The Torque Social Hour is a weekly livestream of WordPress news and events. On this week’s episode, Brian Gardner teaches Doc the fundamentals of editing a block based WordPress theme with the new Site Editor. Brian is the designer of one of the Style Variations that came in the new Twenty Twenty Three theme.
The Torque Social Hour
Join us on December 14th for our interview with Courtney Robertson and Se Reed from the WP Community Collective.
Are you looking for a more engaging way of promoting your products? Video marketing is a great medium for showing customers the value of your products rather than telling them. However, it can feel tricky to tackle if you don’t have experience with this advertising approach.
Fortunately, implementing video marketing in your eCommerce store isn’t all that challenging. With an online video editor like InVideo, it’s simple to create audiovisual media, from fun marketing clips to seasonal gift guides.
In this post, we’ll take a closer look at video marketing. Then, we’ll show you four ways to implement it in your eCommerce store. Let’s get started!
However, using videos is an easy way to bring your products to life. Unlike with static images, you can effectively show your product(s) in action:
You can also demonstrate the benefits of using your products more effectively. This can help buyers understand your goods better, instilling plenty of confidence in their purchasing decisions.
Additionally, videos can make your web pages more engaging. You might utilize humor, add music, and harness the power of storytelling to entertain, inspire, or encourage visitors to act. Videos can also help you build brand awareness by showing your company’s personality.
How to Implement Video Marketing in Your eCommerce Store (4 Ways)
Fortunately, you don’t need to invest in expensive equipment to create high-quality videos. Instead, you can use a free online video editor like InVideo to achieve the same effect in half the time. Here are four ways to use this interactive medium in your online store!
1. Create Marketing Videos
Instead of using static images in your marketing campaigns, videos are far more interactive. They enable you to generate an emotional response from your audience and guide them toward a desired action on your page.
Better yet, using video advertisements gives you a greater opportunity to share key information about your product. For example, you might address customers’ common questions and build a strong brand image.
If you’re launching a marketing campaign, you might want to share a special offer or discount. If this is the case, you could benefit from using a Black Friday Sale Reel:
Product videos let you show users the value of your products rather than simply telling them. You can utilize a video to demonstrate your item in greater detail or create a tutorial that explains how customers can use it:
As you can see, product videos can clearly present the benefits of your products. For example, you might show that your items are super easy to use, or you can boast about a one-click installation process. Either way, it’s much easier to show off your unique selling points using video marketing.Â
Product presentations are also helpful, allowing you to put forth your ideas about your eCommerce products. Alternatively, you could share a style guide video and cross-sell related items in your store:
With the right music, persuasive text, and high-resolution images, you’re able to convey a particular mode, tone, and feel for your brand.
What’s more, if you’re an independent seller, you can always put a quirky spin on your video:
One way you can do this is by encouraging shoppers to give you their business instead of mass merchants like Amazon.
3. Social Media Videos
The type of social media video you should create depends partly on your chosen platform. For instance, if you prefer short, snappy clips, TikTok and Instagram Reels are great options.
Furthermore, you could also build meaningful customer relationships with live videos by hosting Q&As or carrying out product tutorials. In this case, Instagram and Facebook are excellent choices.
“How to†videos tend to perform exceptionally well across social platforms, especially if you partner with affiliate marketers and influencers:
You can also feature these videos on your website. Here, they can act as customer reviews, increasing buyers’ trust through a more interactive format. They can be exceedingly helpful since 90 percent of consumers check online reviews before buying from a business.
If you’re still trying to establish your brand, you could capitalize on pop culture trends, share celebratory news, or give a walk-through of your business premises. This way, customers can get to know you better.
4. Seasonal Videos and Gift Guides
Seasonal videos are great for positioning your brand as relevant and fresh. Plus, you can target a more specific demographic with video ads.
For instance, you might celebrate the change of the seasons or honor global events like Father’s Day and Pride Month:
Gift guides are also excellent for showing off a variety of related products that shoppers might be looking for:
You could share specific themed gift suggestions such as budget-friendly gifts, home accessories, or presents for sports fans.
