Ecommerce Website Design Ideas
Building an ecommerce website is quite different from building an ordinary site for other minor purposes. This is true because, an ecommerce website is like a virtual market place aimed at generating huge monetary returns every single moment. Hence there are various ecommerce Website Design ideas that can be have help if you desire to have one. Let’s take a look at 5 of such ideas.
Decide on the Products to sale
Before you go ahead to design an ecommerce website, you need to decide on the kind of products you wish to sale on the site. This determines the kind of design and approaches to take when building the site. In most cases, it’s better to have a specific product niche in mind for your website. Other products may be secondary and minor. It’s better for the online community to know your site for one unique product niche. This can attract more visitors and also make you to be very focused and proactive.
Use Simple business Templates
When creating your ecommerce site, it’s better to make use of simple business templates that relate to the kind of products you’re selling on the site. Don’t use heavy graphics and images as they may slow down the site when people visit it. Your ecommerce site should be as simple as possible in order to allow many visitors to be navigating it without hitches.
The Shopping Cart Must be Available
You need to create a conspicuous shopping cart on the website for customers coming to the site to buy your products. You have to optimize the “add-to-cart” button to be very clear on the site. Customers should not crack their heads before locating the icon.
Introduce Effective Payment Systems
Your ecommerce website will remain moribund and ineffective when you don’t have working payment systems incorporated in it. You need to introduce various payment systems such as credit cards, PayPal, money Booker and so on. These systems allow your customers to purchase products and pay you instantly.
Create Quick Product Review section
You need to create a section in the ecommerce site where your product reviews are well exposed. Visitors who stop by to buy products will like to know more about them before they buy. You need to have various product reviews articles written concerning all the available products you have on the site. You can easily contact a writer in a freelancer website to do the job for you.
In all, building an ecommerce website is never as easy venture. You need to be updating the site from time to time. You also need to be introducing new site features and even new products. You can always engage the services of a reliable website developer to help you out if you have a need for such.
Source by Terro White
Affordable Domain Names for Your Ecommerce Website
An on-line presence is very essential for any kind of business: it is probably the most cost efficient type of advertising currently available. Numerous small businesses use the web to sell their services and products while many businesses do not actually see the web as a market. No matter what you’d like to do, inform your customers or sell products on-line, you need to know several Web site basics in order to attain success. Fundamentally there are two main types of web sites! informative and commercial. If you are only starting out, dependent on the nature of one’s company, you will either plan an educational web site meant to attract and encourage customers to ask the services or you will develop a professional web site that will sell your products online.
Some entrepreneurs create web sites which are educational and commercial, especially when they might like to encourage products which are new in the marketplace or that could bring significant advantages to the users. Overall, the Web is a marketplace and an internet site. Your most important on-line promotional tool. As a matter of fact, you must first pick a name for the domain and book that domain name. The cost of domain name varies with domain registrar and you can get cheap or affordable domain names too there, but try to avoid free domain name, which is not good for ecommerce websites. This name must be strongly associated to your business and simple to recall. Avoid long, hard domain names like! Allideasforpartydesignuk dot com or names which say nothing about your company like frght88 dot net. Again free hosting isn’t an option for serious on-line businesses.
There are lots of companies offering reliable website hosting services. If you are serious about on-line business you should select a reliable hosting company, one which offers 24 hour support and has an excellent standing. You will design your web site according to these documents. If you hire a pro, make sure she or he can design your site respecting your visual identification recommendations, the World Wide Web Consortium requirements and create the internet search engine optimised pages. Promoting your web site requires a long term marketing plan. You need to take in consideration all possible on-line marketing possibilities: from basic internet submission to PPC, submission in paid directories, news release and article submissions, web blogging and posting in forums, choose-in e-mail marketing and so forth. You will need to help keep your web site actual, or else you will lose significant points in the SERP and the visitors may be considered irrelevant, uninteresting as well as not worth another visit. Well, these are most key elements influencing your on-line success. Each element has its significance and will play a significant role to establish your site presence and usability.
Source by Rosario Berry
8 ECommerce Website Design Tips and Practices That Help You Sell More
Increasingly businesses are shifting towards the digital world everyday. Both the seller and the consumer are online now. With increasing demand for Ecommerce Web Development, there are few things you must keep in mind before starting!
1. Responsiveness
People want convenience, they won’t waste time in figuring out a complex situation when there are literally lakhs of easy solutions available on the internet. The main thing to keep in mind while developing your ecommerce site is to make it responsive. People are on their phone always, it is important to make your website in a way it is convenient for them to operate on a mobile screen.
2. Cleanliness and Easy
Your website should be eye-catching and aesthetic to grab your target audience but don’t make it too complex for the sake of beauty. If it is too complex, the user might get annoyed and leave your site before even seeing your product. Your site should be beautiful but easy to navigate and operate.
