Marketplace Sellers – Customer Experience Optimization

Marketplace Sellers – Customer Experience Optimization

by | Apr 5, 2021 | Advanced SEO, Content Strategy, Ecommerce, Marketplaces

Customer service is one of the keys to any successful business. It’s even more important for eCommerce stores, but unlike a retail store, there is no opportunity to establish a physical interaction with customers.

Instead, online stores not only have to work a little harder to understand customer sentiments and deliver that customer service experience remotely. It starts with an improved digital footprint that makes more information easily available to the customer that is engaging and provides all the information they need to feel comfortable making a purchase decision.

Customer service is not just about getting the order, but building customer experiences that are complete, fast and leave customers happy with their purchase.

Here are some of ways marketplace sellers can improve the customer experience:

Add More Value to Product Listings

Marketplace sellers need to bring products to life through detailed and accurate information as it makes the tasks easier for buyers. It’s important to add high-quality videos and images for products to help customers make informed choices. Since customers can’t touch or feel a product in real time and all they will have images and videos to rely upon, it’s therefore imperative to give proper and accurate descriptions of products.

Online stores have to give more time to product listing management because it keeps things streamlined for customers. When product information is complete and addresses their questions, customers feel confident in making purchase decisions.

Optimize Seller Ratings

Customers trust stores that have a high seller rating. This gives them confidence to buy without any apprehension. When the seller rating is high, this also adds to the legitimacy of the store. Sadly, a lot of eCommerce sellers ignore this vital aspect which ultimately harms them in one way or another. Make sure your store does not make the same mistake as it does not take much to improve seller ratings of a store. You can follow these steps to achieve higher seller ratings:

  • Follow the seller’s published content guidelines
  • Post genuine reviews and encourage happy or repeat customers to leave feedback as a way to promote good reviews
  • Implement customers’ suggestions to improve the value of your store front
  • Learn from the negative reviews and proactively address these concerns in the product description.

Work on Customer Engagement & Solicit Feedback

While most sites focus on the cost efficiency of talking to customers, encouraging customers to interact with a site is an opportunity to turn one-time customers into loyal customers. Make it easy for customers to interact. The goal is to engage with customers and solicit feedback after they have made a purchase as this will add to their overall buying experience. And when customers are engaged, you’re more likely to know what they liked and what not.

Here are some of ways to gain value with customer engagement post purchase:

  • Include a personalized note with the order
  • Send a follow-up email and phone number (label the phone number as “cell” and position your company even closer to the customer) and ask for feedback
  • Suggest that customer feedback is consistently shared with senior management.

Follow the Latest Standards in UX Design

As an eCommerce store, the last thing you can afford is poor UX (user experience) design as it can ruin all the experience of your customers. You not only need to have good UX designs, but also need to match the latest standards to build customer confidence. The design should not only feel good but also it needs to work smoothly. You can also take help of an expert team for marketplace UX optimization.

Make sure your online store UX design follows these principles:

  • Easy to go navigation
  • Well-defined and organized site architecture
  • Interaction-oriented design with focus on visual product description
  • Proper visual clues for customers at intended places
  • Responsive designs with security certificates, payment gateway integration and easy check-out process

Don’t Go Out of Stock

Customers hate it a lot when they visit a store full of expectations only to find their product ‘out of stock.’ When that happens, the store loses some credibility and repeat occurrences can have profound negative implications on conversion rates. For products that cannot be consistently stocked, offer alternative product links and make sure that the stocking status is visually obvious when buyers land on the page.

To avoid regular out of stock scenarios, you need cash as only it can help replenish the inventory. Well, if you are concerned about customer experience optimization in true sense then you have to put in place right cash and inventory management mechanisms. This will help a lot in keeping the trust of customers intact at all times.

Marketplace Competitive Analysis

eZdia is happy to offer brands and manufacturers a free Marketplace Competitive Analysis. Tell us about your marketplace strategy and we’ll prepare an analysis designed to help you outrank your competitors.