Conclusion
Video marketing is a great way to engage with your audience while showing off your products in their best light. However, video can be a daunting medium if you’ve never used it before. Fortunately, an online editor like InVideo makes it quick and easy to create powerful clips you can share online.
To recap, here are four ways to implement video marketing in your eCommerce store:
Create short marketing videos.
Produce in-depth product videos.
Share social media videos.
Leverage seasonal videos and gift guides.
Do you have any questions about video marketing for eCommerce? Let us know in the comments section below!
If you have a website or work in the content space, chances are, you’ve used Google Trends at least once to see what’s popular on the Internet. But did you know that you can also use Google Trends for SEO?
It’s true. Google Trends can help you understand what people are searching for, and how that changes over time. This information can be incredibly valuable when it comes to creating content people actually want to read.
So if you’re looking for a way to boost your web traffic, or simply want to ensure that your content is relevant and searchable, then keep reading. We’ll show you how to use Google Trends to your advantage.
But first, a definition.
What is Google Trends?
Google Trends is a tool that allows users to see how often people search for particular terms on the internet. It also shows how these searches have changed over time.
You can use this for both personal and commercial purposes. For example, you might use Google Trends to track the popularity of a new product. Or, you could use it to see how interest in a certain topic develops over time.
You can also use Google Trends to compare the popularity of two or more terms. This can be useful for understanding how the public receives different products or topics.
All of this information is useful when trying to understand what people are interested in. Knowing that helps to create content that they are more likely to read and share.
Now let’s explore how you can use Google Trends for SEO and improving your web content.
1. Use Keyword Data to Create Relevant Content
One of the most valuable things that you can get from Google Trends is keyword data. This information helps ensure that your content contains the words and phrases that people are actually searching for.
To start, simply enter a keyword or phrase into the Google Trends search bar. You’ll then be presented with a graph that shows the interest in this keyword over time, its popularity in various subregions, as well as a list of related terms and how popular they are.
This data is a great indicator to determine which keywords and phrases you should be using in your content. For example, if you see that a particular keyword is becoming increasingly popular, you may want to consider including it more often in your articles. On the contrary, if you see that a certain phrase is losing popularity, you may want to avoid it altogether. Likewise, your searched keyword can spawn numerous related keywords you may wish to optimize for.
2. Follow How Search Trends Change Over Time
In addition to showing you how popular a particular keyword or phrase is, Google Trends can also let you know how search demand fluctuates over time. This information is valuable when you’re trying to understand why certain topics are becoming more or less popular.
To view this data, simply search for a keyword or phrase then view the Interest Over Time graph. It will also tell you which countries are searching for these terms the most.
For instance, when searching for “pencils,†interest increases around the back-to-school shopping season from July – September then tapers off for the rest of the year in the United States.
At the same time, it is relatively flat year-round when opened up to a worldwide search.
3. Monitor Your Competitors
In addition to understanding people’s interests, you can also use Google Trends to keep tabs on your competition. Monitoring competitors is essential for any business, and Google Trends can give you unique insights into what they’re up to.
To do so, simply enter the name of your competitor into the Google Trends search bar. You’ll then be able to see how popular their brand is, as well as the historical trend.
Use this data to understand whether or not your competitor is gaining or losing popularity. Or, use it to see if there are any sudden spikes in interest, which could indicate that they’re running a new marketing campaign.
A good example of putting this into practice would be if you saw that a competitor’s brand was suddenly trending for a specific keyword set. You could then look at that keyword set and see if there were any opportunities for you to create content around those same keywords.
4. Stay Up-to-Date on Current Trends
Another great way to use Google Trends for SEO is to stay up-to-date on what’s popular. This can be useful for a variety of different purposes, such as understanding what people are talking about on social media, or keeping tabs on the latest newsworthy events.
First, simply enter the name of a current trend into the Google Trends search bar. You’ll then be able to see how popular that trend is, as well as where it creates the most buzz.
Content creators and marketers alike can make use of this information. If you notice that a certain type of content tends to perform better in one region than another, you can localize your content strategy to focus on producing more pieces like it for the former region.