To make it easy, your visitor should be able to get a clear and concise idea of your business and product as soon as they visit your page. Your products should be easy to find. Avoid jargons and complex words.
3. Call to Action
Your call to action buttons should be easy to use and find, so your visitor does not feel like they have wasted their time searching for products they can’t even buy. Avoid unnecessary advertisements and false call to action buttons. Help your visitors further by a live chat option or defined place to file their query.
4. Visual Images
As it is said, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Now, this is something you will have to religiously follow. Use HD and clear pictures of your products, a visitor needs to know what they are spending their money on. Use various techniques such as 360-degree view to make it more attractive and clear. If possible, use product videos to enhance your sales chance.
5. Product Information
This is the most important point that newbies generally ignore. No one is going to spend their money on something they have no idea about. Try to answer all the necessary queries, provide clear description including product material, quality and all other factors that could influence the purchase decision. Advertise your product but don’t go astray. You can also provide relevant blogs or videos for the product. Add “things you may like” or “similar products” to show you have a wide range to offer and serve consumer wants.
6. Ratings and Reviews
It is very rare for a customer to go on a site and blindly buy something without a proper research. To increase your sales chance and ease your visitors’ experience, include a rating and reviews section. It gives your visitors a reassurance and confidence that they otherwise lack while visiting a new site. It becomes a reliable source for your customers and drastically increases your sales chance.
7. Efficient and Fast Check Out
Customers absolutely hate clicking through a series of pages while checking out. If it is unnecessarily lengthy and complex there is 99 percent of chance that the customer might change their mind mid-way. Add easy options to log in or check out as a guest, add easy payment, and check out options.
8. Personalization
Thousands of vendors are selling the same products as you. It is now up to you to give customers that one key factor that will make them choose you. Personalizing your website, and giving it a unique look. Give your visitors personalized experience, add your custom features, make them feel special. Curate personalized list and preference items according to their previous actions for example “customer also bought this” or something along the lines.
To conclude, everyone is online but not all of them are successful. There is a pool of people trying to make it out successful but only a handful can do so. Make sure to keep these points in mind while creating your website to ensure maximum success.
Source by Rahul Ranjan Singh
10 Important Points to Consider to Launch Your First Ecommerce Website
A number of studies have shown that a large percentage of modern users prefer mobile commerce apps to ecommerce websites. Hence, your ecommerce website must deliver optimal user experience to beat competition and mobile commerce. You have to consider several factors to make the web store keep visitors engaged and seduce them to buy the products/services. In addition focusing the look, feel, features, and functionality of the website, you also need to explore ways to optimize its user experience. To optimize the user experience delivered by the website, you need to enhance its accessibility, usability, security, credibility and search engine visibility.
10 Points to Consider while Launching Your First Ecommerce Website
1) User
While planning and developing your first ecommerce website, you must focus extensively on the users and their choices. You must remember that a web store does not allow customers to touch, feel or smell the products physically. Hence, you must keep the users engaged by making their shopping experience fast and hassle-free. You can always keep the visitors engaged by offering products at discounted prices, providing free shipping, and keeping the shopping and checkout process simple.
2) Design
You also need to focus on the design and user interface of the ecommerce website to impress and engage visitors effectively. Unlike established brands, you need to explore ways to gain the trust and confidence of visitors. Hence, you have to include a number of elements in the website design – a recognizable logo, shopping deals, product options, product review and testimonials, and call to action. At the same time, you need to ensure that the look and feel of the ecommerce website is both intuitive enough to keep the purchase process simple and straightforward.
3) Mobile Optimization
As mentioned earlier, a large percentage of modern users prefer mcommerce apps to ecommerce websites. Likewise, most people nowadays access ecommerce websites on their smartphones, tablets or phablets. Hence, you need to ensure that the ecommerce website delivers optimal user experience on both computers and mobile devices. You can always opt for responsive web design to make the web store look good on each device with a single code base. The mobile optimization will further enhance the website’s visibility on major search engine results pages (SERPs).
4) Social Elements
You need to include many social elements in the ecommerce website to impress the users. The users must have option to share the products purchased from your web store with their friends through popular social networks. Also, the social elements will help users to promote your new ecommerce website and enhance its popularity. You can even use the social elements as an efficient tool to gather information about customers and track their behaviour.
5) Search Box
No ecommerce site can display all its products on a single page. But you can always impress visitors by displaying branded goods to the visitors initially. Also, you must allow customers to check your products based on specific criterions or categories. The website must allow visitors to search and find the relevant products without any delay or hassle. Hence, you need to ensure that your ecommerce site includes a robust search box. The search box will enable users to find a specific product and buy it directly, without browsing through an array of products.
