Unlocking the secrets of successful Direct-to-Consumer businesses
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E-commerce trends & models
Newsletter #4 - SEO: How to rank first on Google in just 3 months
January 31, 2024
If you're ever looking for the perfect place to hide a body, you may be recommended on page 2 of Google results: 91% of users never go there.
However, if you want to make your acquisition strategy profitable, placing your e-commerce webpage in the top 10 Google results must be in your top 3 priorities.
But, facing giants like Amazon or La Redoute and improving your natural organic ranking when you are a DNVB can quickly become impossible...
... unless you have the right strategy!
So, I will now share with you Adrien Croville's checklist (SEO expert and founder of the Mentor Marketing agency) to thwart the SEO strategies of marketplaces thanks to the right keywords and rank first on Google.
☑️ Capturing user’s intent
Before you start looking for keywords for your e-commerce, you must divide them into 2 categories:
● Informational keywords: the gateway to your SEO tunnel (e.g. how to keep your vegan trainers in a good shape).
● Transactional keywords: those that users will type in when they intend to buy (e.g. buy vegan trainers in Paris). These are generally the most difficult to capture, as they are often taken over by the biggest e-shop vendors.
🛣 Adrien's advice to increase your traffic
Avoid trying to put too many keywords on your product pages as they can change regularly (especially in the clothing sector). Instead, Adrien recommends optimizing your category pages!
☑️ Identify your keywords and their monthly search volume
There are different methods depending on the size of your business and your needs:
🛠 Free tools.
- Do a manual search on Google, to check if you appear on the first page or not and pick out keyword inspirations.
- The Google Search Console tool gives you info on user queries before they get to your site.
- Ubersuggest gives you an overview of your positioning compared to your competitors.
💸 Paid tools.
- For €89/month, Ahrefs generates lists of keywords according to their search volume, CPC, location, etc.
- For around €100/month, you can use its competitor, Semrush, which has a database 3 times larger.
☑️ Inspecting Meta Titles
You simply have to enter your keyword, followed by "allintitle:" on Google and it will give you the number of websites where it is found in the Meta Title (e.g. more than 166k for "linen pillowcase").
If the result is under 5k, you should be able to rank pretty easily with this keyword. However, above 10k, it becomes more complicated.
☑️ Estimate the ideal word count for your product pages.
To do this, there's nothing like following your competitors. Using tools like yourtext.guru (which offers free trials!) or Semrush 👀.
Their algorithm will analyse the number of words present on the first 10 URLs.
⏱ Growth technique to go faster
Semrush also allows you to grab other keywords to rank higher in Google searches! For example, for the query "linen pillowcase", competitors also position themselves on "fitted sheet" or "natural duvet".
☑️ Marketplaces are your friends!
Despite all expectations, having marketplaces ranked in the top 10 of Google results can be a great asset for your e-commerce! This is because Google is likely to prefer the small ones and automatically rank them higher.
💡 Bigblue Tip to improve your natural SEO
Once again, get inspired by the marketplaces and their functionalities! For example, by offering its customers an intuitive and personalised return portal, the brand CAVAL improves the referencing of its FAQ and its site at the same time!
Learn more
☑️ Determine your minimum Referring Domain
It's about identifying the number of backlinks you need to rank by keeping an eye on your competitors.
You can use the SEObserver tool to find out how many backlinks they have and use this as a guide for your SEO strategy.
🐫 Adrien's two tips if you don't have enough backlinks
1️.First, you can focus on optimising your informational keywords and producing content (blog posts, etc.). It will improve your internal linking.
2️. Keep an eye on your competitors to get inspired by their strategies! With Ahrefs or Semrush, you can see the backlinks that redirect the most traffic to their product pages!
☑️ Avoiding duplicates
Here are two things you should know about duplicates:
● Plagiarism does not please Google, and if the No. 1 GAFA ever accuses you of plagiarising a site, you should consider getting a lawyer.
● This is important because if you have two identical pages, Google will randomly choose to display only one of them.