Or, if you see that a trend is losing popularity, you may want to avoid creating content around that topic.
Basically, using this tool can give you insights into what’s hot at the moment, even if you don’t regularly follow the news or top hashtags. Going to the daily search trends can be illuminating as well, since you can view what is currently trending and whether or not you may be able to capitalize on that.
5. Make Full Use of Google Correlate
Google Correlate was a Google Labs tool that has now been discontinued. It worked by uncovering topics people were interested in, and assisting you in deciding what to write about. It also helped with discovering new related topics that were currently trendy.
Though the official tool is no longer available, its features are a part of Google Trends. Within Trends, you can find relationships between different search trends or any other data point. This is an underutilized aspect because many people are unaware of its existence.
Simply enter a phrase into Google Trends and you’ll see other search terms linked to it. For example, if you type in “backpacks,” you will see results like “cool backpacks for kids” and “carhartt backpack”.
Researching new content topics is essential to maintaining a high-traffic website. These terms can help you identify potential gold mines for topic ideas that are both relevant to your target audience and have a high bar of quality. For example, the suggested keywords make it easy to come up with new content topics. “Cool Backpacks for Kids” is pretty much already a blog post title. For the other keyword you could do something like “Carhartt Backpack Review.”
So you can see how taking this approach can yield extremely helpful results for generating new content ideas as well as exploring the raltions between key terms.
6. Create a Content Calendar for the Coming Months
Once you’ve used Google Trends to understand what people are interested in and which keywords and phrases they’re using, you can use this information not just for SEO but also to create a content calendar.
This will help you to plan and organize your content and make it more readable and shareable. First, simply enter the keywords and phrases that you want to write about into a spreadsheet.
Then, use the data from Google Trends to determine when these terms are most popular and plan your content accordingly. This will help ensure that your articles come out at the time when their popularity is at its peak. For example, below you can see that interest in “weight loss” peaks both around New Year’s (all those resolutions kicking in) and then again shortly before summer season.
Or, you can use a content planning tool to keep your keyword research, potential titles, and to-be-published data organized and in one place. A few great options that are compatible with WordPress include CoSchedule, Editorial Calendar, and Strive.
Each of these tools will help you to better plan and organize your content. This, in turn, can lead to more traffic and engagement.
7. Create a More Cohesive Brand
Google Trends can help you create a more cohesive brand as well. To do this, simply enter your brand name into the search bar and see what frequently associated terms come up. This data is really helpful in understanding how people perceive your brand. It shows which keywords and phrases you should use in your marketing initiatives.
For example, if you see that a particular keyword often comes up in relation with your brand, you may want to use it in your social media posts or on your website. Doing so could help you to reach a wider audience and attract more attention to your brand.
An even more effective approach is to use local trends to create content that is timely and relevant to those interested in your product or service type. For example, a coffee shop could use local search data to target those who are interested in iced coffee during the summer months.
With a clearer idea of these local search trends, you can build a brand that is more in touch with the needs and wants of your target audience.
Now if your brand doesn’t have a huge reach and doesn’t produce Google Trends results, not to worry. You can still make use of this tool to aid in the task of brand building. You will just need to center your searches on competitor’s brand names or more general, industry-specific keywords.
8. Increase Your Chances of Going Viral
Finally, using Google Trends can increase your chances of going viral. Understanding what people are in interested in and which keywords and phrases they’re using is a great basis for creating popular content. Enhancing that with country or location-specific information to make the content more useful to a niche audience makes it more likely that it will hit a nerve and go viral.
In addition, you can use potential keywords from social media and input them into Google Trends. This can help you unlock content ideas that will go viral both in search and in social.
Conclusion: Use Google Trends for Content Creation and SEO
By now it should be clear: Google Trends is a powerful tool to improve your web content. By understanding trends and popular keywords and phrases, you can more easily give people what they are looking for.
This, in turn, can lead to more traffic and engagement for your website. So, if you’re struggling in these areas, be sure to give Google Trends a try.