6) Shopping Cart
Your choice of shopping cart will have a direct impact on the user experience delivered by the ecommerce portal. You have option to choose from an array of open source and commercial shopping carts written in different programming languages. But you must opt for a shopping cart software that enables users to check their previous and current purchases quickly and conveniently. Also, the shopping cart must allow users to add or remove items without any hassle. At the same time, you also need to enhance the accessibility and visibility of the shopping cart by using the commonly used simple basket icon.
7) Payment Options
The choice of online payment option varies from one customer to another. Some customers prefer making payment through their debit/credit cards or internet banking facility, while others opt for popular online payment options like PayPal and digital wallets. Hence, you need to ensure that each customer can make payment for the products purchased by him with any payment option. At the same time, you also need to keep the online payment and financial transactions of customers secure by using a reliable payment gateway and the latest encryption techniques.
8) Trust Marks
You must remember that a large percentage of people are sceptical about new ecommerce websites. Hence, you must explore ways to enhance the ecommerce website’s credibility and win the trust of customers. In addition to including robust security features in the web store, you also need to display the accreditation certificates and trust marks of reputed brands. The trust marks and accreditation certificates will enhance the credibility of your newly launched web store. The trust marks will further assure customers that their personal data will remain private and online transactions will remain 100% secure.
9) Option to Answer Pre-Sale and Post-Sale Questions
While buying products from a new ecommerce website, users often ask a variety of question before and after the purchase. Hence, you must answer the pre-sale and post-sale questions of customers immediately increase your sales and revenue. Like other websites, you can answer the pre-sale and post-sale questions of customers through either online chat or phone call. But the customer must be able to see the options available to clear his doubts and answer his questions. You need to ensure that the phone number or online chat option is clearly visible to each customer. Also, you must deploy skilled customer care executive to answer the pre-sale questions of website visitors appropriately and convert them into customers.
10) Search Engine Visibility
You can easily divert regular search engine traffic to the ecommerce website by complying with the guidelines recommended by popular search engines like Google and Bing. For instance, Google ranks websites based on metrics like mobile friendliness and load time. Also, it recommends entrepreneurs to build web stores with responsive web design. While planning the ecommerce website, you must keep in mind the guidelines and recommendations of major online search engines. The search engine optimized design will help you to get regular website visitors without launching expensive digital marketing campaigns in future.
You further need to assess all important aspects – user interface, functionality, performance, usability, security, and user experience – during the ecommerce website development phase itself to make it popular within a shorter amount of time. You can even consider investing in analytics tools to understand the behaviour and preferences of website visitors based on real-time information collected from various sources. However, it is also important to update your ecommerce website consistently to meet the emerging technologies, industry trends and customer preferences.
Source by Arun Kumar Biswal
Ecommerce Website Design Company
For every business owner, understanding the business aesthetics is crucial. The need multiplies manifold if you happen to be into online business wherein your online presence means everything since you are an online platform for buyers and sellers to connect. A shopping website designing is not an easy task that can be achieved just like that. Although it is much more tricky and cumbersome than how it seems. When you run such as website, your day-to-day tasks include selling products, filling orders, receiving payments and last but not the least – satisfying the customers.
Yes, the website design truly matters a lot. It has to be developed in such a way that is user friendly and gives ease of access to one and all. Whether the website would excel or fall depends on the viability of the design considering the level of different categories of customers to whom the business would be catering to. Moreover we cannot assume that the potential customers will find you themselves rather you need to be prominently seen online to attract more and more traffic on your website. For any viewer to stay and proceed with making a purchase on your website, it is necessary that the design is perfect in every way.
Choosing a professional Ecommerce Website Design company with expertise and robust standing in the market gives you the required boost and a robust foundation to begin with. They are the ones who are expert enough to develop a multifaceted promotional strategy to outgrow your competitors by alluring more and more customers towards your website. The steps are many but the ladder to success has to be a complex one else the fruits fetched won’t be cherished.
Few of the many services that fall in the purview of such designing companies are content development, structuring the pages, designing the internal as well as external pages, overall navigation provisions, credibility factor considering both company as well as customers and so on. How would you feel if your home or workplace is a mess? Do you think it would be a welcoming atmosphere for your prospective customers? Would you prefer too much cluttered stuff or limited organized stuff to be chosen from or looked upon?
The answer definitely would be an organized place (irrespective of the fact whether it is real or virtual) wherein the structure itself becomes the guiding force behind boosting your sales. The website should be such that it tempts the customers to go ahead and buy what is required in addition to what they feel are good buys for them. Any company offering website designing services is aptly experienced and knowledgeable to be able to comprehend with your needs along with the current market scenario.
Source by Nalini Tomar
eCommerce Web Designers For Professional eCommerce Website Design
eCommerce is the activity of engaging in business online… As many people now shop online, eCommerce has become a principal economic activity in many parts of the world. In keeping with this trend, eCommerce websites have taken the lead in the online world presently. eCommerce website designing takes care of the special designing needs of eCommerce websites.
eCommerce websites are specially designed to encourage visitors to buy products and stay longer on the site so that they can spend more. It includes a business relevant look and feel, reflect the vision and philosophy of the business, possess an organized layout and professional design, include proper navigation, carry lucid and market friendly content and have a customer friendly user interface, and also comprise of a simple checkout and uncomplicated shopping cart. These sites are integrated with a professional gateway to ensure smooth and hassle free online payment.