Get Your Free Marketplace Competitive Analysis
Best eCommerce SEO practices to Optimize Your Walmart Marketplace Listing

Best eCommerce SEO practices to Optimize Your Walmart Marketplace Listing

by | Mar 2, 2021 | Advanced SEO, Content Strategy, Content Tips, Ecommerce, Marketplaces, SEO Strategy, SEO Tips

The Walmart marketplace provides sellers with a great opportunity to grow their business and offer their products to millions of consumers. Third-party sellers can join Walmart with product listings and take advantage of Walmart’s strength while offering consumers a quality shopping experience. With over 300 million online visitors browsing the Walmart marketplace each month, there is a wealth of opportunity to increase brand exposure and drive sales.

Even better, there are no monthly fees for joining the platform and the transaction there is secure and fast. The Walmart marketplace is not as competitive as Amazon making it a little easier for any one product to gain visibility, but it’s not as easy as simply listing your products and expecting the orders to roll in. You’ll want to optimize your presentation and take advantage of the best practices for the marketplace search algorithm.

Here are the eCommerce marketplace SEO best practices for Walmart product listings:

Keep Your Product Titles Clear and Concise

Product titles are the single most important marketplace element for marketplace SEO. It’s important to keep the titles clear and concise and pack as many descriptive words as possible. If it’s too short you are likely missing opportunity and, of course, if it’s too long it will be truncated. You should always include the product brand with product attributes to make the listing work better. A good title will ideally be between 50 to 60 characters with no mention of time sensitive special offers or no use of generic marketing terms (Example: Sale, Buy Now, Best etc.).

Use High-Quality Product Images

A good listing on Walmart Marketplace includes high-quality product images. Ideally you will have multiple images all using an image size of 2000 x 2000  that matches the Walmart standard. High-resolution images allow customers to zoom in and inspect a product and grasp the product’s  finer details and make informed choices. There is a strong link between image quality and conversion rate.

Keep in mind a few things with images of your product, including:

  • The product itself should fill the image and be as zoomed in as possible
  • Images should always have the front view of the product
  • Image background should always be kept white
  • Images, videos and customer reviews of the products drive more sales

Include Specific Product Features

The key features (sometimes referred to as bullets) attract customers to the products they are in search of. It’s important to include key features in your product listing to boost eCommerce SEO and catch the attention of your target audience.

Keep in mind a few things when you plan to include key product features:

  • Highlight product advantages
  • Use relevant keywords that add value to product information
  • Give a short product description detailing key benefits and using keywords strategically
  • Include a long description with more product features and benefits to catch the attention of your audience

Select the Relevant Product Category

Like any top marketplace, Walmart gives sellers a chance to use product attributes and categorize their products accordingly. When products are categorized correctly, it helps customers search and find them easily. Plus, it also makes the product’s features more prominent in searches. There are some 24 product categories on Walmart Marketplace to select and list product attributes and doing it right with accurate product details can definitely help improve your product’s ranking on the platform.

Get the Competitive Edge with Pricing, Stock Availability and Customer Service

It takes some effort to make your products feature in searches of customers on Walmart marketplace. Just listing is not enough as there will be competition for the slot and without using the right tactics it’s not possible to gain an edge over competitors. To make your product stand out on the platform, you need to focus on three key aspects, including:

  • Make sure your pricing is competitive on each product, neither too low nor too high
  • Keep your stock always available else it can drive customers away to competitors
  • Offer quick shipping and great customer service so that more customers give positive feedback and reviews to be listed there

List Positive Customer Reviews

If customers are happy with your product price and customer service they can feel happy to leave positive product feed or reviews. And if customers have a positive experience with you as a seller, and they give you glowing reviews, you can always elevate key reviews into the product description. This can work wonders from Walmart SEO point of view. In fact, product rankings can improve a lot when positive customer reviews are included with them. Make it a point to ask customers for reviews and feedback so that your sales can pick up more than it generally does on Walmart Marketplace.

Marketplace Competitive Analysis

eZdia is happy to offer brands and manufacturers a free Marketplace Competitive Analysis. Tell us about your marketplace strategy and we’ll prepare an analysis designed to help you outrank your competitors.

Get Your Free Marketplace Competitive Analysis
What is Schema Markup and Why is it Important for SEO?