☑️ Analyse the order of the tabs under the search bar
For transactional keywords, if "Shopping" appears after "All" when you type in your keyword, it means that Google recognises that it is a commercial query, and you are more likely to rank higher.
For example, the query "guinea pig wig" exists as a commercial query, whereas "camel wig" does not!
According to Adrien, if you apply this method every time you search for a keyword, your efforts should start to pay off within three months.
You'll be able to sleep peacefully while your e-commerce business naturally rises in the Google rankings.
And to push your SEO knowledge a little further, here is the link to a free and ultra-detailed playbook on the subject ⤵️
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E-commerce trends & models
Newsletter #3 - 3 ways to easily optimise your e-commerce site on mobile 📱
January 31, 2024
With Q4 just around the corner, I'm guessing that optimising your online shop for mobile isn't your number one priority.
Yet, I'm convinced that it's just the right time for it. Why?
📲 By June 2022, the share of mobile traffic reached 65.5%
🚴🏻♀️ With an average acquisition cost of £23, you should make it worth it
🎰 DNVBs who went mobile first increased their conversion rate on this device by three times.
To help you get back in control of your marketing spend and boost your sales, I've put together the best tools and practices to improve your mobile conversion rate. ⤵️
Evaluate the performance on mobile in 3 steps📈
88% of your customers will not return to an e-shop if their experience is bad.
On the other hand, 40% will be more likely to spend more than they originally planned if the shopping experience is highly personalised.
The key to taking a mobile-first approach to e-commerce is to prioritise the mobile version before moving on to the desktop.
1️. Check the navigation and responsive design
Loading time, homepage, menu, text and image size...
Ask yourself: are the navigation and design genuinely pleasant?
If the answer is no (or even worse, it is poor), the following should help you 😉
⏱ Bonus tip
To go faster, you can use the Chrome extension Webmobilefirst. It checks if your site is responsive on mobile, tablet and even smartwatches!
2️. Analyse your product pages
I learned that about 30% of e-commerce visitors don't make it to the bottom of a page.
If you have to scroll, you're likely losing an equivalent potential revenue with each visit!
The product pages that convert the most on mobile are those where you can see:
- The product name
- A photo
- The price
- A brief description
- A call to action
As a benchmark, I recommend those of Caval or 900.Care ⤵️
🤜🤛 Bigblue's Friends
Do Caval's product pages catch your eye? You can Ask the experts at BlackSwan agency for advice from me: they did an amazing job on their mobile-first site redesign.
3️. Test your shopping cart
This is the most important part because the shopping cart abandonment rate on mobile is over 85% 🤯
Add a product to your cart and try to place an order. Is the checkout experience intuitive? What are the friction points you may encounter?
BackMarket's method for creating high-performing product pages 🎭
With their armies of marketers and A/B testers, marketplaces like BackMarket, Zalando or ManoMano are incredible sources of inspiration for your product pages 🤩
The secret to their success: they split their product pages into two parts and display the essential details in the right place.
To save you time, I've listed the ingredients for a product page that converts. I've also included 4 tools to test it, and optimise it easily!
1️. On the frontend
Remember, at least 30% of your customers will only read half of your product pages, the first one that appears on their screen.
So they need to find all the essential info without scrolling:
📸 A photo of the product
👋🏻 Its name
💸 Its price
⭐️ Social Proof (Stars, Google ratings or Trustpilot)
📝 A brief description of the product (its benefits, features, etc.)
📦 A reassurance block (secure payment, delivery date)
🥊 A call to action
💙 Bigblue tips
With the Bigblue Fast Tag, you can display the exact delivery date of your product directly in the reassurance block. Brands that use this option have increased their sales by 40% to 86%! 📈
Read more
2️. On the backend
You can put secondary info about your product here.
On the side of the marketplaces, you will mainly find: its functionalities, advantages, technical details, materials used, dimensions, manufacturing method, customer reviews and testimonials (messages, videos), a buying guide (e.g., how to choose a good mattress? or size charts), FAQs...