Designing an eCommerce site is an extremely professional task. The creation and designing of eCommerce sites is not the work of lay designers. It requires very professional and talented eCommerce website designers to design an eCommerce website that can eventually become a success.
So, if you want to start a new eCommerce project or would like to upgrade your existing eCommerce website, then you should hire a competent eCommerce website designer. Thus, you can rest assured that your eCommerce project is in the safe hands of a professional.
Any professional eCommerce site designer will have several successfully completed projects to his or her credit. The designer should normally have sufficient exposure to all elements of eCommerce website designing. The website designer may work independently or even as part of a team that is specifically into designing professional eCommerce stores. The result that you should expect either ways is a successful website that has the ability to draw prospective customers and deliver significant conversions.
Any eCommerce site designer should have the talent and the professionalism to take his or her job seriously. Most clients usually expect designers to take up the entire responsibility of designing the website from start to finish. The designer’s sole aim should be in designing an eCommerce site that delivers the requisite ROI and becomes a profitable venture.
The designer or the designing team should be able to lead the website from conceptualization to the final integration of the website with the payment gateway. Moreover, the buying experience for the customers should be a smooth affair right from landing on the site and choosing the products to proceeding to the checkout for payment. In effect, customers should be able to choose a product of their choice effortlessly and there should be minimal shopping cart abandonment.
Clients should choose an eCommerce designer that understands the responsibilities of designing an eCommerce store well. What is essential for the designer is a complete set of well-developed skills that comes along with a thorough aptitude for design. Alongside, the designer should be conversant with market trends so that the store can be designed in line with the preferences and the professional standards that the target audience expects.
To summarize, with the right eCommerce site designers in hand, you will surely be able to develop or enhance your eCommerce business to reap the rich rewards on the Internet.
Source by John Tweak
Copywriting Vs. Content Writing: What’s The Difference?
When it comes to marketing a business, there’s no question that you need copy – and lots of it. Copy for your website, your ads, your social media, blog posts, emails, and more. But did you know there are actually two different kinds of marketing copy that do two totally different jobs?
Copywriting vs. content writing is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart, because the majority of my daily tasks involve strategizing, writing, editing, or coaching others on digital marketing copy.
I want everyone to understand the difference, why it matters, and to spread the word!
Contents [hide]
- Is copywriting dead?
- What is the difference between content and copy?
- Copywriting vs. Content Writing, Explained
- How to Get Great Website Copy
Is copywriting dead?

Let’s blast any doubts right now: NO. Writing is still a big freaking deal for your business because copy is a vital part of digital marketing.
It might seem like professional copywriting doesn’t matter so much anymore because viral content sites earn tons of traffic despite having crappy copy. Social media is spawning popular new terms every day. And what about the statistics that show that the majority of people scan pages and don’t even fully read them?
For starters, you’re not a content publishing site with hundreds of guest bloggers from around the world, aiming for quantity over quality. And understanding when and how to use new slang (if at all) in your content, or how to craft scannable content that still engages and drives conversions – that takes some special sorcery!
The words you put out into the world on behalf of your business directly impact your conversion rate, customer retention, and your overall brand reputation. Great copy can increase leads and sales. Bad copy, on the other hand, can lead to digital marketing fails.
I’m obviously biased, because I’m a writer. It’s what I do for work and for fun. So let’s look at a bunch of sexy copy statistics:
- Copy has twice the impact on landing page conversions vs. design (source)
- Pages with poor grammar have up to 85% higher bounce rates (source)
- People are 70% less likely to click a Google Ad with a grammatical mistake or typo (source)
- 80% of people only read headlines to get the gist of a page or post (source)
- Listicles can earn 80% more pageviews than other types of content (source)
- Personalized CTAs increase the likelihood of conversion by 202% (source)
- Articles over 3,000 words typically get 3x more traffic, 4x more shares, and 3.5x more backlinks (source)
- Websites with great writers at the helm can get up to 7.8x more traffic (source)…
- …Which is probably why 73% of major organizations hire someone to manage their content marketing strategy (source)
As you can see, copywriting is far from dead.
What is the difference between content and copy?
Now that’s a great question. Gold star for recognizing that they aren’t the same, even if you only got that just now from the heading. Knowing is half the battle!
When it comes to digital marketing, there are two key umbrellas relating to copy:
- Content writing is used in marketing, while copywriting is most often used in advertising – but advertising falls under the marketing umbrella, so both are technically marketing skills
- You can create marketing content without copy, but all marketing copy is content
Is your mind blown? We’re only getting started.
