for the rest of the week. This will make it easier for you and save you a lot of time so that you can move on to other areas of your business.
When filming videos or shooting photos for social media, aim to capture a variety of content that can be reused and repurposed for various posts. This will cut down on the content creation time, as you’re utilizing one shoot for multiple pieces of content.
You can also share UGC (user-generated content) featuring your company’s products or services (either by hired content creators or real customers), which shows social proof while giving you easy-to-post original content that doesn’t require extra work or effort on your part.
In addition to these social media marketing tips to save time and energy, you can also reshare posts from several months ago. For example, if you had a popular post on Instagram from at least 3-months ago that got a lot of engagement, repost that with a slightly different caption now. This drastically cuts down on your content creation time, helping to attract a wider audience of potential new followers interested in your business.
2. Automating email marketing
Automating your email marketing is a great way to save time and increase efficiency while staying in touch with your customers and prospects. You can use an email automation platform like Flodesk, Mailchimp or Constant Contact to create automated campaigns that send personalized emails to your subscribers based on their preferences and interests.
For example, creating an email sequence workflow that automatically is scheduled to send to people who opt-in to your email list is the absolute best way to streamline your email marketing process. It’s also important to segment your audience lists so that you optimize your email workflows — this way, you know where each person is in the customer journey experience.
For example, if someone opts into your email list by signing up for a lead magnet (such as a free ebook), then you’ll want to add them to a cold lead list (since they’re just learning about your business). That way, you start to warm them up through emails before selling them on your products or services.
By comparison, if you set up an audience list of past customers, you can remarket to them by offering reward-based promotions (such as exclusive Thank You coupon codes) to encourage them to purchase again.
As you can see, setting up audience lists makes it easier to create different types of automated emails that drive brand awareness, boost sales conversions and incentivize repeat purchases.
3. Implementing content curation tools
Content curation is another excellent way for entrepreneurs and small business owners to save time on digital marketing. Using a content curation tool, such as Buzzsumo or Curata, you can quickly find and share relevant content in your industry without spending hours researching articles and sources. Content curation tools allow you to easily search for the best content related to your target audience, save it for later use, and share it on social media.
In addition to sharing industry-focused content, you can also share inspirational quotes that relate to your target audience’s mindset. For example, suppose you’re selling beauty products geared toward women. In that case, you might consider quickly creating a beauty image (even a stock photo will suffice) with a caption by an empowering female icon (such as Coco Chanel or Marilyn Monroe). Women are inspired by motivational messages from these figures and will often engage with this type of content on social media (by liking, commenting, and sharing it). This is an easy, effective way to create content that gets results quickly.
These are just a few simple ways that automation will help you save time in digital marketing. Implementing these strategies will allow you to focus more energy on other important business areas while growing brand awareness for your company and acquiring new sales leads.
Wrapping up
We at ShopShipShake have been working with businesses like yours with fulfilling experiences. We offer one-stop services, including an efficient supply chain, over 10 thousand of China’s suppliers, over 1,000,000 SKU and more. With a successful track record of over 100,000 clients, we are sure to deliver your orders requirements.
You’ve made your list, but now it’s time to check it twice. No, not THAT list. At the vert start of 2023, it’s time to double-check your 2023 content marketing list. Whatever your strategy, we’ve put together this list of common content marketing mistakes to help you ensure your content marketing strategy stays off of the naughty list.
Top 9 Content Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid
#1: Not Investing In Content Marketing
A simple, but costly mistake, if you’re 2023 marketing strategy and accompanying budget doesn’t include any content marketing, time to rethink your plan. Content marketing is far more than just a simple blog and the occasional piece of gated content. It’s any piece of consumable media (blogs, videos, podcasts) your company publishes.
Content, regardless of its form, is how your brand can engage with your consumer base. Each piece of content you deliver is another opportunity for your brand to share its story and how it can better improve the lives of your customers.
#2: Not Sticking To A Strategy
If you’re going to invest in content marketing, be sure those content marketing pieces are built around a centralized strategy. A good plan not only dictates what type of content you publish and how often you publish it, but it also identifies how your content will benefit your audience.
If you’re creating content around a central topic, but have no idea why it’s time to revisit your content marketing strategy and ensure it’s aligned with the needs of your customer base.
#3: No Content Marketing Goals
As a note, this should be part of your strategy, but brands often overlook it. It can be a bit tricky, but you need to create goals around your content marketing program. How else are you going to be able to measure the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts?
At a minimum, your goals should:
Be Attainable: No, it’s not reasonable to expect a 10,000x ROI from content marketing
Be Quantifiable: Get some metrics and KPIs in the mix
Be Aligned: Your content marketing goals should ladder up to your general marketing and revenue goals; otherwise, why invest?
#4: Not Sticking To A Regular Schedule Over The Long Term
Raise your hand if you have a colleague or boss that soured on content marketing once the first (and only) blog post you publish didn’t produce a paying customer. Does this sound familiar, “I guess content marketing doesn’t work for us!”
Too many brands make the common mistake of giving up on their content marketing after publishing a few sporadic content pieces. Don’t be those marketers.
Proven content marketing success comes:
When you stick to your strategy (as long as it’s a good strategy) over the long term.
When you publish your content pieces on a regular schedule.
That schedule could even be monthly; the point is to be consistent.
#5: Not Creating Great Content Your Audience Finds Valuable
There is a gluttony of “good” content in the market. The world doesn’t need any more. If you want your content marketing efforts to be successful, you need to move away from good content.
Instead, strive to produce great content that your audience finds valuable. Teach them something, provide them with insight, answer questions, leave the content world more enriched with every piece of content your produce.
#6: Focusing Too Much On Selling.
Speaking of producing great content, leave the hard sales schtick out of most of your content pieces. Your customers are smarter than you give them credit for, and they can pick up when a post goes from “Hey, this is super useful.” to “Oh, here’s where they start selling to me.”
The second that happens, they’ve tuned out of your content and are moving on to the next part of their day.
The one exception, it’s okay to produce sales-oriented content if it’s geared towards individuals that are actively going through your sales funnel.
Which brings us to mistake #7…
#7: Only Creating Top-Funnel Content
Most content marketing is written to promote brand awareness. Get a keyword. Write a piece of content for that keyword. Have Google rank your site for that keyword. Get discovered. Get a customer. Repeat.
Yes, content is a vital part of driving awareness and filling that top-level of the funnel. But it’s not the ONLY part of the funnel that content marketing can affect.
From consideration to decision-making to retention and loyalty building (and even reselling), your brand should be producing content that aligns with each stage of your customer’s journey.
Again, the key is to provide value. Different topics are more helpful to a customer, depending on where they are within their journey with your brand.
#8: Creating Content That Doesn’t Account For Your Audience’s Preferences
Content marketing is more than just blog posts. We know blogging is (dare we say) easier, it’s a writer and a bit of graphic support. Maybe a researcher and a copy editor if you’ve got the resources. But, brands need to understand, not every audience WANTS to read a blog post.
Some prefer more design, others video, still others audio. Audiences have preferences, and if your content marketing plan doesn’t account for the known preferences of your target audience, you’re content marketing efforts will never reach their full potential.
#9: Not Having A Content Amplification Strategy
By far, one of the biggest mistakes we see made by marketers regards their amplification strategy (or lack thereof). Brands collectively spend a small fortune on producing content but many don’t reserve any resources to help share and distribute that content so it can be seen by an audience.
The thought: that SEO and “free traffic” will bring the eyeballs. When the traffic fails to materialize, they throw up their hands and say, “Content marketing doesn’t work!”
You need to have channels in place to amplify your content.
The most common include:
Paid Social Advertising: Publish your content to a social profile and pay to promote it.
Paid Native Advertising: Use a content advertising platform like Outbrain to increase awareness of your content.
Email: Send new content to your subscriber base.
Organic Social: Publish your content organically to your social profile
Fan Advocacy: Leverage the social-sharing power of your biggest fans to amplify your content by sharing your best pieces of content onto their personal social feeds (Curious about fan advocacy, see it in action here.)
The strongest amplification strategy uses a mix of all of the above to ensure every piece of content is getting the attention and awareness it needs to be successful.
#10: Not Diversifying Your Content
If you’re only producing one type of content (e.g., blog posts), you’re missing out on the opportunity to reach a wider audience. Try diversifying your content mix to include things like:
infographics
ebooks
webinars
videos
blog posts
surveys
quizzes
podcasts
Remember, the individuals that make up your audiences all have their preferred content. By creating a mix of different content types, you can better ensure that your message reaches your audience on the platform that best works for them.
Wrapping up
We at ShopShipShake have been working with businesses like yours with fulfilling experiences. We offer one-stop services, including an efficient supply chain, over 10 thousand of China’s suppliers, over 1,000,000 SKU and more. With a successful track record of over 100,000 clients, we are sure to deliver your orders requirements.
All over the South Africa, retailers have been bulking up their inventory for back-to-school sales.
After the New Year holiday, the new school term begins!
Your back-to-school marketing campaigns start here, with insightful methods and strategies to increase sales for your online store.
Like clockwork, parents, teachers, and students look for seasonal sales for deals, discounts, and personalized back-to-school goodies. As an eCommerce marketer, this is your opportunity to generate healthy revenue from January.
Class is in session.
Back-to-School Campaign – a MUST for Your Online Store
The global school and college supplies market is valued at $108.1 billion and is expected to increase by almost $15.12 billion by 2024, with a 3% compound annual growth rate over the forecast period.
2023 is still an uncertain year – the threats of inflation and a general recession are nudging households to look for more affordable options. Remote living has popularized eCommerce as an attractive, budget-friendly shopping alternative. Back-to-school marketing is expected to reach more online shoppers than ever this year.
While uncertain, the market is still growing with a post-pandemic intensity. Last year, the average household spent a record-breaking $849 on school-aged children and $1200 on college students. Currently, the average household is planning to spend most of its budget on back-to-school devices ($295.65) and clothing apparel ($253.46).
Before we list our back-to-school marketing ideas, use this year’s emerging trends to develop the foundation of your seasonal strategy – when you should promote your products, how you should price them, and how large of an audience you can expect to reach:
$100-500 is the most common budget for back-to-school supplies
24% of customers shop from a store’s website (30% use third-party apps or marketplaces)
By the start of January, your campaign should be in full swing to catch as broad an audience as possible, promoting budget-aware sales and curating back-to-school marketing across multiple channels.
Insightful Back-to-School Marketing Ideas and Tips
If you want to keep up with the back-to-school rush, attractive discounts and timely content is a must. This section will detail fourteen unique strategies to help you develop a successful seasonal campaign.
