Let’s face it: Ecommerce sites are boring.
And yet, the people running them are often the most knowledgeable, passionate people on the planet about the products they sell. Maybe it’s the drudgery of dealing with the ecommerce system. Maybe it’s because people carry around in their heads some old ideas about how things are “supposed to be done” that don’t really serve them (or their customers) very well. What they need to do is let that passion loose! Their customers are also some of the most enthusiastic people on earth about their product or service. There is a whole community on the other side of that ecommerce wall.
These are things that Christine O’Kelly and I talked about on the phone the other day not too long ago. This is one of those blogging-has-not-even-begun-to-rock-yet sort of items. We both agreed that there is just a huge need to discuss this topic for a dramatically under-served market.
Not only can blogging work in conjunction with ecommerce, we believe that both together form a mighty combination — a reinforcing symbiotic relationship to higher profits.
Add a pulse to that ecommerce site with a blog
Write up various products your customers love
A blog is unique in that you can write new stuff on it frequently, whereas the pages of your ecommerce site may not change much. Your customers will have their favorite products. You have bestsellers, so why not feature these in blog posts?
Provide helpful articles to get the most from a product or service
Here’s the whole “educated customer is the best customer” thing: you can provide insider tips and insights into using and getting the most out of the products you sell. You can’t really put this kind of information any place else that’s appropriate or that makes sense. A blog is the way to go!
Feature a class of products each month
Every month, you could write a few blog posts about a different category of products. This gives you the opportunity to deal with a group of products in a set, which makes for nice mental “chunking” and organizing of information for customers. By exploring a category of products in-depth, you give customers a chance to gain a more holistic, encompassing view of them, their differences, similarities, and nuances. This type of in-depth knowledge makes for a confident purchase decision.
Benefits of a blog with an ecommerce site
- Each blog post about products with links to those product pages acts as a doorway to those pages, used by visitors and search engine spiders
- The more content you generate about a product or a topic, the greater chance of increasing your search rankings for related keywords
- By helping your customers get the most out of products, you are improving your relationship with them and earning more of their trust, which will lead to greater sales
- You will bring some life and some personality to an otherwise stale, lifeless shopping experience
- Because bloggers tend to link to other blog posts, you will increase the number of visitors to your product pages as people get to them through the blog posts which have been linked to
- Having a blog can be an important component of an overall strategy that involves social media, too, such as StumbleUpon and Twitter
What about email newsletters or forums?
I’m not saying don’t have an email newsletter. I’m saying the blog serves a different purpose and allows for more public interactions. After all, when you get an email newsletter, do you reply to it? Have a conversation with someone about it? Not usually! But this is expected on a blog. Your email newsletter does a better job at reaching less tech-savvy customers or people who do not want a high-touch relationship.
Forums have been around longer than blogs and many ecommerce sites have a community forum, a support forum, or both. This means you can drive forum traffic to the blog and vice versa. Forums are for in-depth dialog, blogs are for shorter communiqés and a shorter, looser version of the conversation. Blogs serve a nice middle ground between the deep, involved interaction on forums and… nothing.
One thing to remember - don’t oversell
In all this happytalk about having a blog on your ecommerce site, let’s not forget one very important thing: people hate to be sold, but they love to buy. When you’re featuring products on your blog, you don’t need to tell people to go buy stuff or encourage them. you need to sell without selling on the blog. If you provide the information in a passionate, knowledgeable way, and engage your community of customers, you won’t need to do any crass selling in the blog.
Last point - it sure ain’t gonna hurt anything
I don’t see how adding a blog to an ecommerce site could possibly hurt existing sales, so you have nothing to lose! Go for it!
photo by Rick Harris
28 Comments
Hi Michael - thank you for yet another killer article on blogging for business. I am finding these to be invaluable as I start my fledgling blog, and associated business ideas.
Thank you very much for the words and inspiration.
@ Brett - Thanks, man! Appreciate the kind words.
Love the shopping cart photo.
Isn’t it interesting how knowing something and knowing how to explain it are two totally different things?
That’s why more e-commerce folks ought to read your blog, Michael.
@ Michael - you’re welcome! I call it like I see it, and I see good stuff here.
I might be biased if I said “great post!” but there - I just said it anyway.
I think there is such an untapped market here that it is mind boggling. I would totally subscribe to a blog that reviewed products I was interested in each week.
For example, I love playing board games with my kids, but don’t always think to go out and shop for them. If I got a weekly email from someone I’d grown to trust reviewing an interesting game, I’m certain I would buy more than one over time.
The other thing to remember is that these blog posts become web pages that are indexed by search engines. A comprehensive personal review about a particular type of game could easily rank in the first pages of search results if the copy was optimized correctly.
And I’m with Easton - that shopping cart photo is great! Perfect choice.
Christine
@ Christine - A good thorough blog post could easily become a high-ranking, authoritative page in SERPs. Optimization is part of it, for sure, but really I think the relevance and trust would be so high on that it would outperform anything else based on people voting with their feet (or mouse).
People are pretty sick of nameless faces and companies. The ones I like best? The companies that aren’t afraid to show they’re real people, that the workers wear jeans and sneakers while building innovative products and the ones who know how to have fun.