💡 My 5 favourite tools to create and enrich your product pages:
-> Mockflow: to easily design and test your product page!
-> Hotjar: to understand how your customers interact with your CTAs.
-> Trustpilot: to automatically integrate your customer reviews.
-> Crisp: to offer a live chat or an FAQ.
-> Widebundle: to offer your products in packs and increase your average cart.
3 tools to measure and optimise your e-commerce performance index 🐆
The ideal page load time is less than 1 second, regardless of the internet connection or device.
For the experts at BlackSwan, every extra second of loading time reduces your chances of capturing a visitor, and therefore converting a potential customer, by 25%!
To avoid this, I've found 3 free tools that will help you increase the performance index of your site:
🏎 GTmetrix: to analyse the speed of your site on your different media and identify what is altering your performance.
🌡 Web dev: to measure the quality of a page of your site and collect recommendations to improve it.
🍔 RequestMap: to remove your greedy applications and take your load time to the next level!
Thank you for reading this far.
I hope you have only one goal in mind for the new year: to make your e-commerce a mobile-first champion!
To encourage you to stay on track, I'll share with you in my next email the SEO methods that Adrien Croville revealed to me to double your organic traffic 🤑
Marketing
Newsletter #2 - Emailing: Generate 30% of your sales with emails 🗝
February 16, 2024
Last week I talked about my experience as marketing manager of an e-commerce brand with Thomas, the founder of EmailClub. I proudly told him that at the time, I was generating 20% of sales with emails.
A humbling moment for sure... he said that an effective email strategy would drive a 30% (😅).
He challenged my email strategy and told me everything I could improve. So, I compiled all his valuable tips to help you make email marketing one of your best acquisition levers!
It's easier than you think ⤵️
PS: to motivate you, I got you a little gift at the end of the email 🎁
Two golden rules to catch the interest of your contacts 🪝
1. Only write to interested people!
Your customers won't react the same way to your sales arguments! This is true for both physical stores and emails
To improve the CVR of his emails, Thomas reminded me that it was necessary to start by segmenting his contacts.
Better segmented contact bases, enable you to send more personalised and relevant content to improve your CAC.
Two essential rules to get started:
- An active base (your loyal customers 😍): these are the contacts with whom you have the most interaction and to whom you send almost all your emails (promos and pure content). You can also use it to get reviews, send surveys, etc.
- An inactive base (the most sceptical 🧐): the contacts with whom you have almost zero interaction and that you removed from your active base. Thomas recommends reactivating them with product launch emails or special offers (about one email in 10).
📖 Need a quick refresher on email lists?
Here's a very complete article by Thomas on how to segment, acquire, leverage, and clean up your e-mail lists! Read the article
Segmenting your lists also helps to infiltrate (almost) every inbox.
2. Make sure they read you!
Email marketing has its own algorithm ⚙️
Good news: it's much easier to crack than Google's.
In 83% of cases, 'not delivered' emails are linked to a bad Sender Score.
Ranging from 0 to 100 (a score < 70 being considered bad), it defines your reliability as a sender based on your recipients' behaviour towards your emails (spamming or junk mail, number of unsubscribes, etc.).
Hence the importance of segmenting your bases!
💡How to calculate it?
I use the Senderscore.org tool to calculate it for free.
Thomas gave me 2 additional indicators of a failing email:
- an open rate below 20%,
- more unsubscribes than orders after the email is sent.
The ultimate checklist for successful emails ✅
Here are 5 tips to make the most of each email you send!
☑️ Always check everything before sending: links, spelling, alternative texts...
☑️ Optimise your emails on mobile: 43% of your customers consult their emails on mobile, and 80% of users buy on this medium.
☑️ Mix the formats and themes.
💡 Get rid of the writer's block syndrome!
Here are my 2 tips to get inspired:
-> subscribe to your competitors' newsletters,
-> use the NewsletterMode tool to go faster!