Launch Seasonal Products and Marketing Efforts on Time
Prepare quickly, and research when the back-to-school season starts in your market region. Even in the US, the first day of school differs from state to state.
Some essential products to sell during the back-to-school season are backpacks, notebooks, lunch boxes, and footwear. You can find inspiration and possible options in the SHOPSHIPSHAKE catalogs:
After electronics, clothing is the second most purchased product during the back-to-school season, with footwear and essential supplies in 3rd and 4th place, respectively.
Personalized clothing and accessories should be a mainstay in your store. Still, school-specific products give your catalog more legitimacy with the flexibility to create back-to-school bundles and promos.
Create Back-to-School Bundles
Offer your customers an option to buy personalized back-to-school-themed bundles. You can tackle your audience directly with online surveys or by contacting local schools. Alternatively, research the top websites that offer lists of back-to-school essentials.
To better customize your back-to-school bundles, choose a specific customer base. Parents, teachers, and college students will respond to different marketing efforts. Design your content marketing strategy based on your existing customer demographics, their preferred media channels, and use of vocabulary.
Market your back-to-school bundles as a more affordable alternative to buying things separately. Take the opportunity to theme your products with matching designs and product imagery.
Update Your Storefront to Match the Seasonal Aesthetic
It’s ideal to give your customers a seasonal feel with a uniquely themed UX design. Match the back-to-school aesthetic by redesigning your storefront. Update your homepage with seasonal messages, and change visuals for your banner image, background, and theme.
Use this opportunity to change and update your catalog listings for the new traffic. Place promos, discounts, and appropriate products on the top of your catalog for accessibility and higher visibility.
Here are a few standard back-to-school themes you can use for inspiration:
Classroom designs – add images of blackboards, lecture podiums, and notebooks with chalk or cursive letter fonts and formats.
Grading systems – use thematic accessories like grades, corrections, and images of diplomas, exams, and countdowns for deadlines.
Seasonal images – fill your background with fall colors, landscapes, transitions in nature, and pictures of schools or a college campus.
Character profiles – use images of children with backpacks, campus students, and teachers from stock photos or product models.
Supplies and stationary – add collages of calculators, rulers, protractors, globes, chemistry sets, textbooks, etc.
By redesigning your interface, your store gains authenticity and builds loyalty for new visitors. An active and updated store page can encourage your customers to participate in user-generated content.
Organize a Sales Event Contest or Challenge
Back-to-school sales are an excellent opportunity to promote creativity and ideas. Take advantage of the seasonal shopping rush by creating an accessible medium for user-generated content.
Offer parents or students a unique way to highlight their customer journey. Create raffles and options to share posts, tag people, or jump on a catchy hashtag. Social media is an essential platform for this kind of engagement. People can freely participate and follow timely developments.
Set up a tangible reward that your customers can look forward to, like a special deal, a chance to customize their own product or a highlight on your store page or profile. Use these insights to generate more content and valuable resources for other users.
Create Valuable Resources
Creating seasonal content has the potential to increase your search engine rankings, which is a necessary part of managing good website SEO. Master your keyword research through valuable guides, lists, and how-to’s to increase the quality of your brand without having to make significant expenses.
Some valuable ideas for back-to-school marketing content include:
Shopping lists – provide a list of back-to-school picks for parents or students
Survival guides – determine the essential supplies every student needs
E-books and articles – delve into deeper topics surrounding education and back-to-school sales
Fashion lookbooks – discover the latest fashion trends for the new fall semester
Educational resources – list the do’s and don’ts of buying back-to-school supplies online
Your trove of original resources will encourage more traffic and sales and give you the authority to team up with educational institutions and organizations.
Team Up With an Organization That Supports Education
Provide support for education through fundraising initiatives and goal-oriented partnerships.
You can help local organizations or donate a part of the profits to a good cause – help foster education and make it more accessible for local communities.
When done with good intentions, corporate social responsibility can humanize your campaign and give your store an edge over competitors. Think about initiatives for diversity, academic freedom, better conditions for teachers, or workshops that involve and motivate students to learn.
As an award for participation, provide deals and discounts for the back-to-school shopping season or donate your proceeds to charity to increase your overall growth and customer loyalty.
Offer Special Deals
A special discount is the lifeblood of good back-to-school marketing. Seasonal deals encourage users to do their own research and spend time exploring possible shopping avenues that wouldn’t otherwise be on their radar.
Finding a good deal is a rewarding experience – it encourages return purchases and fosters word-of-mouth advertising. We will briefly describe the types of offers that you can add to your catalog of back-to-school products:
Percentage-based or cash-off discounts – the most common offer you can provide is a percentage or cash discount for a limited time or season. You can discount specific products or offer bundle deals for a better price.
Free shipping and deliveries – high shipping costs are a common reason for abandoned shopping carts. Free shipping will give the customer a more transparent price estimate.
Promo codes – promo codes are great for affiliate marketing campaigns and limited offers. Add them to your newsletters, partnered organizations, or social media posts.
Student discounts – personalize your discounts for specific demographics. Student discounts are a tried-and-true tag that users openly search for.
Teacher discounts – show appreciation for the hardest workers of the back-to-school season. You can market teacher discounts as great gifts that parents and returning students can give to their favorite professors.
Dorm or roommate gift deals – college roommates will be ecstatic to find appropriate gifts for their own, often neglected demographic.
Returning customer discounts – offer loyalty discounts for return purchases for customers that subscribed to your newsletter or follow your media channels. Once customers develop a purchase pattern, next time they will likely go directly to your store.
Including an extra deal that feels unique to each customer is necessary to encourage smart shopping. A rewarding experience from a perceived gift can counteract the otherwise stressful season for many parents, teachers, and students, especially near the end of August.
Include a Gift With Each Purchase
Adding a small but free school-related gift with each order can be a nice touch. You may also consider customizing your packaging for a more personalized look and providing extra discounts with the product receipt.
Your gift doesn’t have to be too grandiose – extra stationery or a thoughtful booklet can significantly increase your brand’s quality without breaking the bank. When thinking about potential gifts, consider purchasing in bulk to keep your expenses lower.
Of course, free labor is hard to come by and even more challenging to sustain. Not everything in your marketing campaign needs to be done by you. Next up, we have influencer marketing.
Get in On Influencer Marketing
You might not know what younger school kids are into these days, what parents have to deal with, and the struggles of your average teacher. It’s untenable to perfectly capture the ins and outs of every demographic.
Move out of old-school advertising into marketing campaigns with a more authentic method of engagement. Save time and partner up with social media influencers, or sign a contract with an agency that offers to promote your products through a profile that your niche would naturally enjoy or be familiar with.
Influencers are incredibly relatable among younger audiences. The current k-12 aged generation is part of different pop-culture niches. YouTube creators, Twitch streamers, Instagram gurus, Twitter gimmick accounts, and even social media activists are all potential outlets for back-to-school marketing.
Influencers can frame your back-to-school marketing campaign in various ways:
Products with specialized features or manufacturing techniques
Latest clothing and accessory fashion trends
Affordable supplies for families with a tight budget
Ease-of-access online shopping opportunities
Home-learning vs in-person essentials
Customizable products and gifts for teachers
Influencer marketing is a specific term used for figures that have formed their business for dynamic marketing. Influencers create curated profiles that mix content and marketing based on trends, audience analytics, and overall growth.
Organize a Giveaway
Giveaways are one of the most straightforward marketing methods that provide high engagement without costing more than the prize for the lucky winner. The prize, however, must be substantial enough to entice potential participants.
Select a series of requirements to enter the giveaway. You can ask potential participants for:
Follows, shares, replies, and retweets
Testimonials for a product or service
Subscriptions to your newsletter
Specific hashtags in related posts
Challenges and user-generated content
Media sites like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, where your follower count can influence your brand standing, are a great medium to practice a variety of giveaway offers. Your giveaways can operate under one entry per person, or you can encourage more active users by offering multiple entry requirements for a higher chance of winning.
Offer Coupon Codes for Future Purchases
Your work doesn’t end with a successful sales campaign. Grow your business by encouraging return purchases with coupon codes. Back-to-school season shoppers make their purchases sporadically, returning for extra essentials and forgotten supplies for a new class or course.
Coupons, like discounts or promos, can offer a cash-off deal or free shipping for a limited time. Your coupons don’t necessarily need to be back-to-school themed, they can be a great way to keep new visitors around after the end of the seasonal period.
Create Fun, Interactive Quizzes With Shareable Results
If you’re likely to sell to internet-focused generations, we encourage more entertaining methods of back-to-school engagement. Formulate a results quiz for students to identify their clique, niche interests, or personality type related to some form of belonging, e.g., “what kind of back-to-school shopper are you?”
Quiz results should be easily shareable on social media and contain a call-to-action statement to inform the user of your products or special deals for the season.
Create a Back-to-School Campaign Newsletter
At this point, you’ve most likely noticed that all these back-to-school marketing ideas work well with one another, providing a diverse assortment of content that users can expect to receive throughout the season.
By design, your marketing should be curated across multiple channels, filling your advertising portfolio with timely and streamlined content. As part of your email marketing, newsletters are a great way to combine back-to-school campaigns into a single, digestible feed of content that users can check without effort.
In turn, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly newsletters are an excellent tool to maintain all year round, advertising seasonal sales and new content releases, while informing users in a personalized and entertaining manner.
Additional Things to Keep in Mind
Surveyed back-to-school shoppers showed a growing comfort in purchasing online this year, with 40% planning to buy curated supply kits and 50% looking to purchase apparel and fundamental school supplies.
Online shopping trends are varied and often hard to predict. Knowing where and how to present your back-to-school marketing for maximum visibility is just as important as creating original content in the first place.
The remaining points below will briefly discuss practical marketing methods to keep your back-to-school marketing successful.
Omnichannel Marketing
With omnichannel marketing, you create a seamless experience for your customers by using multiple marketing channels in a unified way.
Unlike multichannel marketing, where each platform is managed separately, omnichannel marketing is simply the process of distributing the same or similar content over multiple points of customer contact.
By using over three channels in a campaign, marketers earned a 494% higher order rate than single-channel counterparts.
Social Media
You should upload most of your back-to-school marketing efforts on social media channels. Social media usage is increasing, even among users aged 65 and up. Adults spend an average of 95 minutes per day on one of the leading social media apps.
Over 90% of businesses use social media in their marketing, and its process has shown results from surveyed customers. Pick your preferred media channels, be it social networks like Twitter, media sharing sites like Pinterest, or other community-oriented sites.