What is copy?
Copy is text. Yup, it’s that simple.
In content marketing, copy is written information used by a business to either hook a person’s interest, or to convince them to take an action.
And that is the difference in copywriting vs. content writing: the purpose of the words.
What is content?
Whether it contains copy or not, content is information that’s being delivered to an audience for a specific purpose. That purpose could be art, entertainment, education, awareness, advertising – there are countless types of content.
Content can just be copy, but it can also be illustrations, photos, videos, sounds, animations, or even all of the above. The Medieval Latin contentum means ‘to contain’, which is a great way to think about content – whatever it is you’re creating, it should always contain a purpose.
Otherwise you’re just adding more content noise to clog up the internet, but don’t get me started on that pet peeve.
There are lots of mediums through which to serve up your content. Content marketing usually refers to the information a business puts out into the world to attract potential customers. For example:
- Articles or case studies on a website
- Videos on YouTube
- Podcasts on iTunes
- Posts on social media platforms
- Emails sent through a marketing tool
Does your content need a boost? Read How to Write Great Website Content!
Copywriting vs. Content Writing, Explained

Now you know the basic difference (and similarities) between copy and content. But if you’re like me, it’s way more helpful to see examples. That will better illustrate whether you need copywriting or content writing for your specific task.
What is copywriting in marketing?
Copywriting is the art of weaving powerfully convincing yet concise phrases to convince a person to take a profitable action. Its purpose is to drive sales.
Here are common examples of copywriting:
- PPC ads
- Social media ads
- Really, all ads
- Also landing pages for ads
- CTA buttons on a website
- Product or service page copy
- Sales emails
- Website forms
- Video scripts
- Headlines
- Website menus
- Pop-up messages
- Chatbot scripts
Copywriting requires a strong understanding of your audience, your brand strategy, and the emotions required to get the job done. In some cases, like ad headlines and CTA buttons, you only have 2-5 words to grab that reader and make them believe – each word is vital!
Popular emotional hooks used in copywriting are fear, superiority, gratification, trust, and happiness. Being able to quickly convince a reader that their life will be immensely better with your product, or that they’ll be miserable if they miss out, takes a master wordsmith.
Copywriting does occasionally cross paths with SEO, such as writing headlines and menus. But for the most part, it’s used in advertising or microcopy.
Wait, what is microcopy?
In the world of user experience (UX) design, microcopy is all the little pieces of copy that are needed to help a user find their way around a website and complete actions.
The words might encourage a specific action, or they might simply tell the reader what to do next. It’s a huge deal, but deserves its own article. Read more on the power of microcopy in this post from UX Planet.
What is content writing?
The purpose of content writing is to subtly educate or entertain an audience, piquing their interest so they check out your business – and come back for more content. It’s not about making a sale, it’s about building up an audience of potential leads
Here are common examples of content writing:
- How-to articles
- Complete guides
- Reviews
- Lists
- Case studies
- Interviews
- Op-ed pieces
- Newsletters
- Social media captions
- E-books
- ‘About’ website content
- FAQs pages (which should include keyword research!)
Content writing incorporates storytelling, branding, emotions, and SEO. It also has the hardest ROI to prove; a person might be exposed to 10 great articles over two years, and then contact your business through a form that gets the conversion credit.
Content writers don’t do it for the glory, that’s for sure.
To get your content discovered and make people hungry for more, you need a voice that’s perfectly suited to your audience, an understanding of when to use logic vs. emotion in the funnel, and a strong knowledge of on-page SEO including search intent.
The best content writing focuses on being helpful – are you giving your target customer something they actually need or solving a problem? Does your content drive your business goals? If you can’t easily explain the purpose of your content, whether it’s copywriting or content writing, you probably shouldn’t publish it.
Is a content writer a copywriter?
When it comes to finding someone to craft words for your business, a content writer is not a copywriter because the purpose of content writing is totally different.
With that said, as with most professions, any writer is going to specialize in certain areas. You wouldn’t go looking for a children’s picture book writer to draft a horror screenplay, right? (Although, now I want to.)
That doesn’t mean a writer can’t do different kinds of writing; lots of us can do both copywriting and content writing well, but are especially good at one or the other. You want the specialist who can rock the exact kind of wordsmithing you need.
But what about SEO copywriting?
Yeah, there’s no such thing. Sorry.
The SEO community uses that term and it’s oozed out into the marketing mainstream, but nobody can agree what they mean by it. If you look at the online definitions, they’re all talking about content writing – optimizing pages and posts to rank better with search engines. And who writes pages and posts? Content writers.
This term comes from people who think copywriters write ALL THE COPY.
Which is best, copywriting or content writing?
The best kind of writing is the one that serves your content’s purpose. Are you trying to make a sale, or build your audience?