Blogging helps show some of that realism and personality. I’m all for it.
@ James - Great point. You have a relationship with a person or people at a company, then that IS the relationship you have with that company. Microsoft, of all companies, has learned this. A strong relationship means loyalty and a lifetime of purchases. Studies and data show in particular that women, who do most of the online buying, are all about the relationship and trust. So, if there’s nothing there to have a relationship with, where does the trust come from?
What perfect timing for this post! And I love the photo, too.
I just re-launched my web site last week, which now includes a new shopping cart as well as updated blog. I’ve been uncertain about any personal aspects of the blog (not too detailed, but still…), so have not yet linked the web site to the blog. However the blog, of course does link to the site.
That’s very interesting about posting on the blog about the products (or in my case services) that you offer. I’d be concerned about not sounding spammy to my own blog readers, though…
I’m fairly new to blogging (just over 6 months) so I know I still have a lot to learn as far as business blogging goes. I’d think it would be a tough balance to strike, in order to blog about your services without over-selling. I’m definitely what you’d call an under-seller at this point, which I realize has to change…
Most definitely something worth thinking about! I just need to figure out the best way that I can accomplish this in order to link my own blog to the ecommerce portion of the site.
Thanks for getting the wheels on this spinning for me!
This post is so right on. I believe that any e-commerce site that doesn’t start including some kind of personal, direct and compelling communication to build trust with customers is going to find itself dwindling to nothing. There’s so much the e-commerce sites can do to start creating some real loyalty and relationships–it’s wide open.
Superb post Michael,
It’s interesting that this kind of concept is hugely under utilized on the net right now. I see the value this can bring to the actual reader.
The feeling of being respected and appreciated works like magic when it comes to whizzing out that credit card.
@ Selene - You should definitely link to the blog from the site. For more information on how to really use that blog to further your business, see my guest post at Liz Strauss’ blog: Do you have a blog content strategy?.
In order to write on such a blog without over-selling, I suggest you read my post on How to Sell without Selling. I think both of these together will give you some good ideas for how to best proceed.
BTW, nice lookin’ blog ya got there! You must be a desginer or something!
@ Sonia - Yup… it’s amazing just how wide open and how full of unrealized potential this is.
@ Monika - Great observations. If you really want to bond with your customers and strengthen your relationship with them, a blog is a great tool for it. It has to be real in order to work. You can’t fake it.
@Michael - Thanks for the links! I read the How to Sell… one just after making my comment. Off to read Liz Strauss now!
Thank You for the comment on the blog design!
Yup… I would be a web designer, lol.
Holy cow, Michael, that’s a great post over at Liz’s blog, as is how to sell without selling.
It’s as if you know a thing or two about business blogging…
@ Brett - Thank you for the kind words. I think I’m blushing!
Hey, I can’t help it Michael, your stuff is really helping me out a lot, so it’s the least I can do to say thanks.
I couldn’t agree with you more - a blog, well done, can do more to personalize a company than just about anything else, and that’s a solid first step to building brand loyalty. The whole point about a blog is person-to-person communication, after all - and your “sell without selling” tip is key, I believe, to making that work. Yes, a blog can help to bring traffic to a commercial website, but that’s not where the gold lies. There are plenty of opportunities to advertise to prospective customers, but a blog offers a unique opportunity to build a relationship with them. And it’s a largely untapped opportunity, as Christine quite rightly points out.
@ Micheal: you know, you are close to being a genius really. The more I think about this concept, the more I love it. And I totally agree, blogs really are our voice that allow us to connect with our reader/customer.
@ rjleaman - Yes, that’s it in a nutshell!
@ Mokika - Well, I’m flattered, but let’s give credit where it is due: Christine O’Kelly brought this to my attention, so this is just as much hers as it is mine.
Well, Christine rocks! We all know that, don’t we? :-)Running around with a sign, this takes guts and just shows how strong and smart she really is!
lol - well thanks for the compliment Monika! I certainly didn’t feel all that smart standing there holding the sign!
Yes, but look at you now - I’m glad you did that, or we might not be reading your great insights. Life’s funny like that, isn’t it…
Fantastic post - I feel that blogs are increasingly great for branding purposes and if done right, it can really help boost a business’ profile and presence.
Michael, I agree with you that any ecommerce site would benefit by having a great blog. But I think many business owners wouldn’t say they have nothing to lose by starting a blog. Blogging is very time intensive and it’s possible to end up with many hours spent and very few readers to show for it.
Business owners might love the idea of blogging but they have to think about their own (and their staff’s) time commitment and capabilities. As always, their job requires juggling priorities.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this and if you’ve ever had similar experiences with clients.
@ Jeff - Any business owner has to decide how they’re going to spend their time and money in marketing and customer relationship-building. It’s an investment like any other. The pay-off is often not measurable directly. I can think of specific examples, though they are not clients of mine: Woot.com and Stonyfield Farm.
hola
love this. it’s true, ecommerce sites are boring. i’m running one and it sure is a boring site with just product images and descriptions. i’ve been trying to figure out a way to make it interesting. i guess a blog may just do it.
thanks.
@ Hadee - A blog probably would help. It certainly wouldn’t hurt!
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