Benefit Even if You’re Not Selling School Supplies
You don’t need to plan a streamlined campaign or sell school supplies to take advantage of the back-to-school season. Get in on the fun simply by offering seasonally-themed products or student discounts.
Celebrate the new semester with fall-themed store designs, community posts, and gestures of support to keep your business actionable and authentic throughout the year.
Ready to start your store’s school year with an increased budget and growth? Start your back-to-school marketing campaign using marketing content, discounts, gifts, and events made for parents of school children, college students, and teachers.
Wrapping up
We at ShopShipShake have been working with businesses like yours with fulfilling experiences. We offer one-stop services, including an efficient supply chain, over 10 thousand of China’s suppliers, over 1,000,000 SKU and more. With a successful track record of over 100,000 clients, we are sure to deliver your orders requirements.
It is important to know which Incoterms are applicable in 2023 as they determine the responsibilities of buyers and sellers. Additionally, incorrect Incoterms can result in costly errors or delays in international trade.
Incoterms were first published in 1936 and are continually updated over time to reflect the changing global business environment to be continually used in 2022 and beyond.
The International Chamber of Commerce ICC published the latest version of Incoterms 2020. These changes came into effect on the 1st of January 2020 and will be used in 2023 and beyond, until the next changes are published sometime in future. The ICC originally published Incoterms in 1936 and have continually made updates to reflect the changes to the global trade environment. It’s important that all parties involved in trade clearly understand the changes and how they apply to global supply chains.
Incoterms play such a vital role in the world of global trade. In 2023, it’s imperative that buyers and sellers clearly understand Incoterms 2010 or Incoterms 2020 and clearly understand each party’s obligations along the supply chain.
Note: The content of this article and chart is only for general information purposes and shall not in any circumstances be considered bespoke legal advice or professional advice.
This article explains the top 5 most commonly used Incoterms that international buyers should know.
What are Incoterms?
Put simply, Incoterms are the selling terms that the buyer and seller of goods both agree to during international transactions. These rules are accepted by governments and legal authorities around the world. Understanding Incoterms is a vital part of International Trade because they clearly state which tasks, costs and risks are associated with the buyer and the seller.
The Incoterm states when the seller’s costs and risks are transferred onto the buyer. It’s also important to understand that not all rules apply in all cases. Some encompass any mode or modes of transport. Transport by all modes of transport (road, rail, air and sea) covers FCA, CPT, CIP, DAP, DPU (replaces DAT) and DDP. Sea/Inland waterway transport (Sea) covers FAS, FOB, CFR and CIF.
Why are Incoterms vital in International Trade?
Incoterms are referred to as International Commercial Terms. They are a set of rules published by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), which relate to International Commercial Law. According to the ICC, Incoterms rules provide internationally accepted definitions and rules of interpretation for most common commercial terms used in contracts for the sale of goods’.
All International purchases will be processed on an agreed Incoterm to define which party legally incurs costs and risks. Incoterms will be clearly stated on relevant shipping documents.
5 commonly used incoterms
CIF – Cost, Insurance and Freight
Cost Insurance Freight (CIF) is a prevalent option in global trade. That’s mainly because it is beneficial to both the exporter and the buyer. It’s primarily used to transport non-containerized goods like vehicles, machinery, and commodities.
Under CIF rules, the seller is responsible for transporting the goods to a named place or destination country. But unlike some other trade terms, the seller doesn’t carry the risk of loss or damage to the goods. Instead, that risk passes to the buyer from the point of origin.
Conversely, the buyer doesn’t have to arrange or pay for transportation costs. But to offset some buyer risk during the voyage, CIF requires the seller to insure the goods for a minimum amount. Therefore, CIF balances risk and responsibility almost equally between the parties.
DDP – Delivered Duty Paid
Any buyer that has bought goods from an online marketplace like Alibaba.com is likely acquainted with this Incoterm.
Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) has become very common due to the rise of e-commerce. The term requires the seller to handle everything including shipping, customs, import duties, taxes, etc. Delivery is only complete when the goods reach the buyer’s door, and risk only passes at that point. As a result, this makes it a very convenient option for buyers.
However, most sellers will include the costs of delivery in the price of their goods. Therefore, buyers will probably bear the ultimate costs of receiving the goods.
FOB – Free On Board
Free on Board (FOB) requires the seller to transport the products from their warehouse or factory to the ship. Additionally, they’re obligated to load the cargo onto the ship, and risk only passes to the buyer at that point.
FOB is not meant for containerized cargo, though; it mostly applies to ocean freight or transport by inland waterways. The Incoterm typically applies to shipments of easily movable goods like grain, iron ore, etc.
FCA – Free Carrier
Free Carrier (FCA) is another term that could be highly favorable for sellers.
Just like Ex Works (EXW), FCA puts the responsibility and risk of shipment on the buyer. All the seller has to do is deliver the goods to the “place of delivery.” This could be a seaport, airport, train station, or even the seller’s warehouse.
However, EXW is slightly different in that the seller may still have to handle export reporting and clearance. Meanwhile, with FCA, all of the seller’s obligations end at the place of delivery.
FCA is common among sellers who don’t want additional responsibilities or risks and buyers who don’t mind the extra effort.
FAS – Free Alongside Ship
Free Alongside Ship (FAS) applies mainly to so-called out of gauge (OOG) cargo. These are goods that don’t fit into a container, such as large machinery. FAS is the most common shipping option for goods of this nature.
Under these terms, the seller is only obligated to deliver the goods alongside the vessel. Risk also passes at that point, and everything that happens afterward is the buyer’s responsibility.
What Incoterms are best for you?
Many factors determine what Incoterms to pick. Here are some factors to remember as you negotiate the sales contract:
The type of shipping. Some Incoterms are suited to sea shipping alone, while others fit sea and non-sea shipping. For instance, CIF, FOB, and FAS are meant for sea shipping, while DDP and FCA are excellent for all shipping types.
The extent of obligations. Does the buyer have the resources and connections to process customs clearance or pay duties and taxes? For example, DDP is extremely convenient since it takes all of the responsibility for shipping and customs off buyers. Comparably, FCA and EXW will require much more buyer involvement.
Shipping destination. Shipments to a far destination can be expensive, so buyers need to consider if they’re willing to take on that cost. Additionally, certain Incoterms, like EXW, are not suited for international shipping because they present many cross-border difficulties.
The nature of the goods. Hard-to-ship goods like heavy machinery can be problematic. If the seller has special expertise in shipping these goods, it might be best to leave most of the process to them. Likewise, FAS works best for OOG cargo, so that’s something to consider when negotiating with the seller.
Incoterms can save buyers money and prevent disputes when properly understood and applied. Hopefully, this article can help buyers build a better knowledge of these trade terms and their uses.
Wrapping up
We at ShopShipShake have been working with businesses like yours with fulfilling experiences. We offer one-stop services, including an efficient supply chain, over 10 thousand of China’s suppliers, over 1,000,000 SKU and more. With a successful track record of over 100,000 clients, we are sure to deliver your orders requirements.
Let’s get in touch to build, sustain, and grow your businesses!
If you would like to know more details about us, please contact us: blog.shopshipshake.com
Currently, 70 percent of U.S. households own a pet, up from 67 percent in 2019. With more and more people willing to own a pet, a wave of high-tech pet products is revolutionizing the market. Every entrepreneur and wholesaler in this domain should pick the pace and stock up the smart pet products to capitalize as much as possible.
The lucrative pet products industry
Every owner shares a unique bond with their furry friend. Besides this, the growing animal healthcare awareness has increased the demand for animal supplies. The recent introduction of smart pet products has taken pet care to a new level. They provide added safety, convenience, and peace of mind to pet owners.
According to Global Market Insights, the pet tech market size surpassed USD 5 billion in 2021. It is now set to grow at a CAGR of about 20 percent from 2022 to 2028. Also, the global industry shipments will exceed 130 million units by 2028. The markets are stocked with several smart pet tech products such as collars, feeders, harnesses, and cameras. This article highlights the most profitable smart pet products that pet companies should stock.
Four pets products that attract most pet owners
Automatic feeder and food dispenser
All pets live busy lives. From chasing their tails to going for cat naps, there is one thing they never forget – asking for food!
Likewise, some pet owners have a hyperactive social and work life that disables them from catering to their pets well. This is where an automatic pet feeder and food dispenser come in handy. They serve consistent food portions at regular intervals and give pet parents the liberty to go away for a night or a weekend without worrying about their fur friend starving alone at home.
An attached mic and speaker in some food dispensers enable pet owners to interact with their fur kids and comfort them remotely. In addition to keeping the pets well-fed, some feeders offer options like a laser dot chasing game and food bowls to keep the dog and cat stuff.
A product that lets pet owners get rid of the guilt and gives them the liberty to stay outdoors stress-free is an ideal pet product to invest in. Always prefer the ones with enhanced features and easy functionality.
Smart cat litter box
Scooping litter has always been a gruesome task for pet owners. To their ease, a variety of smart cat litter boxes are now available in the market.
An ideal pet product in this domain will dispose of the litter and work with a self-cleaning mechanism. The efficiency of scooping relies on the quality of the smart litter box. Keeping a range of options is a good business decision as people might be looking for various price options.
A clean litter box lets little felines feel safe and comfortable. Perhaps this is why the best pet product brands have focused on cleanliness more than anything. Some pets and owners are finicky regarding pet products like dirty litter boxes or even pet leashes. Products with an odor-controlling feature are an excellent option for users who wish to minimize their trips to the trash cans. Some litter boxes are designed to be used with washable granules that rarely need replacement. Also, a few cat waste boxes have an odor-neutralizing and simple clean-up system that can go as long as a month without changing.
Stainless steel pet water dispenser
A well-hydrated pet tends to stay happy and healthy. The water dispensers are an incredible option for all pet owners who wish to keep an eye on their little munchkin’s water intake. A stainless steel water dispenser often contains features that improve water quality and clean up the ions. Some dispensers will automatically turn the power-off protection when the water is short in the tank. Also, most of these fountains contain a filter to provide clean water to the felines.
Many customers prefer food-grade quality when searching for such pet products, but not everyone has the luxury of visiting the Nashville Pet Products Center frequently. Offering these pet products online will be a sound move by wholesalers and pet product retailers. Ideally, these water dispensers should be easy to clean and assemble. Ensure that the dispensers enable users to control the speed and volume of water.
Intelligent LED pointer toy
Cats need mental stimulation to thrive. Without it, they will likely become bored, anxious, and lazy. Eventually, these emotional imbalances compel cats to find other ways to occupy themselves. This translates into destructive behaviors like inappropriate digging, chewing, or urination.