I fully admit that I picked this heading from Google’s ‘people also ask’ results because I’m an SEO content writer doing her job – but also because it’s so funny. Who is asking Google this question? Is it fellow writers? I need to know.
How to Get Great Website Copy
All of this information might have you worried about your marketing efforts, if you don’t have a copy wizard on staff.
Fear not! Copy is a big deal, and so is understanding your copy’s purpose – but I believe you can create great digital marketing copy with your current resources. And if not, help is only a few clicks away.
Learn Content Writing Skills
Writing marketing copy isn’t the same as producing a Nobel Prize-winning piece of literature. You don’t have to be an English major, or even regularly write for your business.
Knowing your brand can, in many cases, make up for any writing skills you lack. If you can talk to a customer about your business, products, or services, you can also write about them. Good marketing copy is going to sound like a conversation with a real customer.
Beyond that, you can hone your writing skills through a little online learning.
There are free online copy courses you can take, like all these courses from Skillshare and this one from Udemy. Just be sure that no matter what the title indicates, you confirm that your chosen course is teaching you how to write the right kind of copy!
You can also subscribe to content marketing and SEO newsletters, which frequently share articles that relate to copy. We’ve published quite a few articles about copy on the Forge and Smith blog. Here’s a selection of my favourites:
- How to Write Great Website Content
- Balancing Logic & Emotion in Website Copy
- 13 Tips to Improve Your Copywriting for Better Search Rankings (This is mostly about content writing, but I optimized it for ‘copywriting’)
- The 10 Commandments of Great Web Writing
- Search Intent 101: the Complete Guide
- How to Write a Business Blog (Even if You Think You Can’t)
- 20 Awesome Blog Content Ideas for Small Business
And of course, you should use writing tools like Grammarly or Hemingway Editor. Just read everything over carefully before publishing – those tools can make mistakes, too, especially when it comes to spelling industry-specific words like products, or the names of people.
Hire a Professional
I work for an agency that offers digital marketing services, so keep that in mind here. But even before I started, I’ve always been a big advocate for hiring professionals to do professional work.
Unlike small repairs or new recipes, I don’t believe you can learn to write through YouTube videos. And you don’t have to be a writer! The best way to drive business growth is for you to focus on running said business – not splitting your focus to learn all about marketing copy.
You can easily find digital marketing agencies and freelancers who have the writing skills you need.
The most important thing to keep in mind, whichever route you take, is that each piece of content your business puts out is an investment. Every time potential and existing customers encounter your content online, whether it’s your website or social channels or a text ad, they’re judging your business.
Make sure your copy is giving them a great impression
The Complete Guide To Long-Form Content In Digital Marketing
Small and medium-sized business owners tend to face a lot of confusion around the ideal word count for a piece of written content on their website or blog. Data from the past five years shows a steady increase in the length of published posts. And, it seems that the change is happening with good reason.
In 2017, for example, the average article length fell somewhere between 500 and 1,000 words, with less than 10% of bloggers investing in long-form (2,500+ words) articles.
Today, on the other hand, things are looking very different. According to research from Orbit Media, 63% of bloggers are publishing posts that exceed the standard 1,000-word count, with 30% to 36% of those who go above 1,500 words reporting “strong results.”
Source
But while the data suggests that long-form content performs better in today’s digital marketing landscape, we can’t conclude that marketers simply need to write more in 2021. On the contrary – they must learn when and how to invest in long-form content to get the absolute most out of it without wasting resources on producing sub-par material that does nothing but run on and on.
So, how can you make the most out of your digital distribution platforms with long-form content that excites readers and delivers results? This guide looks at everything you need to know before you start making long-form an integral part of your digital marketing strategy.
Contents [hide]
- What Is Long-Form Content?
- The Benefits of Publishing Long-Form Content
- How to Create Winning Long-Form Content
- Getting Long-Form Content to Work for Your Business
What Is Long-Form Content?
Like a bunch of other digital marketing concepts, long-form content does a beautiful job of evading definition.
To some, long-form content is any piece of written content that exceeds a word count of 750. To others, the label is reserved for those articles that go beyond 2,500 or even 3,000 words.
In truth, there is no universal answer. Every single format adheres to different standards, which is only natural. After all, there’s no way of comparing a detailed case study with a simple “what is” blog post that gives readers a quick way to gather information and only scratches the surface of a topic.
So, before we go into the ways to get the most out of long-form content on your website, let’s agree not to use labels in the form of word counts. Instead, we’ll agree right here that the way to define long-form content is to call it any written piece that does justice to a topic by paying sufficient attention to every single detail, and successfully answering reader questions.
The Benefits of Publishing Long-Form Content
Although defining long-form content may be challenging, identifying its benefits is anything but.
Research has shown time and again that well-written (and well-researched) pieces offer a multitude of advantages for those ready to do the work.
SEO
One of the most significant gains you unlock when publishing long-form content on your website is that it helps you boost your brand’s visibility on Google.