What is Schema Markup and Why is it Important for SEO?

by | Feb 25, 2020 | Advanced SEO, Content Strategy, Featured, SEO Strategy, SEO Tips

In 2011 the search engines Google©, Yahoo©, Bing©, and Yandex© created schema.org. The collaboration was designed to increase the use of schema, to enrich and enhance user search experience. Schema is structured data text that can help search engines parse and define information. That said, let’s dig into schema markup and its importance to SEO.

What Is Schema Markup?

Schema markup helps search engines understand the context behind user inquiries. For instance, a user could type “make chocolate cake” and receive everything from box mixes to local bakers that make chocolate cakes. Unfortunately, the meaning behind the inquiry suggested that they were looking for a recipe or how to make a chocolate cake, making the SERP less accurate. Structured data vocabulary like schema helps interpret information in a way that communicates the end-users intention to the search engine. Better interpretation of inquiries provides more relevant results in SERPs.

Primary Schema Markup Forms

The most commonly used form of schema is microdata. Microdata can be inserted into HTML, XML, and XHTML-based documents and pages. Resource Descriptive Framework in attributes (RDFa) is inserted into the same type of documents as microdata. JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Objects (JSON-LD) is a bit different – it implements schema by pasting it into specific areas of JavaScript coding.

Why Structured Data Matters

Using schema is becoming increasingly important with the rise of voice search and technology like Amazon’s Alexa™. Structured data communicates your site’s or page’s purpose and creates relationships throughout the internet between search engines and applications like websites, emails, and social media. Rich snippets only appear in SERPs after info is gathered from schema or other structured data. Search engines are guided by SEO content and the inclusion of schema in your SEO strategy may eventually make the difference between being found and being forgotten.

Schema Is Important To SEO Strategy

Schema is important to the evolution of SEO strategy. For SEO content, marketers, and advertisers, structured markup like schema means a potential increase in click-through rates and overall site traffic. When companies implement the inclusion of structured data into their SEO strategy, it’s called Semantic SEO. Providing context to web pages using schema makes them more visible to search engines, which can transfer to higher SERP rank. Rich snippets created by structured data boost your page in terms of relevance. In short, schema provides visibility that traditional SEO strategies may not offer.

Defining Items With Schema Markup

Microdata and other forms of schema are enhancements that can drive consumers to your business or service. Using schema markup provides opportunities to rise in rank for SERPs, by giving depth to text strings. Few companies or entities presently use schema markup, so it’s a good time to get in at ground level with Semantic SEO. To find out more about how schema can be integrated into your SEO strategy, and view a full list of items that can be defined by schema online, go to schema.org.

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Dwell Time vs. Bounce Rate vs. Time on Page: What’s the Difference?

Dwell Time vs. Bounce Rate vs. Time on Page: What’s the Difference?

by | Jan 14, 2020 | Advanced SEO, SEO Strategy, SEO Tips

The most common misconception about dwell time, bounce rate, and time on page, is that they’re all the same thing. While they’re extremely similar in some ways, each one serves a unique purpose in the grand scheme of search engine metrics. If you’ve ever been confused as to why they matter, and how to accurately use each metric, read on to find out.

It’s A Thin Line Between Metrics

Dwell time, bounce rate, and time on page are all about numbers, namely percentages in some form or another. Dwell time is the length of time a user spends looking at a site after they select the link from an SERP, before going back to the SERP. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who visit one page and then click to any other page on or off your site. Finally, time on page refers to the time a user spends anywhere on your page before leaving. If it all sounds very similar, it is. The key difference between all three is that dwell time is solely SERP-based, links from other areas aren’t included in metric. Both bounce rate and time on page take all visitors into account, not just those flown in from SERPs.

Why Does It Matter If They’re Different?

Each of these metrics offers information about the quantity and quality of visits to your website, but in its own way. Let’s take a look at each one, why it matters, and what you can do to improve them.

What Is Dwell Time?