An indoor LED pointer toy could be a sound purchase for cat owners. An exciting light beam moves randomly on the floor, targeting the cats’ natural hunting instinct. This provides cats with a wonderful activity indoors and keeps them proactive. Some toys have a silent motor for changing the light direction. This prevents discomfort for the fur babies and keeps them occupied in the game.
At the same time, some pet products let the pets exercise at a fast pace. For instance, there is a faster light movement that the pets try to catch. This lets them blow off some steam and reignite their strength. On the contrary, snoozer pet products provide a cozy sitting for the pets to rest and restore their energies after an intense game. Many pet owners prefer buying toys and snoozer products simultaneously to ensure their fur kids have all it takes for good growth and simulation.
What is next in pet tech products?
The smart pet products industry is steadily moving towards maturity. This means that entrepreneurs and wholesalers should keep an eye on what is coming in the future. Some highly anticipated trends are:
Facial recognition controls for electronic feeders and pet doors
Audio-based devices
Advanced solution for dog and cat litter
Smart wearables to monitor pets’ health
Personalized diets and foods
Ancestral database of pets
Considering the pace at which smart pet products are growing, there will be many innovations to make lives easier for pet owners. It is integral for suppliers to stock the recent products to ensure their sustainable presence in the market. Staying in the learning loop is necessary to ensure a viable market reputation and fulfill prospects’ needs.
Pet owners are always looking for ways to enhance the comfort of their little buddies. When they find smart pet products to secure their munchkins, they cannot resist the temptation to buy. Pet product suppliers need to maintain an updated product list. When buyers and sellers are on the right page, it is a win-win for all. Over time, they can also conduct surveys and market evaluations to understand what helps them maintain their market relevance.
Wrapping up
We at ShopShipShake have been working with businesses like yours with fulfilling experiences.
We offer one-stop services, including an efficient supply chain, over 10 thousand of China’s suppliers, over 1,000,000 SKU and more. With a successful track record of over 100,000 clients, we are sure to deliver your orders requirements.
Let’s get in touch to build, sustain, and grow your businesses!
If you would like to know more details about us, please contact us: blog.shopshipshake.com
When you’re selling online, you want to make sure your website represents who you are and what you do. After all, it’s your chance to make an impression on your customers. And if you do it right, you can make a lasting one.
That’s why, when starting your ecommerce journey, it’s important to pay more attention to your online store’s design. There are plenty of other business tips and tricks readily available to you. But in this article, we’ll go over ecommerce website design.
I found 43 great ecommerce businesses that I thought stood out from the crowd.
43 best ecommerce website design examples in 2023
There’s no shortage of beautiful ecommerce websites, but some have designs that inspire more creativity than others.
You’ll notice that photography is the key for most of these ecommerce website designs. Photos play an important role in any website trying to sell products online.
Let’s check out each of these ecommerce website examples, one by one.
1. Hebe
Hebe’s website is beautiful. The thing that stands out the most is its photography. High-quality photos are important when running an online ecommerce business, especially on a clothing website. The site’s typography is great as well. The font is just a little bit thicker than what you usually see online, which makes the website design stand out even further.
2. Bliss
This ecommerce website channels its fun energy through its website design. With bright colors, it gives off a very cheerful feeling. Additionally, it’s done a great job with photography. The big photos on its homepage set the mood of the rest of the website’s design.
3. Dress Up
Dress Up sells fashionable clothing for women. It uses contrasting colors and texts to highlight new arrivals, sales, or seasonal promotions. What’s interesting on its website is the “Chat with us” option, which isn’t common for online fashion stores, but is definitely a plus point!
4. Bohemian Traders
If you’re looking for inspiration on how to design a clothing website, Bohemian Traders is a good place to start. With a bit of Bohemian touch in the design, visitors to this ecommerce website can easily navigate between clothing items based on the latest arrivals, occasions, accessories, or sale items.
5. ambsn
Here we have another ecommerce clothing website. This online store is full of the colorful patterns of the brand’s jackets, shorts, and t-shirts. So it’s no surprise that its ecommerce website design is full of big, bold colors too. It also uses a lot of orange, which stands out against the minimalist background of the site.
6. RYDER
RYDER is on this list because of its strange (but interesting) take on ecommerce website design. Contrasting elements helps the store stand out. RYDER also has simple navigation, which makes it easy for visitors to find different products on its website.
7. Magic Spoon
Magic Spoon, a breakfast brand, does a great job portraying its products’ texture on its ecommerce site. The layout has a magazine-like structure, with a sparking color palette and detectable details behind every click and scroll. A light blue background spreads through pink and purple palettes, which perfectly complements the high-quality product shots.
8. Dick Moby
Dick Moby sells glasses. Its ecommerce website design is full of great design elements. First off, it’s the fun patterns and squiggles you see at the top of its homepage. Second, it’s the quality photos of its glasses. Notice that on the Shop page the glasses are alone without anything in the background. That lets the product stand out. It’s a great ecommerce website example where the design helps create a unique feeling for the products.
9. The Horse
Everything from the name to the design of this ecommerce website is memorable. You see bold pictures and fewer words. If you’re looking for how to design a website in a unique way, you can take some inspiration from The Horse’s amazing design.
10. Esqido
The ecommerce website design of Esqido focuses on the beauty of its main product: lashes. It’s full of closeup photos of the product and its intricate packaging. What’s more, it even has a short video on its homepage explaining how to apply fake lashes. This ecommerce website is especially helpful if you’re looking for some ideas on photographing makeup or beauty products for your ecommerce website.
11. Mahabis
Mahabis focuses on showing off its high-quality products straight away. And what better way to do that than with a beautiful website design. As soon as you’re on the homepage of this ecommerce website, you’re greeted with a one-line description of how comfortable the product is. The amazing design of this site shows even the smallest details to entice the potential buyer.
12. Poketo
Poketo uses vibrant colors to its advantage. The font makes reading the text and calls-to-action easy. You can easily navigate its product options since they’re lined up at the top. Or, scroll down and treat your eyes with their boxy patterns.
13. Jackie Smith
Jackie Smith is another example of ecommerce website design that uses bright colors to its advantage. But the colors aren’t just limited to photos of their colorful bags and promotions. Even the fonts it uses are colorful!
14. Grovemade
Grovemade relies heavily on lifestyle shots of its products. It includes beautiful photos of its wooden accessories on desks and tables, and the composition of the photos is excellent. Did you notice their fun font too? It’s rounded, which isn’t typical on most website designs.
15. Muroexe
The layout of shoe products on Muroexe’s site is great. The shoes are aligned in a neat grid, making browsing easy. There’s a lot of white space, which is the empty space, or padding, around the photos, making the products on this ecommerce website stand out even further.
16. Sierra Designs
Sierra Designs is a great example of website design to take inspiration from. Its eye-catching professional photography and user-friendly website provide an equal balance between a clean aesthetic and a responsive design. The website has a feeling of adventure and liveliness that is carried through the appealing photos on this ecommerce store.
17. Helbak
Helbak is the perfect example of small business website design that shows you don’t have to overdo it. Its products are beautiful and clean. The design utilizes the color of the products and white space in the background to show off the artistic side of the items. It’s simple, it’s neat, and it’s easy to look at.
18. Mollyjogger
The thing about Mollyjogger’s website is simplicity. There’s nothing fancy going on here. But the great website design makes the products easy to browse and digest.
19.Skullcandy
I’d call the ecommerce website design of Skullcandy anything but simple. It uses just the right amount of text and visuals to enhance the experience for visitors. Its website comes to life with the chosen colors.
20.RSVP
This ecommerce website design is interesting. A lot is going on in the corner of every page. Literally, but it’s part of the experience of the company.
21.Ratio
Ratio uses ecommerce website design to show its customers that it sells a high-end product. Each coffee product has its own page explaining its brilliance. The ecommerce website design is filled with good use of photography, color, typography, and just the right amount of white space.
22.Frank Body
Frank Body is all about modern beauty. Its ecommerce website design caters to a fun and young audience, which is apparent through its monotype font and pastel colors.
23.Rest.
Rest sells wooden desk accessories that are handcrafted and stunning. Naturally, the ecommerce website design for Rest is based on lifestyle shots of its products on desks. The product pages include well-designed details of the product and how great it would look if you bought everything on display. This ecommerce website has videos to watch on its homepage further describing its products and brand.
24. The Letter J Suppy
This ecommerce store example sells prints and iPhone cases. It has a unique take on product photos. The prints are leaning against different colored pieces of paper, which makes it more interesting.
25.100% Pure
100% Pure doesn’t have a fancy website. I wanted to include a less dramatic ecommerce website design example to show you don’t need to be overly creative to have a good-looking website. It’s OK to start with, as long as your website is easy to navigate—just like 100% Pure’s.
26. Allbirds
The thing I like about Allbirds is the action shots of its shoes. They’re so much different than most shoe photos you see. Here, they can be seen in pictures that give a feeling of motion. It’s nice—and it’s really memorable.
27.Oi Polloi
Oi Polloi is another one of my favorites on this list. Its homepage is minimal, but it’s also fun. And it shows that minimal doesn’t need to mean cold. The website design of this ecommerce store relies on giant photos of its products on colored backgrounds. It also uses a fun custom font to tie it all together.
28.P&Co
The reason P&Co is on this list is its attention to product detail. The clothing website’s design is undeniably very particular. It shows off many different angles of its t-shirts and has a lot of different specs for each item too, which is just as important as having a great ecommerce website design.
29.Black Butterfly
BlackButterfly’s web design represents a simplistic, modern feel with a basic theme. This ecommerce website example follows an easy structure. With fun photos and cute graphics covering the website, you can easily scroll through to the dress category you’re interested in.
30. Di Bruno Bros.
When you first enter the Di Bruno site, it’s hard to ignore its design. One of the highlights of this website is the short descriptions of each food product, which visitors can read when viewing product category pages. So, for instance, if you’re interested in trying something new, you can browse through the product pages based on images and then get a short preview of the food product you would like to know more about. This helps people discover what they might like and provides an in-store experience for the user.
31. SISU
SISU has one of the best-designed ecommerce websites for sports. Its website is categorized into sections to make it easier for visitors to skim through their categories of interest. The minimalist design helps keep the focus on the product.
32.Dainty Jewells
This is an example of a clothing ecommerce store with a very soft vintage look. The main colors you’ll see here are light pink, gold, and white, accompanied by delicate patterns. This ecommerce design goes well with the product it’s aiming to sell. It feels feminine and fresh, with the font matching the rest of the website’s look.