In the simplest of terms, a longer article body allows for better search engine optimization, giving you the opportunity to:
- Fit in your focus phrase (naturally) without reverting to tactics such as keyword stuffing
- Optimize your copy for synonyms and long-tail variants
- Boost readability with multiple headings, internal and external links, and multimedia
- Win Google’s Featured Snippets position
Of course, you can do all of these things with short articles as well. However, research shows that the average word count for first page results on Google lands at 1,447 words, proving that taking the time to produce long-form content pays off in terms of SEO.
Generate Authority for Your Brand
Investing in high-quality content has been proven to be one of the best ways to position your brand as an authority in your field.
By focusing your production efforts on in-depth content, you’re effectively sharing your insights and know-how with audience members looking for value.
For example, imagine a person looking for an explanation of different email authentication protocols. If they land on this article by Sendinblue, they’ll walk away with the impression that the brand behind the piece knows what it’s talking about. (And, even if the reader is not yet looking for an email marketing platform, they’re sure to remember that they once read a helpful piece published on the brand’s blog.)
Get Backlinks and Boost Social Media Shares
If you’re still not persuaded about the benefits offered by long-form content, you’re sure to be convinced by the following two statistics from Backlinko’s analysis of 912 million blog posts.
According to the brand’s research, long-form content outperformed shorter pieces, both in backlinks and social media shares.
It turns out that pieces that are 3,000+ words long get an average of 77.2% more backlinks than shorter articles. Moreover, the sweet spot for maximizing social shares falls between 1,000 and 2,000 words, further proving the benefits of investing in long-form content.
Validate Talking About Your Product
One of the challenges of getting the most out of your content marketing strategy is that blog posts aren’t always the ideal place for a sales pitch – especially if you’re targeting search terms that aren’t directly related to your products and services.
Fortunately, with long-form content you can match the user intent, provide value, and squeeze in some space to call the reader’s attention to the benefits your brand offers. Plus, you get to do all of this without coming off as too sales-y.
This is what TimeTackle does with its guide to creating an editorial calendar. Explaining the process and highlighting the best products for planning a content strategy, the brand’s writers managed to find a clever way to mention TimeTackle’s app in a section that explores the benefits of Google Calendar to assign, track, and schedule content distribution.
It’s a logical continuation of the topic, which means that it provides readers with relevant info. Yet, it manages to create a space for the brand to pitch its products without coming off as pushy.
Win the Goodwill of Your Readers
Finally, as we look into the benefits offered by long-form content, don’t forget to consider that people love it when brands are helpful.
Studies have revealed that consumers choose to support the brands that offer the most value, which shows that sharing your knowledge and unique insights pays off in the long run.
If you have the resources (and know-how), investing in educational content, sharing your expertise, and empowering your readers is an excellent way to approach your content creation strategy.
How to Create Winning Long-Form Content
Now that you understand everything you stand to gain by rolling up your sleeves and getting down to some serious content production, it’s time to start writing.
Here are the five steps to producing long-form content that’s sure to get you noticed by your target audience.
1. Know What Your Readers Want to Read About
Before you start putting words to paper, you will have to go through a preparatory phase. That’s why your first step for creating content that cuts through the noise is to do your research and to do it well.
One of the best ways to ensure your content brings results is to optimize it for user search intent. And, it’s worth mentioning that long-form content works particularly well for informational search intent.
Informational intent refers to cases in which web users search for knowledge. They need answers to questions or guides to solving pain points. And while they’re still in the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey (meaning that they’re not yet ready to make a purchase), serving the right content can efficiently capture them as leads and speed up their path from information-gathering to buying.
Understanding informational search intent and how to optimize content for it is a great way to get more out of your long-form articles:
- For example, you can obtain a coveted SERP position by using certain search terms in the article’s title, sub-headings, and body like “how to,” “guide,” “what is,” “best way to,” etc.
- By organizing your content in a way that gets to the point early on, then goes into detail, you’ll grab user attention. Additionally, you’ll encourage visitors to stick around on your page until the end of the article, signalling to Google that your content is a good match for the intended search intent.
- Finally, by providing high-quality, actionable information, you’ll have given your readers everything they wanted, effectively boosting your brand’s authority and helping you become the leading resource in your niche.
As a great illustration of a long-form piece that checks all the boxes, check out this guide on the best way to learn guitar by Play Guitars.
Understanding that it’s a complicated topic, the writer behind this article made the smart decision to optimize for search intent with the correct keywords, an outline at the beginning of the piece, and by visually organizing the post into scannable sections.
2. Don’t Hold Back on Detail
When it comes to the value that long-form articles offer, the thing that makes them relevant is the abundance of detail they deliver. When producing long-form content, creators should do their best to enrich their posts with as much new, helpful information as possible.