Dwell time is an important factor in SEO strategy, because it’s solely SERP-based. Knowing if your links in SERPs are leading users to the best area on your site is important. The first thing you should know about dwell time in regard to metrics is that it fluctuates by business or business intent. For example, if you operate a weather site or a retail business, it may take less than five minutes for people to get what they want from a link. In that event, your dwell time would be naturally low. On the other hand, blogs and videos can expect higher dwell times because it takes a while to read articles or watch videos. Start compiling all the metrics related to dwell time to find the ideal average dwell time for your site. Once you have that information, use the following tips to help you reach dwell time goals.

  • Stop spamming users: Don’t use invasive or disruptive ads like pop-ups or auto-scroll videos–users hate that. One of the surest ways to lose a customer is to force them to watch or click through interstitial ads to get to your content. Make the answer to their search engine inquiry non-intrusive and easy to find.
  • Make Quality Content a Priority: Create useful content that’s actionable, accessible, and entertaining. Only use links if they are reputable and helpful. Make other content relevant to search topics accessible on the page so users don’t need to dig.
  • Speed Matters: Load time is just as important as content. Dwell time will suffer from poor load speeds, so use speed optimization tools like Pingdom’s Website Speed Test to see how your site measures up. Speed in terms of use is just as important as load time speeds. While scrolling pages may be a hassle, done correctly they can also help search engines parse data quicker and make content faster to read.

Another important piece of meeting your dwell time ideal is to focus on conversion optimization. If conversions are poor, it could be the quality of your content, speed issues, or broken links causing people to leave or never gain access to your site.

Bounce Rate

A bounce rate that’s too high can clue you into major issues, like a lack of dynamic content or that dwell times have fallen way below average for your business. Neither one is good. In some cases, a high bounce rate is normal, for instance, a weather forecast site won’t have high dwell times because it doesn’t take that long to check a forecast. The need was met and the user moves one, so in that instance, a fairly high bounce rate is a good thing. For sites that are strictly mobile, the bounce rates you can also expect to experience higher bounce rates. If your site offers online training or deals in retail, a lower bounce rate is better because you expect people to stay a bit longer. Again, as with dwell time, there are no specific good or bad average rates, as they vary by niche, but general criteria are available in the table below.

General Bounce Rate Range Indicators
 Good  26-40%
 Average  41-55%
 Fair  56-70%
 Poor  ≥ 71%

If you hit over 90%, something is majorly wrong with your website, because people are leaving immediately. A spike this high can indicate one of the following major issues:

  • Poor load speeds
  • Bad content or lack of engaging content
  • Poor overall design

Bounce rate is an important indicator of what areas of your website design need an upgrade and lets businesses know if analytics software tracking is off. There are a few areas to consider when tracking bounce rate:

  • User intent: Did the page meet user intent, did the page accurately cover user search inquiry?
  • Type of page: Is the page relevant to user search engine inquiry?
  • Quality of page: Is the content actionable, useful, engaging, and informative?
  • Quality of traffic: Is the page attracting the right type of traffic
  • Device type: The device users access from can affect bounce rates. Is the average user accessing from desktop, laptop, or mobile?

Another way to find your ideal bounce rate would be viewing top sites that offer similar services or products as your website. Bounce rates have value because they are easy to measure, linked to business goals, and improving them can help reduce latency issues.

Time Spent On Page

This metric is affected by bounce rate, but isn’t the same thing. TSOP is simply a measure of time that anyone who accesses the site spends on a given page. If the exit percentage is high then the time spent on page average is less reliable. Low exit percentages generally indicate an accurate reflection of TSOP. Exit percentages are the percentage of total exits from a page, after time spent on that page. One of the best ways to get accurate TSOP metrics is to use event tracking methods that determine the following:

  • If the user scrolled
  • If the user interacted with the page (videos, sharing buttons, links, etc.)
  • If the user went on to another page of the site

Without event tracking methods, TSOP won’t account for the people who leave their browser open during supper, or left the browser open on their tablet or phone when they went into the store. Tracking specific actions instead of just time periods will give you actionable information.

If you already have a stellar SEO strategy in place, none of this should present an issue. If you don’t, you may want to consider finding a SEO content powerhouse like eZdia to help you develop one. Our professional SEO strategists and content writers can help you make sense of the ins-and-outs of search engine growing pains.

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