33.Boxhill
This beautifully designed ecommerce store has a theme with a lot of white space, which helps present the items more prominently. It has a very neat and clean design, making the website look very professional and sophisticated. The items are listed simplistically, but when a visitor clicks on an item, they see a lengthy description that tells them more about the product.
34. Northernism
The unique aspect of this ecommerce store is that it stands out by placing images and text on a grid, which many other ecommerce stores don’t do. With a modern design, this ecommerce website has plenty of free white space containing simple images, making it feel much less crowded.
35. Bon Bon Bon
Bon Bon Bon is an artisan chocolate company with a truly impressive website design. A lot is going on here, and it all reflects fun. It’s got colors, designs, patterns, and many different shapes. Even its add-to-cart page looks unique and fun!
36. Simply Chocolate
Simply Chocolate is a chocolate company based in Copenhagen, Denmark. The design of this ecommerce store gives enough space to let each of its products shine individually. When you scroll down the page, a new chocolate bar floats up in the middle, with each bar taking a different color theme and a fun name. Additionally, each bar’s ingredients, such as coconut slices, almonds, and mint leaves, cover half of the screen animatedly. The website design of this ecommerce store can’t be compared to any other.
37. Premium Teas
This ecommerce store has a clean, modern, and sophisticated design. The teas are presented in a way that makes it easier for visitors to scroll through and select their desired product. The page focuses on visual representation rather than being covered in too much text. When you click on any product, you’re taken to a different page with a detailed description of the tea. This includes product information like aroma, caffeine level, brewing time, brewing temperature, and much more information that can be valuable for the buyer.
38. Bouguessa
Bouguessa’s homepage gives off a luxurious feel as soon as you arrive on the website. The ready-to-wear fashion brand allows images to take center stage, relying on them to sell the items while keeping navigation to a minimum. The black and white theme also enables long dresses and bright-colored apparel to stand out amongst other elements. Also, I love the smartly placed Instagram feed above the footer section—it gives visitors a chance to envision the product on real people.
39. Ban.do
Ban.do is a lifestyle ecommerce store featuring a playful and intuitive theme with a touch of vibrant color. The online store balances design and imagery by including high-quality product shots on its homepage. This combination gives the site a fun and youthful vibe.
40. GREATS
This Tokyo-based ecommerce site switches from a flat theme to a unique dimensional affair using suggestive motions. There’s also hyper-stylized visuals of the product and the shop full-screen animations that switch to modal views when you hover over them. It’s fun yet inspiring to watch. We especially love the animated green text-slider above the footer that contradicts the static with the dynamic.
41. Kettle & Fire
Kettle & Fire’s design will take you by surprise. Above the fold, the company uses a fairly standard layout for an ecommerce site. But a few clicks and scrolls later, you’ll see a lot of unique elements. There are photos of vegetables (key ingredients in the brand’s product) floating throughout the site. Plus, fun slogans like “Warm your soul” and “Yummy in the tummy” show off the quirky side of the brand.
42. Bison Coolers
Bison Coolers’ website is just as powerful as its products. Stunning background photography and graphic design, and a captivating brand voice keep the website simple yet impactful. The brand also taps into a brilliant conversion opportunity, proudly touting that its products are made in the US.
43. Endy
Mattress brands are known to play it safe with their website design and color palette, but Endy looks to make a bold statement. The Canadian e-tailer mixes the industry-standard white with a bright pink logo, CTA buttons, and headlines. On Endy’s product pages, you’ll find detailed product images, animated GIFs, and videos showing off the most impressive features of its mattresses.
Wrapping up
We at ShopShipShake have been working with businesses like yours with fulfilling experiences.
We offer one-stop services, including an efficient supply chain, over 10 thousand of China’s suppliers, over 1,000,000 SKU and more. With a successful track record of over 100,000 clients, we are sure to deliver your orders requirements.
Let’s get in touch to build, sustain, and grow your businesses!
If you would like to know more details about us, please contact us: blog.shopshipshake.com
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If you’re new to the world of ecommerce or digital marketing in general, you’ve likely heard about search engine optimization (SEO). In a world where the majority of online traffic stems from a string of text typed into a search box, search engine optimization can be a deciding factor in the fate of your ecommerce business.
SEO encompasses many tactics, but the underlying principle is that you’re helping Google and other search engines better understand what your ecommerce site is about and what it sells. This, in return, increases your visibility by increasing the chance search engines will list your site in the search results when potential customers are looking for the products you sell.Click here to start selling online now with Shopify
One of the foundational tactics of SEO is keyword research. SEO keyword research is the simple art of better understanding the terminology your potential customers are using to find the products you’re selling, then matching your website and marketing terminology.
In this article, we’ll cover the basics of keyword research for ecommerce. The ultimate goal is to build a relevant list of keywords that you can refer back to and use as you build and optimize your site, write your product descriptions, and craft your blog posts.
Why is keyword research for ecommerce important?
Every time someone does a search, the search engine must decide which handful of results to display from hundreds of thousands of possible pages. It’s up to the search engine algorithms to determine the best and most relevant matches for every single search. This is why it’s so important to choose your keywords carefully, so that the search engines can match and display your site in the search results to the most relevant keywords searches.
Not only is it important to rank on the first page of a search engine results page for relevant search terms, but it’s equally important to rank in the top positions of the first page. To understand how big of a difference position can make, consider the graph below, which shows search result position and average traffic share:
From the graph we learn that the first three search results receive over 58% of the traffic.
Keyword research helps you:
Understand search demand so you can create an optimal SEO strategy
Create a list of relevant phrases that match your marketing goals
Prioritize your keyword investments to target high ROI keywords first
Close keyword gaps in your store
In short, the closer you are to the top of Google Search for relevant terms, the more traffic (and potential sales) you’ll receive. Depending on the search term and the volume of searches per month being made for that search term, the difference in just a few positions can represent significant revenue loss in the long term.
Ecommerce keyword research: the basics
Before you jump into doing keyword research for your online store, there are a few basic terms you’ll come across that are important to know and understand.
These terms include:
Keywords
A keyword, in the context of search engine optimization, is a particular word or phrase that acts as a shortcut to sum up the content of a page or site. Keywords are part of a webpage’s metadata, and helps search engines match a page to an appropriate search query.
Long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are simply keywords that contain three or more words. Long-tail keywords are important (hence them having their own name) because they catch people further along in the buying cycle and, thus, tend to have higher conversion rates.
Someone searching for “hair extensions” is likely in the early information gathering stage. However, someone searching for “20 inch brown hair extensions price” is likely further along the buying cycle and much closer to purchasing. These keywords are referred to as “high purchase intent” or “high commercial intent.” SEO often assigns one of three search intents to a keyword:
Navigational: when searchers are looking for a specific website
Informational: when searchers want to know or do something, like create a homemade recipe
Transactional: when a searcher wants to buy something
Search volume (average monthly searches)
Search volume is usually measured in average monthly searches. This is the total number of searches each month for each particular search phrase (keyword). Ideally, you’re looking for the keywords with the highest search volume. Ranking highly for search terms with higher search volumes means more potential traffic and conversion potential for you and your store.
Unfortunately, there is not a magic number that represents the perfect search volume for everyone. What constitutes the “right” search volume is going to be different for every site.
Competition
Search volume isn’t the only thing you need to consider. Competition is equally important, if not more. There’s no point trying to rank for specific keywords you have no chance of ranking for. Competition refers to the difficulty of ranking for each particular keyword.
In an ideal situation, your strategy will have high search volume and low competition keywords. However, these gold nuggets are difficult to find and will require some hard work, patience, and maybe a little luck to find.
How to research keywords for your ecommerce SEO strategy
1. Identify your keyword universe
There are a lot of nuances between new stores and existing stores, so for the sake of brevity, I’ll assume you’re working on a brand new website.
If your store is more established, you’ll likely already have a nice baseline of data from which you can pull to help determine the direction you want to take with your research. But for a new site, you’re going to need to lean on competitor research.
The right way to do this is to find the major players in the space that aren’t colossal brands—steer clear of Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and other established, generalist ecommerce websites. Don’t be too dismissive, however, because you don’t want to necessarily stay away from the big informational brands like Wikipedia or Quora. These sites can actually be treasure troves of keyword terms and topics.
You can also start your search using an SEO tool like:
Ahrefs
Moz
Semrush
Google Keyword Planner
For this tutorial, we’ll use Ahrefs. Let’s say you’re an organic pet supplies brand and your main competitor is Only Natural Pet. You can enter its website URL into the Ahrefs search bar and pull up a list of organic keywords the brand ranks for.
You can also browse by Top Pages to see which webpages get the most traffic, and the top keyword for each URL.
Open a Google Sheet and start writing down the keywords you want to rank for. Logging each keyword is how you begin to build your keyword universe.
2. Find niche keywords to win
To compete against the 800-pound ecommerce gorillas these days, especially if you’re just getting started, you need to begin with a hyper-niche—a niche within a niche, and sometimes even a niche in that niche (it’s niches all the way down).
Highlighting the importance of specialization, let’s run through the entire keyword research process from start to finish with a real example. Examining something tangible is a good way to make the concepts we’ll cover easier to understand and apply.
Continuing with the pet supplies example above, let’s look at how we can find the right keywords to rank your store for.
Our first step is going to Google and doing some basic searching, starting with good old common sense. All we’re looking to do right now is see what Google comes back with from auto-suggest. For this search, I typed in “dog food,” just to kick things off.
Many commercial terms are more competitive than ever. At the time of this writing, Chewy was ranking in position one, and Petco ranked in position 2, followed by Amazon in position 3. You can view search volume and CPC right in Chrome and FireFox with Keywords Everywhere.
Next, let’s see what all the Google suggestion keywords look like. To do this, we can use a keyword research tool called Ahrefs. Let’s start by entering our main keyword, “dog food,” and looking at the potential keyword ideas.
Immediately we see that supplies (containers) and type of food (raw, fresh, homemade) are common terms used to specify what these searchers are looking for. Not all of these terms are going to be relevant though. We’ll want to scan the terms and look for modifiers that we can remove using the “Exclude” keywords function.
For example, I’m noticing that some searches have brand modifiers like Royal Canin and Purina. We want to add as many of those to our negative keywords list as possible to further clean up the results. It’s OK if you don’t get every branded term in. You’ll see we included 60 of the top brands in the space. The goal is to get your list down to something more manageable.
This leaves us with 342,384 unique keywords, so from here you want to sort by monthly search volume to get a sense of how popular these keywords are.
