5-Step Content Strategy for E-Commerce Websites

Creating and maintaining an e-commerce platform, and managing its content marketing strategy is not only beneficial for overall customer acquisition but also expands possibilities through search engine optimization. By understanding the real intent behind keywords, online marketers analyze the different needs of potential buyers, thus creating content that is likely to lead to sales.

Developing a content marketing strategy for e-commerce can often be complex. In this blog post, we’ve compiled all the tips you need on how to create this strategy.

Do you want an expert to create your content marketing strategy for you? You can contact us immediately for a custom (SEO-friendly) content proposal for your e-commerce site and for your e-commerce SEO.

What is E-Commerce Content Marketing?

Content marketing is an excellent tool that connects the dots between consumers and business owners.

Consumers search for specific information depending on where they are in the sales funnel. Business owners provide this information through content (blogs, videos, and more) that answers consumers’ questions at every step of the funnel.

E-commerce content marketing is the process of creating valuable content specifically tailored to the target audience of an e-commerce brand.

So, what is the ultimate goal here?

To provide users with the content they need, wherever they are in the purchasing funnel, and ultimately guide them to make a purchase.

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, content marketing campaigns will yield significant returns.

Building a Content Strategy for E-Commerce

Every business is different, which means your content marketing strategy should be unique. You know your customers’ tendencies best, so you’ll also be the best judge of what content will engage and resonate with them.

However, understanding your customers’ purchasing journey and producing effective content for that journey are not the same. The content production process can be particularly challenging.

To help you, here’s a step-by-step guide:

Step 1: Understand Your Target Audience and Purchase Cycles

When expanding (or starting) a content strategy, you first need to understand your users’ search behavior and how it relates to your website.

For example, the content someone searching for “men’s hiking boots” will see will differ from the content someone searching for “men’s X brand boots” or “X and Y brand boots” will see. This is because these three queries have different intents.

The first query indicates that the searcher doesn’t yet know which product they might be interested in purchasing. The next query is specific to someone who knows what they want and is likely shopping based on price, stock/availability, etc. The last query (“X and Y boots”) means the consumer has narrowed their choices down to a small set of preferred brands/models—but is seeking some advice to make a more informed decision.

Therefore, each of these search queries requires a different e-commerce content strategy.

The “purchase cycles” approach will help you narrow your focus. Every good marketer knows that the sales/purchase cycle involves multiple stages. We’ve simplified these stages and adapted them to specific scenarios encountered in an e-commerce shopping environment.

1. Option-Seeking Indecisive Shoppers: You can appeal to these consumers in various ways. You can present top-level product types in a browse-and-click format (like a category page) or write general, informative content in a conversational and helpful tone about their options.
2. Persuasion-Needing Decisive Shoppers: This group is closer to making a purchase but needs persuasion through certain tools. Providing useful educational content about their options adds value to visitors and drives sales.
3. Know-What-They-Want Shoppers: Shoppers at this stage of the customer journey already know what they want and are specifically searching for product names. These consumers may not yet be ready to purchase, but they have (most likely) precisely identified what they want.

Thus, as long as your product pages provide an engaging experience, conversion rates for product name keywords will be high.

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Step 2: Review Your Existing Content

As with all other digital marketing initiatives, in content marketing, you must first know where you currently stand and create a plan to get you where you want to be.

In other words, you need to conduct a content audit.

Your content audit can be as simple or as in-depth as your team’s scope allows. However, the more detailed your initial audit is, the better your insights will be for creating an effective content marketing strategy for the future.

You can start by answering the following questions:

• Which content is driving (and not driving) organic traffic?
• Which pages are generating revenue for your e-commerce store?
• Which content aligns (and doesn’t align) with your current marketing goals and your target audience’s needs?

Once your analysis is complete, you can create a priority list of pages to improve, remove, and consolidate according to your content strategy, ensuring you don’t waste time on content that won’t perform for your target audience or duplicate efforts.

Step 3: Build Your Content Strategy

For those new to the content marketing world, it may be helpful to create your content marketing strategy and content plan simultaneously.

Part of defining your content goals involves understanding your team’s current strengths and capabilities; your content plan shows how you’ll leverage them.

Here are the steps to build your content strategy:

Determine the Types of Content You Use
An e-commerce content strategy is more than just optimizing your product and category pages. The best e-commerce stores leverage the power of blogs, social media, visuals, and videos to drive more product browsing and increase conversions.

There are many other ways to enhance your e-commerce website strategy and target users at different stages of the purchase cycle:

• Buying guides and “how-to”/educational content
• Contests and giveaways
• Product image galleries
• Gated content
• Product reviews and comparisons
• Niche-themed articles and blog posts
• Multi-expert or “roundup” articles
• Online “print” catalogs
• Video content
• Infographics
• Forums
• User-generated content
• Coupon, discount, and sale pages
• FAQ pages

Keyword Volume

Keyword research can be a great starting point for your content ideas, but it shouldn’t be the sole and most critical step of your content strategy.

Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can show which content topics are popular in your industry and are useful for researching specific product and category page terms to target on your e-commerce site.

However, don’t let high monthly keyword volume dictate your content calendar. Many low-volume, long-tail keywords can attract high-intent customers to your site (and are often overlooked by new marketers who chase keyword volume above all else). In fact, these long-tail keywords can reveal details about your target audiences that you weren’t initially aware of!

Competitor Content

If certain content works for your competitors in your niche, it will likely work for your e-commerce site as well. This process is also known as “Keyword Gap.”

Examine what types of content your competitors are producing (blog posts? videos?) and how well they are performing. (Semrush and Ahrefs are great tools for this.)

Tip: Your competitors in the industry aren’t always the ones you’re competing with on search engine results pages (SERPs). Ensure your competitor research includes brands ranking at the top of the results so you can learn from their approach as well.

Step 5: Execute Your Content Strategy

At this point, you’ve identified your content types and topics and documented them in a consistent content calendar.

Now it’s time to take action!

One of the first decisions you’ll need to make is whether to execute your content strategy on your own or with the help of an external content marketing expert.

Creating effective and engaging content takes time. If you have a small marketing team, you may not be able to allocate the time and energy needed to keep your content engine running as it should to meet your goals.

If you need help, it can come in various forms: full-service digital marketing agencies, agencies specializing in SEO content planning, or freelancers who can turn your content briefs into full-fledged articles and videos.

However, it’s a fact that the best results come from the best choices. As a Content Marketing and SEO agency, Digipeak has worked wonders in the industry and continues to do so. Our team of content experts and SEO professionals has helped many e-commerce brands achieve success. You can contact us to get information and start writing your success story!

Step 6: Monitor Your Performance and Optimize Your Approach

Your e-commerce content strategy should be a living thing, redesigned and updated according to your brand’s changing needs and, more importantly, your content performance.

By tracking and analyzing your content marketing performance, you can optimize your efforts to focus on what delivers the best results (and avoid spending more time and money on content that yields little return in terms of traffic and revenue).

Unfortunately, evaluating your content marketing performance isn’t as straightforward as other marketing channels like paid search or paid social media. The connection between page views and revenue is a bit weaker and requires some advanced tracking and reporting.

Useful Metrics for E-Commerce Sites

In other digital marketing channels, success is often measured solely by revenue. However, since content marketing targets customers at every stage of the funnel, revenue isn’t always an appropriate success metric.

For specific content campaigns, your goals may be to develop product and brand awareness to keep your e-commerce store top of mind when customers are ready to purchase. Therefore, you may want to use more appropriate metrics like page views, time on page, and clicks to assess how well a piece of content resonates with your target audience.

Top of Funnel Content: Organic traffic, engagement rate, click-through rate

Middle of Funnel Content: Organic traffic, click-through rate, revenue

Bottom of Funnel Content: Organic traffic, revenue, conversion rate

Create Your E-Commerce Content Strategy Now!

In this article, we’ve explained in detail the importance of content for strengthening your e-commerce brand. As you can see, content goes far beyond readable product descriptions—it’s a powerful tool that drives the final purchasing decision.

While we’ve outlined how you can create your content strategy and shared all our tips, content production is a task that requires expertise, experience, and, of course, creativity. At Digipeak, our content team consists of professionals who meet all these criteria. If you want a reliable guide to hand you the key to success on this journey, you’re in the right place.

Join Digipeak and take advantage of our unique content marketing services and SEO solutions right away!

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Frequently Asked Questions About This Topic

How is e-commerce content created?

When creating e-commerce content, you must first understand your target audience. By identifying their interests and needs, you can produce content that resonates with them. You can use various formats such as product descriptions, blog posts, social media posts, product image galleries, and videos. Additionally, you should optimize your content for search engines to make it SEO-friendly. High-quality visuals and explanatory videos will also make your content more engaging and informative.

What is e-commerce content?

E-commerce content refers to the text, visuals, and videos found on an e-commerce site that introduce products, inform users, or encourage them to make purchases. This content includes product descriptions, reviews, blog posts, social media management and posts, and advertising materials. E-commerce content aims to improve the customer experience and increase sales.

What content is necessary for an e-commerce website?

Essential content for an e-commerce website includes product descriptions, high-quality product images and videos, user reviews and ratings, a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section, blog posts, and social media posts. Additionally, product categories, campaign and discount information, and an effective communication and support page should be created. This content helps visitors gain information, build trust, and make purchases.