☑️ Subject line is key: the open rate of your email depends on it, no matter what it contains. List your Leads Magnets and use them to arouse the curiosity of your customers.
☑️ Always A/B test: objects, formats, sending times, CTA position... The more you test, the better you can analyse your contacts' behaviour, and the more effective your strategy will be!
💡Tip to analyse your results
To more easily track the performance of my emails and understand what my audience likes and doesn't like, I list all my tests on Whimsical (the Miro tool also works great) with screenshots of my results.
The 2 most profitable emails 💸
1. Order tracking emails
Post-purchase emails have an open rate of around 75% (compared to 19.7% on average for marketing emails). Brands that leverage this channel as a marketing tool generate up to 8% higher conversion rates!
For example, Unbottled integrates vouchers into their follow-up emails to generate additional sales! ⤵️
💙 Bigblue Tips
With Bigblue, you can easily personalise your follow-up emails and provide your customers with a great experience, even after they have placed their order!
Read more
2. Cart abandonment emails.
By optimising this channel, Thomas recovers up to 20% of abandoned carts and in a 100% automated way!
Even though I was quite shy about this practice, he advised me to combine my emails with SMS, ideally creating sequences of 3 emails for 2 SMS.
To save you time, I'm sharing the sequence he uses for pure conversion purposes:
- Email 1 (15 min) / SMS 1 (30 min): a short urgent message that sends your customer back to their basket.
- Email 2 (1 to 2 hours) / SMS 2 (1 day): a reminder of the advantages of the product or your mission + addition of a first promotion (to be defined according to your strategy and margins)
- Email 3 (1 day): specify that this is the last email + add a 2nd more attractive promotion.
💡 Guarantee your brand image
To mitigate the intrusive aspect of cart abandonment emails, I advise you to configure your sequences according to these 3 criteria :
- Trigger: cart abandonment at checkout,
- Filter 1: your customer has accepted your marketing emails,
- Filter 2: they have already placed at least 2 orders.
You know everything!
I hope that all these tips will be useful to you and that you will keep me posted on how they've worked for you. (I always reply).
Oh, and if you ever want to dig into the subject, I'm sharing a free email marketing cheat sheet here (and a surprise 🎁)
Marketing
Newsletter #1 - User Generated Content: +111% conversion rate thanks to your community 🤯
January 31, 2024
In this first newsletter, we will see how to achieve a +111% conversion rate thanks to your community, without paying £20k an influencer! 🤜🤛
For the past few months, I've been fascinated by user-generated content, mainly how e-commerce brands use it to double their sales.
In this newsletter, I'm sharing with you all the findings, actionable advice and tips I've gathered to boost your growth through UGCs ⤵️
Two (very) good reasons to be interested in UGCs
#1 They are ultra-efficient marketing tools...
By sharing photos of its customers in trench coats, Burberry's website recorded more than 7.5 million visits from 150 countries...in 2009!
In 2012, Coca-Cola generated over 12 million impressions through UGCs.
#2 ...and super conversion levers 🦹
- User-generated content is 42% more effective than branded content,
- Their engagement rate is 6.9 times higher,
- 90% of users believe that positive reviews of your products influence their purchase decision.
Agency techniques to create good UGCs
After testing 20k creatives for over 200 advertisers, Matthieu from Stride Up agency revealed two things about UGCs:
#1 "The uglier it is, the better it works." 🤑
Consumers are 2.4 times more likely to view user-generated content as authentic compared to content created by your brand.
A high-performing and qualitative UGC must therefore be authentic and created by your client...
... at least in form!
Because there is nothing to stop you from briefing them to ensure you have usable content!
#2 "Videos convert the most." 🎬
Photos and reviews are great, but the video remains the format that inspires the most trust.
The holy grail? A facecam customer who speaks up, expresses his satisfaction, does an unboxing, live fitting…
For more performance, he recommends including the acquisition codes:
- 9:16, 4:5, 1:1 formats,
- Subtitles (for those who watch the networks at work),
- 30 to 40 seconds in length (it's not an Insta-real, it takes longer to convince your client).
