The term marketing can bring up all sorts of connotations which may or may not be a good thing! For better or worse, every business needs to do some marketing to raise awareness of their products and/or services. It’s a necessary requirement in a world where everyone is trying to find their portion of a particular niche.
Some marketing tools which can help you straight away are from the largest search engine in the world; Google - of course. With Google Suite, Analytics, Tag Manager, Keyword Planner, Trends, Alerts and Merchant. Some of these take more work than others but they really can give you a great starting point.
Live Chat
Probably one of the most important features you’ll have on your site is Live Chat. We’re huge fans of SmartsUpp which has a great free option and integrates really easily. According to a survey from Forrester:
“44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a Web site can offer.”
Some other tools will round out your marketing functions, the first of which is ‘Heat mapping’.
Heat Mapping
This comes in two/three different forms, mouse tracking, scroll tracking and click tracking. There is good data to show that people move their mouse in line, or nearly in line with their eyes. With Mouse tracking you can therefore ‘see’ what visitors to your site are looking at, or not as the case may be! This can give you an idea of where you need to improve the design, or move products around.
The second form is scroll tracking, quite simply this shows, cumulatively, how far down the page your site visitors are getting to. With this data you can see if people are missing out on an amazing offer that was set just above the page footer. Or you can see what may be pulling visitors down to read the page. The longer someone stays on your page, the more likely they are giving ‘buying intent’ - this is what we want!
The third form does what it says on the tin. It shows you a map of where people are clicking. Are people trying to click something that is not a link? Does it need to be? Are they missing hidden links that could be made more obvious?
Data is good
With all things, more data is good. It allows you to decide on Design, Call-to-action placement, internal and external links, product placement, and more, based on what’s actually happening.
We’re a fan of HotJar who have a free option as well as super easy reporting and a simple setup process.
Shout about it
The other two tools that we alluded to above are an email communication tool like MailChimp and a social media management tool like HootSuite or Zoho Social. These shouldn’t need explaining further but if you do want some more information there’s a great resource from OmniStar.
Of course, if you would like any help on getting these tools setup for your shop then just let us know.
* Anything marked with an asterisk is an affiliate link, the product does not cost you anymore and we only provide affiliate links for products that we, and our customers, think are great!
If you have any queries about this feel free to get in touch with our Support team on Live Chat or via email.