Before going any further, let’s look at what each of these columns means in terms of the metrics they’re showing.
Keyword: the actual phrase that is being typed into Google.
Keyword difficulty (KD): an estimation of how hard it is to rank in the top 10 organic search results for a keyword on a 100-point scale
Volume: the average monthly number of searches for a keyword over the latest known 12 months of data (specifically targets users in the US).
Global volume (GV): global search volume shows how many times per month, on average, people search for the target keyword across all countries in the Ahrefs database.
Traffic potential (TP): this shows the sum of organic traffic that the #1 ranking page for your target keyword receives from all the keywords that it ranks for.
Cost per click (CPC): the average price advertisers pay for each ad click in paid search results for a keyword.
Clicks per search (CPS): the ratio of clicks to keyword search volume. It shows how many different search results get clicked, on average, when people search for the target keyword in a given country.
Parent topic: determines if you can rank for your target keyword while targeting a more general topic on your page instead.
Snippet Features (SF): the number of enriched results on a search engine results page that are not traditional organic results.
Updated: the date when Ahrefs last checked search engine results for a keyword.
When looking at keyword data as part of your overall research process, it’s important to recognize that the keywords you identify based on your initial run and first attempts at filtering are just the tip of the iceberg. Understanding how your users think with research like a contextual inquiry will help you identify new keywords.
Any of these terms with a search volume over, say 100 per month, is likely to have a whole universe of related terms around it. For example, let’s look at some of the related terms that come back for a few of the terms in my current list.
💡 Note: I’m using the same list of negative keywords, with a filter set to only show keywords that receive more than 100 searches per month, on just Google.com.
Topic: best dog food
Topic: dog food container
Topic: raw dog food
Topic: natural dog food
This exercise is exactly why you always pull the data and don’t make guesses when it comes to defining your content map and best keyword priorities.
Looking back over the terms generated from the four keywords above as seed terms:
“Best dog food” comes back with relevant suggestions including 29,494 other terms.
“Dog food container” comes back with relevant suggestions including 2,164 other terms.
“Raw dog food” comes back with 10,567 other keywords.
“Natural dog food” includes 9,182 additional terms and makes a strong case for creating a content page targeting these keywords.
3. Create a research process
You can run through the above process around 10 to 15 times to build substantial lists of relevant terms to work with. Even easier, you can manage most of these steps right in Ahrefs.
Here’s what my list looks like, including terms throughout the shopping funnel, i.e., specific pet food terms, container sizes, calculators, and top-of-the-funnel terms like “how to” and others.
Armed with a solid list of terms to target, the question remains: Now what? Answer: It’s time to group these into topics.
4. Build a topic map
A topic map is a spreadsheet where you group related keywords together into smaller lists that all roll up under a representative topic.
For example, some of the topic maps from my data set are:
Topic: “Best dog food”
Keyword
Volume
Best dog food for puppies
7,600
Best dog food for pitbulls
4,400
Best dog food for picky eaters
2,000
How to choose the best dog food
50
Topic: “dog food container”
Keyword
Volume
Dog food container 50lbs
2,500
Dog food metal container
1,500
Ceramic dog food container
500
Dog food container with wheels
400
How to keep ants out of dog food container
40
In both of the examples above, I’m taking general swings at grouping together the keywords from my list into topics. But this isn’t the end of our research process. From here, it’s important to determine if these groupings make sense based on content type.
Google has shown time and time again that it prefers to rank specific kinds of content for specific queries. If you want to rank for a particular term or a set of terms, you need to build out the type of content that Google is showing you it wants to see.
Blog posts (even these can vary in form, but for the purposes of this post I’m going to lump them all together)
Video
Reviews
Visual/infographics
Audio/podcasts
5. Map the different content types
It’s helpful to deliberately plan the types of content you need to create to best target your keywords. The most straightforward way to do this is through some old-fashioned Googling. Create a spreadsheet for yourself using the exported lists of keywords from Ahrefs as a starting point.
Within that sheet, you can create a new tab with the following columns:
Keyword
Topic
Volume
Difficulty
Content Type
The two highlighted rows above will need to be entered manually. Admittedly, this is going to be a bit tedious, but it’s worth the effort! Here’s an example of mapping the different types of content for my dog food container example.
This one is a great example of a mixed search engine results page.
It looks like the easiest path to break onto this SERP is to invest content and link resources into ranking a product category page. Second easiest is a list-form article. However, if you’re selling direct on Amazon, you’re going to need to amass a few thousand reviews.
We can immediately see the results skew toward pages with high commercial intent. There’s the product listing ads (PLA) carousel at the very top (before the text ads), and then we’re greeted with a variety of product category pages.
Now that you’ve gone through your priority terms and mapped all the content types, it’s time to create a plan for how to build out this content. A smart first step is designing a deliberate “content map.” This asset outlines your requirements (your ideal keywords), your blueprint (what content needs to be produced), and your structures (a roadmap for content production).
6. Develop a content calendar
You have your priority keyword list in hand, you know what types of content you need to create, and you’ve mapped these across your site.
Now it’s time to build a calendar so you can put rubber to road and start getting this content live and ranking for your target keywords. To do this, it’s helpful to create additional sheets in my overall keyword file and lay them out by funnel stage (based on search intent).
You’ll also want to bring together all of the other components of this process:
Topic focus
Content type
Test title 1
Test title 2
Test title 3
Target keyword
Additional keywords
Target length
URL
Here’s an active example, including all of the parameters above.
Then, build a sheet specifically for the schedule with the following columns:
Draft completed by date [ACTUAL]
Publish date [ACTUAL]
Draft needed by date [ESTIMATED]
Expected publish date [ESTIMATED]
Author
Status [Not started, Assigned, In progress, Pending, Published]
Blog post type [If post, Category of Post]
Post topic and description
Example site
Recommended URL
Recommended title
Recommended H1
Recommended meta description
Target keywords
Notes
You can then bring in your content creation and management resources into this sheet and filter each of these columns to get visibility into your ecommerce SEO efforts from a content and keywords perspective.
Your keyword research process determines your progress
Your search engine optimization efforts are only ever going to be as effective as your process. Most ecommerce store owners, especially when they’re starting out and are strapped for time, don’t have a process in place and aren’t sure how to create one.
Maybe that was you at one time, but now, you have a game plan 😃. To improve your overall SEO marketing strategy, check out our SEO checklist.
Wrapping up
We at ShopShipShake have been working with businesses like yours with fulfilling experiences.
We offer one-stop services, including an efficient supply chain, over 10 thousand of China’s suppliers, over 1,000,000 SKU and more. With a successful track record of over 100,000 clients, we are sure to deliver your orders requirements.
Let’s get in touch to build, sustain, and grow your businesses!
If you would like to know more details about us, please contact us: blog.shopshipshake.com
What to sell, what to sell, what to sell. That’s one of the biggest questions you’ll be asking yourself when building your online store. How do some stores end up making six and seven figures while others have a big, fat zero? It comes down to having winning products. And fortunately, all you need to do is find one to make it big. So in this article, I’m going to answer a common dropshipping FAQ: “How can I find a winning product?” I break down the eight easiest ways to find such (and the exact thing that helped me find my winning product). Time to get those dolla dolla bills y’all.
8 Easiest Ways to Find Winning Products Every Time
Most online stores have best seller lists. This is obviously great for customers who want to see the best products an online store can offer. But for online retailers best seller lists are a freaking goldmine.
And new entrepreneurs don’t exploit them enough.
Most say that the downside to dropshipping is that everyone is selling the same products as you. But I like to look at it with a glass half full approach: if everyone’s selling the same stuff, you can easily sell it too. And if you know what their best sellers are, then you can sell a winning product. To find the product that helps you hit the jackpot, all you need to do is a little bit of product research.
Here are a few examples of websites with public best seller lists.
1. Amazon Best Sellers
So, I’m going to be a Captain Obvious and start with the obvious choice first.
Amazon has best seller lists for literally every category. And not only that, but they’re updated every. single. hour.
You will find some brand name products on best seller lists like Lego and FujiFilm above. However, you can also discover some unbranded products that are also easily available.
Let’s take a quick look at women’s fashion. On the best seller list, I found these comfortable drawstring pants which are ranked 14 on Amazon’s Best Sellers for the Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry category. But they also ranked 1 in women’s Casual Pants & Capris. There are 964 reviews with an overall 4 star rating. Not bad at all.
I decide to look up the exact keywords following the brand name to see if I could find it on AliExpress. And sure enough, there’s a supplier carrying the exact product.
If they’re best sellers on Amazon, they could also be best sellers on your own store. So you can add products to your store, like this one, based on their performance on Amazon.
Okay, let me guess what you’re thinking right now. “But Nicole, I can’t possibly compete with Amazon. Their prices are too low.” Am I close?
I used to have those fears too until I experienced the impact of a winning product first hand. If someone sees your product from an ad first, they’re more likely to buy directly from you.
The secret – and this is a BIG one – is don’t use the manufacturer’s product name. You’re building your own brand, so spend the 30 seconds needed to come up with a unique product name. If you find the product and add the manufacturer’s product name, your competitors will find the product too. But if you have a creative name, it makes it slightly harder to find the same winning products.
2. Wish’s Winning Products
Wish is another example of an online retailer who publicizes their best-selling products. Take a look at the cat towels on the bottom right corner. Over 50,000 people have bought those towels off Wish’s website so they’re definitely a winning product.
If you head over to Wish’s product page, you’ll see some more impressive numbers. Over 6,900 reviews proving that people are actually buying these products.
Wish is a bit more sophisticated, so you can’t just copy and paste the title into AliExpress. However, if you search for cat towel, sure enough, you’ll find the exact product.
The cool thing about this cat towel is that you can immediately tell just from looking at it that it’s an impulse buy product. Most of the winning products on Wish are catered to attract the impulse buy. So naturally they would do well on visual platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
So when looking through best seller lists, keep your eyes open for impulse buy products. Some trademarks for impulse buy products include things like:
Colorful (or visually stands out when scrolling)
Elicits an emotional reaction (“I need this” or “This is adorable” or “I love this”)
Different design or style from anything you’ve ever seen
3. Insert Your Competitor Here
Most of your competitors have best seller lists. Check them out. Even if you can’t find their exact product, by studying their product collections, look for patterns within best selling products.
If you’re in fashion, online retailer Suzy Shier has a trends category. Within the trends category, you’ll find best sellers. However, what’s just as interesting is that they also divide their clothing into fashion trends. This can help give you an idea of what types of trends within the fashion niche are popular right now. Under trends, you see categories like athleisure, animal prints, and plaid. So, you can search for fashion within those types of categories so you’re selling the latest trends.
