Marketing Tips to Optimize Your Site

Performance marketing is all about building relationships and increasing brand awareness. Affiliates work very hard to get their followers interested in a brand and get them excited to shop. While your brand and products are worth all the effort, a good site is key on converting those visitors.

Here are some essential marketing tips to keep your site fresh.

 

1.    User Experience

 

From start to finish, your customer’s journey should be seamless and interesting. Keep each page of your site engaging, easy-to-use, and unified. Any sign of struggle, whether it be random looking pages or hard-to-navigate categories, can make a visitor bounce quickly. Even plain pages can make a visitor feel uneasy to shop if they’re unfamiliar with the brand. Build trust and get them excited with appealing visuals and always keep important information, like your contact and security info, out in the open.

 

Additional to the look and functionality of your site, a user’s experience can be enhanced with fun extras. Create value by going beyond the product and price. Yes, those matter, but a lookbook or buying guide might help convince the customer to purchase. These types of ‘product education’ is a way to inform shoppers and communicate the value about your brand and products. These little extras can go a long way with customers and what they remember from their shopping experience.

 

2.    Imagery

 

Having bloggers promote your brand is a great way to show people your products in a new light; however, it doesn’t help to have sub-par imagery when that reader goes to shop. Make sure to keep the same intrigue when they arrive to your site with high-quality images. While lifestyle images are always a favorite among shoppers, simple and clean product shots are key too. Is your background and lighting dated? Try a fresh white background to brighten things up. If you’re selling clothes, opt for a model instead of a mannequin. Some clothes don’t have hanger-appeal and need to be seen on someone to show their true potential. Modest styling is always good too, but additional shots of the outfit are a good way to give your products versatility.

 

3.    Community

 

Taking a chance on something new is hard and consumers don’t want to be the first. That’s why most shoppers are looking to affiliate sites for guidance. Give the sense of community on your site with a Most Loved category and product reviews. Going a step further and featuring your affiliate bloggers and customers on the site will get shoppers excited to buy, share and shop again.

 

4.    The Competition

 

How do you compete in the market? Do you have better guarantees, free shipping, a longer return window, or is your customer service spectacular? Having any or all these things above the competition not only makes your own visitors want to shop, but these types of incentives will only help your affiliates promote you. You can provide all the exclusives in the world to your affiliates, but if their readers don’t know your brand and you’re not offering more, they’re going to look elsewhere.

 

5.    Site Abandonment and Retargeting

 

Let’s say that you have all the above handled and your affiliates are killing it, but your visitors keep bouncing; what else can you do? Try to win them back! Having strategic site and/or cart abandonment campaigns can be the last-ditch effort needed to get that sale. Just because a shopper leaves the site, doesn’t mean they aren’t still willing to buy. Offering an exclusive code or suggestions based off what they were looking at can convince them to checkout.

 

6.    A/B Testing

 

TEST, TEST, TEST! Where are customers bouncing, where do they click the most, what’s the common journey across the site? The answers to these questions and more are vital to succeed; however, the only way to find the answer is to test. Try different colors in your headers and call-to-actions. See if different verbiage is key. Only 61% of marketers believe their marketing strategy is effective. (HubSpot, 2017). Get to know what works and why. There’s nothing that can’t be tested, and you’ll be surprised at the difference a small change can make.

 

Think of marketing as a relay race and your website is the finish line. Your affiliates are key players, but your marketing team is the anchor in the relay. They know your brand the best and are there to make sure you win that race and grab that trophy (i.e. sale)!

 

Did any of those tips get your creative wheels turning? For more helpful insights, check out our marketing services and contact us today.