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Download PDFAre you considering adding a blog to your ecommerce store? In short, the answer should be yes.
From improved search rankings to lead generation, these days, content is king and blogs can add immense value to your website. Blogs have become a must-have item for any online business. To help you understand the value a blog brings to an ecommerce store, we’ve outlined the key benefits your business can experience from having a blog.
Customers are more likely to develop loyalty to brands they connect with emotionally. Blogs can be an excellent platform for humanizing your brand. A blog can be used to create an identity, tone, and voice for your brand. It also allows a business to discuss a variety of topics.
“60 percent of consumers reported more positive feelings about a company after reading customer content.” (ContentPlus)
Use your blog to share behind the scenes content and employee spotlight features, especially with client facing team members. Give your blog a personality, and don’t be scared to incorporate humor, when appropriate. You can also repurpose blog posts for use on social media. Linking back to your blog can drive traffic back your website.
Blogging offers businesses a major opportunity to increase website traffic by improving search engine optimization. A new page is indexed on your website with every new blog post. The more content that can be crawled by search engines, the greater your chance is of earning better organic search rankings. Additionally, regularly adding new content notifies search engines that your website is active and should be crawled frequently. Learn more about SEO for ecommerce.
Often times, buyers conduct online research before making a purchase or reaching out to a sale representative. Leveraging your blog to provide potential customers with valuable content is critical to lead generation.
Include a call-to-action in relevant blog posts to generate leads. As a best practice, the call-to-action should request customer information in exchange for free content such as a product trial, ebook, or webinar. Your sales team can follow up with the lead once their information has been captured.
Utilize your blog to showcase features of brand new products. Depending on website design, product pages can limit businesses from going into detail about specific product features. However, publishing a blog post can provide customers with background information on the product and can offer your business a means of explaining how a specific product can solve customer problems. Additionally, you can use your blog to describe various scenarios in which customers can use your featured product. Consider including a unique promo code to increase conversions. Use the promo code to gain visibility into how many conversions your blog posts generate.
Having a blog allows a business to share new content regularly. In addition to the aforementioned SEO benefits of posting content consistently, fresh content encourages your readership to visit your website frequently to check for new content. On the flipside, having outdated content can be seen as irrelevant and can cause users to quickly exit your website, increasing your bounce rate, which can hurt your search rankings.
You don’t always have to share blog product information and features. Blog posts are also a great way to keep your customers and blog readers informed and updated about business news, awards, and community happenings. Remember, quantity is not necessarily better than quality. Blog posts should always offer value to the reader.
A blog can help an online business establish authority within a specific topic or category. Regularly posting quality-rich content will eventually lead to readers recognizing your brand as an expert in its niche or industry. Identifying as an expert will also build trust between your brand and clients. You can earn clout by providing answers to questions that readers have. For example, prospects are more likely to enter the sales funnel when they discover relevant product benefits from your blog posts.
Katy Ellquist, Miva’s Digital Marketing Strategist, is an accomplished writer, marketer, and social media analyst who has created sophisticated content campaigns for a broad range of professional clients. She brings to Miva a complex understanding of ecommerce trends and techniques, building upon extensive digital agency experience and a prior role as direct liaison to Miva’s top accounts. Katy is a regular contributor to the Miva blog, covering essential ecommerce topics like design & development strategy, site optimization, and omnichannel selling, with the goal of increasing the actionable knowledgebase of the entire Miva community.
Miva
Miva offers a flexible and adaptable ecommerce platform that evolves with businesses and allows them to drive sales, maximize average order value, cut overhead costs, and increase revenue. Miva has been helping businesses realize their ecommerce potential for over 20 years and empowering retail, wholesale, and direct-to-consumer sellers across all industries to transform their business through ecommerce.
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