Ardene is another retailer that has a trends section. Funny enough, when you check out their best sellers, the first item that shows up is a plaid hoodie which confirms that this trend is on fire right now. So if you’re looking to sell women’s fashion, having a few plaid items can help you get some sales.
The more you look through competitor websites, the more you’ll find patterns and connections among top brands. You can incorporate these patterns as you build your product collection.
4. eBay Watch Count
Find the product you should sell using Watch Count which allows you to see what’s popular on eBay. You can either find winning products on hyper targeted keywords like ‘ionic hairbrush’ to see the photos and style that’s most popular right now.
Or you can broaden your keywords so you can find the best sellers in your niche. So instead of ionic hairbrush, you’d just search hairbrush. Or instead of flower leggings, you’d just search leggings.
The best dropshipping product recommendations include the items with the most watchers. Keep in mind that when doing a narrow search like ionic hairbrush, the number of watchers will be lower because you’re being specific and that the ionic hairbrush is still wildly popular despite a lower number than the leggings.
Also, you’ll notice that with both sets of pictures that there are always multiple products shown in view. Making your photos in a similar manner can also help customers see the entire selection before clicking onto your product page (and it can help entice them more since there’s more options for them to view).
5. Monitor High-Performing Ads
We live in a world of scrollers. We scroll through articles, newsfeeds, and product pages. But have you ever stopped to think what could happen if you didn’t scroll past an endless wave of posts?
My world completely changed because, one day, I stopped scrolling to look at a Facebook ad.
The ad copy? Lackluster.
The website design? Mediocre at best.
But somehow the ad engagement on this winning product was unlike anything I’d ever seen before proving that it was one of the best items to dropship. Sky high. Comment after comment. Friend tagging like you wouldn’t believe. Tens of thousands of likes.
Everyone wanted this product.
It was almost hard to believe that these comments were real. But they were.
I decided to look for a similar product with AliExpress. It was a big, colorful blanket, so I tried different keywords like “beach blanket” and “meditation blanket.” After a bit of searching, I found the exact, same product.
Bingo!
But the truth is, just because you find a winning product doesn’t mean you know how to sell it.
That first month, I only made $1659.70. These numbers don’t really hint that success is coming up: Less than a 1% conversion rate and only 39 orders. This product’s supposed to be a homerun?
The truth that no one tells you is that you can have a winning product on your store and have no freaking idea. Your store’s performance can be just like a lot of other new stores. Enough sales to know you can make money, but not enough to know you’re onto something big.
There are so many factors to ensure your winning product has the best chance of success:
Your ad needs to target and attract the right audience
Your website needs to convert
You need to convince customers to buy right now before going off and doing research
The product shouldn’t be widely available (i.e., not in retail stores)
And more!
So don’t be afraid to ask around for store reviews to get feedback on your store. Because you could very well have some best-selling products on it without even realizing it.
And keep your eyes peeled on Facebook and Instagram for ads.
A little trick to consistently trigger ads from various stores is to add best-selling products from various competitors to your cart. Top-performing stores will usually have retargeting ads which often get triggered by abandoned carts. And you can use the templates from those ads as inspiration for your own ads to give you a better chance of marketing your winning product.
You can also use a tool like FB Search to find ads within your niche with high levels of engagement. You might need to play around with various keywords to find them (the more specific the better). So avoid keywords like “fitness” or “yoga.” Instead do keywords like “mandala blanket,” which narrows it down to the exact product. You’ll find posts with high engagement – sometimes they’re just standard posts but sometimes advertisers turn their existing posts into ads.
6. Unicorn Smasher
Looking for an Amazon product research tool? Unicorn Smasher helps you find the best-selling Amazon products for free. With this handy Chrome extension you can find the prices, best-seller rank, reviews, ratings, and estimated sales in a single glance. And this data is shown for every single Amazon product as long as you’re on the .com domain.
Let’s take a look at the data when searching for kitchen products. You can choose to sort any of the Chrome extension by any of its headers. Here I chose to view based on estimated revenue but you can also view by price, rank, reviews, ratings, and whether or not it’s fulfilled by Amazon.
A handy trick for dropshippers to find the best items to dropship is to view based on the number of sellers. If there are multiple sellers for a single product, it’s more likely that the product can be found on AliExpress. Alternatively, you can use the AliExpress Dropshipping Center to discover high-potential items. Dropshipping secrets like these are really effective for finding winning products.
Pro tip: Be careful when analyzing branded and trademarked goods. For example, if iRobot Roomba only has one seller and you see that iRobot is also the brand name, you likely won’t be able to sell the product since it’s branded. However, multiple sellers shows that the product likely isn’t branded and anyone can sell it too.
7. Using Automizely to Find the Product
Within Automizely, you can get access to data for various AliExpress products. You can find out which products have had sales and which haven’t. But you can also find out how recent those sales are. Keep in mind that some of these products will be the most popular that everyone else is selling since it’s what people will check through first.
So you’ll need to dig a little deeper and look at all of these details to help you make a decision. A 4.7 star rating is great. I usually like to stay above 4.5 stars. But keep in mind that if there are more than 100 reviews anything above a 4 star is a great product to choose from.
When it comes to pageviews, I like to compare it with orders from the last 30 days. When you divide orders from the past 30 days against total pageviews (also from the past 30 days), look at the percentage you get. If it’s above 50%, you likely have a winning product on your hands. Anything lower than that and your ad pricing might end up costing you too much.
When it comes to Orders, check to see if the orders in the past 30 days are high. If they’re higher than the past six months, you likely caught it before the trend blew up. However, you don’t need to discredit a great product because of it either. Even if the trend is dying, you can still capitalize on it if sales in the past 30 days are in the hundreds or higher.
8. How to Use Google Trends to Find Winning Products
Google Trends is a popular free tool you can use to find out if a product is growing or declining in popularity. Read this to find an in-depth breakdown about how to use Google Trends to find winning products. But in the meantime, let’s break down some basic ideas on how to find the product using this tool.
Using Google Trends, enter the product type. For example, a popular AliExpress product is a rose in a glass that you can sell as wedding centerpieces, a Valentine’s Day gift, or a piece for home decor. I simply add “rose in glass” to see the search volume popularity and voila.
It hit its peak in March 2017, but it’s actually been rising again the past few months. You can add this product to your store knowing that it’s still popular. Take a look at the data points I used. First I used United States since it’s one of the biggest markets to promote too (but you can check others too – and you should). I also chose the setting from “2004-present” which helps me see the full picture a bit clearer. There are other methods for Google Trends you can check out so be sure to check out the full article on the topic.
So the main secret to finding winning products comes down to research. I know, I know, it’s super tempting to add random products onto your store just because they look nice. But if the goal is to have a store that sells top performing products, your process can’t be random. It needs to be strategic. So don’t be afraid to do you homework, do some competitor research and monitor what people are talking about online. By paying attention to high-performing ads and competitors, you’ll inch closer to finding high-performing winning products for your store.
Wrapping up
We at ShopShipShake have been working with businesses like yours with fulfilling experiences.
We offer one-stop services, including an efficient supply chain, over 10 thousand of China’s suppliers, over 1,000,000 SKU and more. With a successful track record of over 100,000 South African clients, we are sure to deliver your orders requirements. Let’s get in touch to build, sustain, and grow your businesses!
If you would like to know more details about us, please contact with us: blog.shopshipshake.com
Who really reads the copy on your product pages, anyway? There are so many other things to do on a website in terms of conversion rate optimization that a product description can’t really make an impact on sales, right?
Wrong. In fact, evidence from an ecommerce study conducted by Nielsen Norman Group shows that 20% of unsuccessful purchases are due to lack of relevant information in product descriptions.Click here to start selling online now with Shopify
Ecommerce business owners and marketers alike are susceptible to a common copywriting mistake (even professional copywriters make it sometimes): writing product descriptions that simply describe your products.
Why is it wrong? Because great product descriptions need to augment your product pages by selling your products to real people, not just acting as back-of-the-box dispensers of information for search engines (though SEO can’t be an afterthought, of course).
Let’s have a look at how to write a product description to persuade visitors on your online store to buy.
Write perfect product descriptions ✍️
What is a product description?
How to write product descriptions that sell
Create your product description template
A compelling product description will always pay you back
Product description FAQ
What is a product description?
A product description is the marketing copy that explains what a product is and why it’s worth purchasing. The purpose of a product description is to supply customers with important information about the features and key benefits of the product so they’re compelled to buy.
A well-crafted product description moves buyers through your conversion funnel. If you add a bit of creativity, your product pages instantly become more compelling, leading to more conversions from casual shoppers.
To succeed in product description writing, you need to answer questions customers have about your products:
What problems does your product solve?
What do customers gain from your product?
What makes it better than the competition?
A product description should answer these questions in a fun and engaging way.
How to write product descriptions that sell
Online stores often make the mistake of listing product features when writing product descriptions. This likely results in lower conversions because people don’t understand how the product helps them.
Let’s look at how you can create perfect product descriptions that sell for you:
1. Focus on your ideal buyer
Understanding how to write product descriptions requires putting yourself in the shoes of your audience. When you write a product description with a huge crowd of buyers in mind, your descriptions become wishy-washy and you end up addressing no one at all.
The best product descriptions address your target audience directly and personally. You ask and answer questions as if you’re having a conversation with them. You choose the words your ideal buyer uses. You use the word “you.”
This is how retailer The Oodie starts the product description for its I Love Plants Oodie in the first of our product description examples.
🎯 Can’t stop buying plants? Unbeleafable. Don’t worry—us too! Cover yourself in your favourite obsession in our NEW I Love Plants Oodie! For every I Love Plants Oodie sold, one tree is planted across Australia.
When it comes time to write product descriptions for your own ecommerce business, start by imagining your ideal buyer. What kind of humor do they appreciate (if any)? What words do they use? Are there certain words that they hate? Are they OK with words like “sucky” and “crappy”? What questions do they ask that you should answer?
Consider how you would speak to your ideal buyer if you were selling your product in-store, face to face. Now try and incorporate that language into your ecommerce site so you can have a similar conversation online that resonates more deeply.
2. Entice with benefits
When we sell our own products, we get excited about individual product features and specifications. We live and breathe our company, our website, and our products.
The problem is our potential buyers are not as interested in mundane features and specs. They want to know what’s in it for them—how it will address their biggest pain points. Successfully executing how to write a product description requires you to highlight those benefits of each feature and overcome cognitive bias.
A great product description example comes from Dr. Squatch.
