How to get more sales in your online shop - Organic growth & content

How can you win the market and increase organic traffic? You guessed it right! The answer is content.

Content is king

There are many ways to attract potential customers to your online store. Many of the solutions require up-front payment, such as Google Ads and Facebook advertising. However, there is also the option of using a pull strategy that focuses on organic traffic. Organic traffic includes all traffic that comes naturally, for example, from a Google search.

To be found on Google, for example, you need to search engine optimise your shop, but also focus on delivering good content. Good content happens when you make yourself an expert in your field. This can be done with blog posts, where you talk about the properties of your products, but also write informative articles about the topic you are dealing with in your online shop. If you run an online store that sells pet supplies, you could write a blog post about which dog food is best and why. This also increases the value of your brand, as more people will have seen your logo and you will be top of mind for all visitors who read your online shop's articles.

Why Coolshop is successful with content

Coolshop's blog section on their website.

To take a real-world example, look at Coolshop, which utilises its blog extensively. Here you can read engaging articles related to Coolshop's product range. For example, you can read about the "world's largest beer pong game" and other articles that highlight the products that Coolshop sells.

From the consumer's point of view, shopping with an expert is reassuring. Coolshop achieves expert status as the consumer will judge from good content that the shop in question knows its products.

Content is more than just articles

If you think that good content only includes blog posts, I'm sorry to disappoint you. Content is much more than that. Content can also be delivered through social media such as Facebook and Instagram in the form of posts. Similarly, content can be delivered in the form of videos on media such as YouTube.

One of the companies in Denmark that has had great success with YouTube content is Slikhaar. At the time of writing, they have 2.13 million subscribers on their YouTube channel and several of their videos refer to products in their online store. In addition to YouTube being a great medium for publishing content, it is also a search engine on par with Google, for example. Therefore, you should also search engine optimise your videos, as this will increase the potential traffic to your online store.

Slikhaar TV's YouTube channel.

What is good content?

With an understanding of the importance of content in place, it's also a good idea to know what good content is. There's no concrete answer, as it will vary depending on the industry you're targeting and how useful the article is to your reader, which can also vary. But at the end of the day, there are various factors that can be a good guideline for producing good and useful content.

First and foremost, your content should be useful to the reader. If you sell cake moulds, it can therefore be a good idea to create an article or video where you put the cake mould to use and show its functionality, while at the same time being useful to the reader.

Another thing is that you should make sure that the content you want to create is relevant. There's no point in creating content for a topic that no one is searching for or is otherwise outdated. Therefore, you should carry out an analysis beforehand, checking whether there is other similar content out there, possibly in another language if nothing comes up in Danish. Therefore, you should always check whether the content you want to create is relevant.

Thirdly, you should assess whether the content you create solves a problem for the reader. For example, if you sell tents and create an article or video that demonstrates how the user can assemble this tent.

By using Google Analytics, you can analyse the traffic for the pages on which you have created content. Here you can assess if the bounce rate is high compared to other pages and see if there is anything that needs to be improved. Remember that a high bounce rate does not necessarily mean that your content is bad. It can also be caused by a poor experience on the landing page, which may mean that you need to optimise your site's speed, visual layout, etc.

How to get started with content

To get the right foundation for delivering great content, you should first and foremost always have the foundation in place. You should therefore make sure you have a good content strategy. But how do you create a good content strategy?

Start with a brainstorm! What topics would be interesting to write about and what seems the most straightforward? Make sure to write down all potential focal points with a main point and write sub-points that are related to the main point. For example, a main point could be "How to guides" and sub-points could be "How to roast coffee beans", "How to operate an espresso machine", etc.

Find out which channels create the most impact. If you don't have the resources to make a video, write an article and post on social media, you might want to stick to one of these channels. Of course, we would recommend that you make all channels work together. This is where quality over quantity comes into play, as it's the quality of your content that matters most.