For editing, Stride Up advises playing with the AIDA mechanisms:
- 💡 attracting Attention thanks to a stop scroller that will make your prospects want to watch the video,
- 🧐 Generate Interest by using a secondary hook,
- 😍 create Desire by listing the benefits of the product or its differentiating points,
- 🤳 Encourage the customer to take Action by inserting a CTA at the end of the video!
Examples of effective strategies to collect UGCs
#1 Stop thinking about customers, think about community 👨👩👧👦
68% of buyers will consistently leave a review of your product or service if you ask them to.
As for pampering them, you're already doing that very well: DNVBs have an average 34% higher re-purchase rate than a retail e-tailer! 🤩
Here are some more techniques to boost your community engagement:
- Asphalte or Nidéco bet for product co-creation: this allows them to engage their subscribers ultra-efficiently while increasing their reach and awareness!
- CAVAL optimises its post-purchase experience to increase customer satisfaction: impeccable delivery, memorable unboxing thanks to personalised packaging and a simplified, hassle-free returns process!
#2 Spread the word! 📣
Each brand has its own technique to encourage its customers to send content for free:
- Balzac organises competitions to encourage its subscribers to share photos of their products.
- Ysé dédie highlights its customers in its newsletters and in fitting sessions on its site.
- Unbottled uses its post-purchase emails to encourage its customers to share content with an "I'm posting on Instagram" CTA (Transactional or tracking emails, shipping or delivery confirmation, etc.).
- The Bradery directly puts a CTA on their packaging. A # or even a QR code works too!
PS: 85% of consumers would not send content on their own but would be inclined to do so in exchange for something in return. A gifted product or voucher whose value changes according to the content generated can help (e.g., -5% for a comment, -10% for a Google review, -20% for a story, etc.).
⭐️ Can you imagine building customer loyalty through unboxing?
Here is a complete article to give you all our ideas to optimise your unboxing such as The Bradery, and encourage your customers to share it on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Read me!
Finally, if you're interested in this lever but don't have the time to set up a collection strategy, here are my two tips:
- The tool Flowbox makes it easy to retrieve content, even if you are not logged in on a publication!
- You can contact Joseph from Wiink from me; after only five months of use, Blissim has achieved incredible results with their solution:
2K reviews on FB and Trustpilot
12k content: videos, photos, stories, lives, etc.
1.6k ambassadors and 500 recruited each month
370k interactions
13M coverage! 🤯
Three tips to increase the impact of your UGCs
Brands that convert thanks to UGCs rely on a multi-channel strategy.
#1 Integrate them into your site ➡️
Websites that post UGC have seen an increase in their conversion rate of up to 111%!
Posting UGCs directly on your site increases your credibility, helps your customers project themselves with your products and encourages the act of buying.
- Lashilé adds customer reviews directly to its product pages.
- Like LePantalon, you can replace your product pictures with UGCs
- Respire has created a page on its website entirely dedicated to customer reviews and photos!
- UGCs can also be displayed in a footer, on a scrolling text.
#2 Incorporate UGCs into your emailing and post-purchase email campaigns!
- Ysé displays her subscribers' photos in its newsletters, while Smoon adds her customer reviews to the footer!
- Follow-up emails have an average open rate of 75%. Like Unbottled, rely on this channel to highlight your UGCs!
💌 Like Unbottled, do you want to increase your conversion rate up to 8% thanks to automated emails?
Here is a detailed article with tips and agency strategies to generate sales with post-purchase emails to live the same success story as Unbottled and Ubac! Tell me everything!
#3 Use UGCs in your Ads campaigns!
If your videos respect the acquisition criteria and play with the AIDA mechanisms (see Stride Up's ⤴️ tips), why not use your UGCs in your paid acquisition campaigns?
🦀 Thanks to this strategy, the brand Poiscaille generated +85k coverage and divided its CAC by 2!
That's it for me. I've revealed everything I know about UGCs!