The fact is, most of what is found on the internet today is a remake – a sort of retelling of information found somewhere else. And while it is possible to turn such content into a tool for driving organic traffic and boosting brand authority, the effect it produces is nowhere near that of truly original content.
For a great example of how the perceived value differs between recycled and original long-form content, compare the following two posts by Semrush.
On the one hand, check out the brand’s overview of mobile marketing statistics collected through different sources already available online. On the other, look at the original study conducted by Semrush’s team on the difference between mobile and desktop trends in SEO.
A quick check shows how much better the original study performs compared to the roundup article. Despite a shorter word count, it has:
- Scored an Ahrefs URL rating of 44 vs. 30
- Earned 628 backlinks vs. 142
- Secured 318 referring domains vs. 90
This just goes to prove that detailed, helpful, and original information performs better than article length on its own.
3. Check the Readability
Okay, but what should you do if you have already written some long-form content and you want to update it to serve your audience (and your business) better?
Well, a simple hack would be to check and improve the readability score of your article.
It’s well-known that internet users prefer to scan than versus fully read content online. So, it’s only natural that creators should aim to produce articles, which are scannable, to the point, and successful at engaging readers.
Knowing that big walls of text alienate readers, writers should implement chunking techniques that effectively break up concepts into bite-sized chunks of information that are easier to read, understand and remember.
Great ways to do this include:
- Using bullets
- Implementing subheadings
- Shortening sentences and paragraphs
- Utilizing formatting to guide the reader’s attention (for example, by bolding for emphasis)
- Including multimedia to illustrate complicated concepts
For an excellent example of a page that does all this, check out this 5,000+ word guide on learning to code from Skillcrush. This page effectively manages to grab and retain user attention, despite the massive amount of information it covers, thanks to strategically using headings, a table of contents, bulleted lists, as well as a large font size coupled with generous negative space.
If you’re looking to improve the readability of your existing long-form content, the best way to go about it is to utilize free online tools like Readable, Hemingway, or the readability checker for WordPress by Yoast.
4. Supplement with Multimedia
Research shows that people respond much better to visuals than to words alone. That’s why multimedia is such a valuable addition to your long-form content.
Using the right photos, illustrations, videos, and even audio files can help your audience get more out of your articles. Plus, it can help you communicate information more effectively and offer something more than your competition.
A great way to present data is through infographics, which are an excellent tool for providing a visual dimension to the information you’re offering to your audience. A company that does this rather well is PWC, whose reports strategically use visuals to improve the effectiveness with which they communicate technical information.
If you’re looking for a slightly different approach, know that you can get equally beneficial results by simply including videos and screenshots in your long-form articles, as exemplified in this Google flights guide by Scott’s Cheap Flights.
The writers of this article understood that everyone processes information differently, leading them to produce a guide that works for both auditory and visual learners. This is achieved thanks to an abundance of annotated screenshots that instruct the reader on how to use the Google Flights app.
But, what’s interesting is that the content creators also knew that video had the potential of engaging more people. So, they created a video summary of the article on the page, allowing readers to consume all the contained information in just eight minutes. All the while, they can follow the audio instructions and go through the discussed steps in real-time.
5. Get Creative with Different Content Formats
Finally, as you look for ways to create winning long-form content for your website, remember that it’s not just standard blog posts that can get you the results you’re after.
By mixing things up – especially with various content formats – you can widen your offering and keep your audience interested, engaged, and constantly coming back for more.
Excellent alternatives to standard articles to explore for long-form content include:
- Information roundups – provide readers with an easily accessible resource for all the data relevant to their query, like this collection of remote work statistics from Flamingo.
- Inspiration resources – give website visitors ideas on how to resolve their pain points, like this Instagram captions article from Sixads.
- Step-by-step guides and tutorials along the vein of WikiHow’s guide on how to tie a tie (which expertly uses a combination of text, images, GIFs, and videos).
- Case studies – the one content format trusted by most people (60% according to Statista), giving you the perfect opportunity to present new information to your audience. HubSpot has an entire content section devoted to customer success stories.
- Definitions of niche terms and concepts – the perfect format for reaching audiences at the very top of the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey as well as for positioning your brand as the answer to all their future needs in your industry. B&H Photo offers a terrific example with their extensive glossary of photography terms.
Getting Long-Form Content to Work for Your Business
The great thing about investing your time and resources into producing high-quality, original, helpful long-form content is that it has the potential for impressive returns.
An exceptional piece of writing won’t just help you wow the people who land on your site or blog. If you consistently deliver valuable, insightful, and unique articles, you are sure to reap the longterm benefits for both your website and your business.
So don’t be afraid of giving long-form articles a try. Start with one or two – preferably by covering pillar topics for your site. You’ll see, the longer form factor won’t take long to get used to. But it’s sure to deliver results – whether you’re after a boost in your reach, increased sales, or simply engaging with more of your followers.