🎯 Made with real pine extract, this all-star bar is as tough as a freshly cut bat. A true MVP of the shower, this heavy-hitter knocks out grime with its gritty composition and ultra-manly, woodsy scent. Toss in the exfoliating oatmeal and the super-soothing shea butter, and you’ve got a bullpen of natural ingredients that will strike out any stink.
Dr. Squatch suggests that the benefit of its soap is not just that it’ll clean you up in the shower, but that the soap is actually tough enough to knock out any stench. No matter how heavy your day was. It also sneaks in some product benefits including “natural ingredients” and “exfoliating oatmeal” to appeal to its ideal buyer persona.
Consider the benefit of each of your features. How does your product make your customers feel happier, healthier, or more productive? What problems, glitches, and hassle does your product help solve?
Don’t sell just a product, sell an experience.
3. Avoid “yeah, yeah” phrases
When we’re stuck for words and don’t know what else to add to our product description, we often add something bland like “excellent product quality.”
That’s a “yeah, yeah” phrase. As soon as a potential buyer reads “excellent product quality” he thinks, “Yeah, yeah, of course. That’s what everyone says.”Ever heard someone describe their product quality as average, not so good, or even bad?
You become less persuasive when potential buyers read your product description and start saying, “Yeah, yeah” to themselves. To avoid this reaction, be as specific as possible.
One shopper in a recent study could not find the information he needed in the product description, so he left the site to search Google for more product information. In the course of his search, he found another site with the same product, a more complete description, and a lower price.NN/g
Beardbrand, for instance, doesn’t describe the quality of its styling balm as excellent. Instead they describe each detail plus its benefit.
🎯Whatever your style is, Beardbrand Styling Balm is versatile enough to handle it. Designed to work with all hair types, it provides enough hold to keep thick, curly hair under control, keep thinner hair from falling flat, and keep the most unruly beards inline—all while keeping your hair flexible and touchable (no hard, stiff, crunchy hair here). This product pulls its weight when it comes to keeping your look locked in throughout the day. Whatever your style is, wear it with confidence with Beardbrand Styling Balm.
Product details add credibility. Product details sell your product. You can never include too many technical details in your product descriptions. Be specific.
4. Justify using superlatives
Superlatives sound insincere in a product description unless you clearly prove why your product is the best, the easiest, or the most advanced.
Amazon explains why the Kindle Paperwhite is the world’s thinnest and lightest e-reader.
The word signature gives the reader the impression that this is something special. Amazon goes on to quote the pixel density (300 ppi) and how the reader has glare-free display and twice the amount of storage as previous generations.
If your product is really the best in its category, provide specific proof why this is the case. Otherwise, tone your product copy down or quote a customer who says your product is the most wonderful they’ve ever used.
5. Appeal to your readers’ imagination
Scientific research has proven that if people hold a product in their hands, their desire to own it increases.
You’re selling things online, so your web visitors can’t hold your products. Large, crystal-clear pictures or videos can help, but there’s also a copywriting trick to increase desire: let your reader imagine what it would be like to own your product.
Here’s how Firebox stirs your imagination with a description of its Fizzics DraftPour. It shows how the product solves the problems common with going to the pub for a pint.
🎯Nothing beats a freshly pulled pint in your favourite pub—except maybe a freshly pulled pint in your very own home.
Never battle with crowds, struggle for a seat, or have to hang about outside on the pavement just to enjoy your favourite beer again! The Fizzics DraftPour gives you nitro-style draft beer from ANY can or bottle. Even the cheapest economy lager can be instantly transformed into a luxurious draft pint with just one pull of the lever.
The DraftPour may be a sleek piece of kit, but it’s deceptively high tech under the hood, applying sound waves to convert your beer’s natural carbonation into a smooth micro-foam. These diddy little bubbles create the optimal density for enhanced aroma, flavour, and a silky smooth mouth-feel.
Get a fruit machine and a few boxes of pork scratchings in and you’ve basically completely replicated your local pub. Sticky bar-top and ancient, dubiously-stained carpet not included.
To practice this copywriting technique, start a sentence with the word “imagine,” and finish your sentence (or paragraph) by explaining how your reader will feel when owning and using your product.
6. Cut through rational barriers with mini-stories
Including mini-stories in your product descriptions lowers rational barriers against persuasion techniques. In other words, we forget we’re being sold to.
Wine sellers like UK-based Laithwaites often include short stories about wine makers.
🎯 The Dauré family own one of the Roussillon’s top properties, the Château de Jau. Around the dinner table one Christmas they agreed it was time to spread their wings and look to new wine horizons. The womenfolk (Las Niñas) fancied Chile and won out in the end, achieving their dream when they established an estate in the Apalta Valley of Colchagua. The terroir is excellent and close neighbours of the Chilean star Montes winery.
When it comes to using your product description to tell a story about your products, ask yourself:
Who is making the product?
What inspired creating the product?
What obstacles did you need to overcome to develop the product?
How was the product tested?
7. Seduce with sensory words
Restaurants have known it for a long time: sensory words increase sales because they engage more brain processing power. Here’s a great product description example from chocolate maker Green & Blacks.
Green & Black’s sensory adjectives don’t just refer to taste, but also to sound and touch: “crunchy” and “soft.”
Adjectives are tricky words. Often they don’t add meaning to your sentences, and you’re better off deleting them. However, sensory adjectives are power words because they make your reader experience your product copy while reading.
Dazzle your readers with vivid product descriptions. Think about words like “velvety,” “smooth,” “crisp,” and “bright” if you’re selling food products.
8. Tempt with social proof
When your web visitors are unsure about which product to purchase, they look for suggestions about what to buy. They’re often swayed to buy a product with the highest number of positive reviews and testimonials.
One gym apparel seller, Gymshark, includes customer reviews on each product page. It also displays a rating system so shoppers can get product information quickly and easily.
Try to include an image of the customer to add credibility to a quote. It also makes your online business more approachable and relatable. You can even integrate a social media feed filled with user-generated content that shows real people sharing success stories about using your products.
The above quote carries extra impact because it describes the product as popular. The popularity claim is further supported with a cutting from the press and the phrase “press favorite.”
Most buyers are attracted to buying something that’s popular. When it comes to your ecommerce website, highlight the products that are customer favorites.
9. Make your description scannable
Is your web design encouraging web visitors to read your product descriptions?
Here’s a great example of product description from Kettle & Fire. The brand uses bullet points to communicate quick, scannable product benefits. It also replaces the standard “benefits” headline with “Why You’ll Love It,” personalizing the experience for shoppers on the product page.
Packaging your product descriptions with a clear, scannable design makes them easier to read and more appealing to potential customers.
Leaving shoppers’ questions unanswered can derail a sale or even worse, make shoppers abandon not just the purchase, but the site as well.NN/g
Here are some areas to focus on when designing yours:
Entice your web visitor with headlines.
Use easy-to-scan bullet points.
Include plenty of white space.
Increase your font size to promote readability.
Use high-quality product images.
10. Set goals and KPIs
The goal of a product description is to move a shopper toward purchase. But how do you know if your descriptions are working or not?
You’ll want to decide on a set of metrics to track on your product pages. Defining these metrics will help you understand what product descriptions are working best and improve on underperforming ones.
Common KPIs to monitor include:
Conversion rate
Cart abandonment
Return rate
Support inquiries
Organic search rankings
You can then run different A/B tests using a tool like Neat A/B Testing, resulting in higher conversions and more sales for your ecommerce website.
Create your product description template
Unfortunately, there is no one template that can write product descriptions for you. Every product and audience is different and has different buying triggers. And that’s OK, because you want your product descriptions to be uniquely your brand.
If you’re stuck on writing a product description, here are a few prompts that can help you build a product description template that works for your products and business.
First, answer the following questions:
Who’s the ideal customer? Knowing who your product is for is foundational to writing a good description.
What are your products’ basic features? Write out any dimensions, materials, functions, care instructions, and details about the fit (if you’re selling clothing).
When is the product best used? Is your cozy blanket perfect for cold winter nights with a cup of hot cocoa by the fireplace? Or is it more for a brisk autumn evening as the sun goes down? Highlight the ideal scenarios for when a customer should use your product.
What makes your product special? Think about the unique benefits of your product and why it’s better than that of your competitors.
Once you have this information in a document, use the following template to write out your product description.
Write a specific headline that grabs your target customers’ attention. Keep your ideas simple while showcasing an instant product benefit. For example, if you’re selling a yoga t-shirt with a pattern, call it Fleck Studio Shirt.
Craft a short paragraph based on the basic features and best-used information above. Look to the examples above to get inspiration for writing an entertaining description.
Include a bullet list of product features and benefits. Add any technical details needed.
Add social proof. You can use a customer reviews app to capture product reviews on your website and integrate others from third-party sites like search engines or Facebook.
Now you’re all set to add a product (or adjust an existing one) in your online store!
A compelling product description will always pay you back
As you prepare to write persuasive product descriptions for your online store, remember:
Share your knowledge about your product.
Tell stories and explain even the tiniest details.
Make an effort not to be boring and instead delight your web visitors with seductive descriptions.
Most of all, write with enthusiasm, because your passion for your products is contagious.
Product description FAQ
How do you write an effective product description?
Focus on your ideal buyer.
Entice with benefits.
Justify using superlatives.
Appeal to your readers’ imagination.
Cut through rational barriers with mini-stories.
Seduce with sensory words.
Tempt with social proof.
Make your description scannable.
What is the purpose of a product description?
The purpose of a product description is to provide shoppers with important information that helps them make a purchase decision. Think of a product description like a salesperson who works 24/7 on your product pages to sell your stuff.
What is a good product description format?
Specific product title
Short, descriptive paragraph
Bulleted list of features and technical details
Social proof
Call to action
Wrapping up
We at ShopShipShake have been working with businesses like yours with fulfilling experiences.
We offer one-stop services, including an efficient supply chain, over 10 thousand of China’s suppliers, over 1,000,000 SKU and more. With a successful track record of over 100,000 South African clients, we are sure to deliver your orders requirements. Let’s get in touch to build, sustain, and grow your businesses!
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If they’re best sellers on Amazon, they could also be best sellers on your own store. So you can add products to your store, like this one, based on their performance on Amazon.
If you head over to Wish’s product page, you’ll see some more impressive numbers. Over 6,900 reviews proving that people are actually buying these products.
The truth that no one tells you is that you can have a winning product on your store and have no freaking idea. Your store’s performance can be just like a lot of other new stores. Enough sales to know you can make money, but not enough to know you’re onto something big.