Do you have any additional tips for using Google Trends for your SEO and content efforts? Any secret strategies we missed? Share them with us in the comments below.
One of the biggest problems that store owners face is cart abandonment. Even if the right customers are viewing your products, they could add items to their carts and leave your site without making a purchase.
Fortunately, you can use abandoned cart recovery plugins to remind customers that they left products in their carts. These tools can help you boost sales and prevent users from turning to your competitors.
In this post, we’ll explain the benefits of using an abandoned cart recovery plugin. Then, we’ll recommend some of the best options on the market. Let’s get started!
Why You Should Consider Using an Abandoned Cart Recovery Plugin
Even if visitors place your products in their shopping carts, there’s no guarantee that they’ll purchase them. In fact, eCommerce stores have an abandoned cart rate of about 70 percent.
There are several reasons why customers abandon their carts. These include surprise costs like expensive shipping options or extra fees. Unexpected charges can cause customers to leave your store and do their shopping elsewhere.
Another possible cause of a high cart abandonment rate is an inefficient checkout page. If you don’t make it easy for customers to purchase a product, they likely won’t complete their orders. Therefore, you’ll want to provide a smooth checkout experience.
However, even after taking the necessary measures, you may notice that your online store still has a lot of abandoned carts. In this case, you can use an abandoned cart recovery plugin to encourage second visits.
If customers were initially window-shopping, a reminder email can prompt them to purchase the items they wanted. The right tool can help you track your customers’ carts and send messages about abandoned items. By following up with customers, you can help decrease your abandoned cart rate.
3 Best Abandoned Cart Recovery Plugins for WooCommerce
Once you decide to start targeting customers who have incomplete purchases, you’ll need to find the right tool for the job. Fortunately, many WordPress plugins are designed specifically for abandoned cart recovery. Let’s look at some of the best options on the market.
1. Metorik
If you’re having trouble tracking your customers and their abandoned carts, Metorik can be a useful tool. This plugin provides extensive reports for your revenue, orders, customer retention, and much more. Plus, you’ll be able to view your most-abandoned products and which customers were interested in them.
Once a visitor places an item in a cart, Metorik starts tracking it. If the cart is abandoned, you can send automatic email reminders with discounts to increase completed purchases. Then, the Metorik dashboard will display your new recovery rates and conversion stats.
Integration with Google Analytics, Zendesk, WooCommerce, and more
Pricing: Metorik is a free WordPress plugin. However, you’ll need to connect it with a Metorik account. Registration starts at $50 per month, but you can also sign up for a 30-day trial.
2. Retainful
During the abandoned cart recovery process, you’ll send emails to customers to encourage them to revisit your store. Retainful enables you to automate these email campaigns.
This plugin offers an easy way to contact customers, thanks to its pre-designed email templates and a drag-and-drop editor. It also enables you to show pop-up windows to visitors who are about to abandon the checkout page. By including one-time coupon codes, you can grab a customer’s attention and incentivize them to complete their purchase.
Key features:
Reports on when live carts are abandoned and recovered
Pricing: Retainful has a free plan that supports abandoned cart recovery, 500 emails per month, and up to 300 contacts. If you need to extend these features, the premium version starts at $19 monthly.
3. Abandoned Cart for WooCommerce
Abandoned Cart for WooCommerce is another plugin that sends messages to customers after incomplete purchases. After a user clicks on the add-to-cart button, they can enter their email, phone number, or Facebook account details. If they abandon their items, they’ll automatically receive reminder messages.
To quickly create a workflow, you can choose one of the pre-designed abandoned cart email templates. Alternatively, the rich text editor enables you to create new templates by copying and pasting HTML. Then, you can use merge tags to personalize the emails with details about the customer and product.
Automated reminder emails, texts, and Facebook messages
12 WooCommerce abandoned cart email templates
Option to apply discounts and coupon codes
Integration with Mailchimp, Drip, Sendinblue, and more
Pricing: Abandoned Cart Lite for WooCommerce is free to download. The premium version starts at $149 per year and includes abandoned cart email templates, coupon codes, and pre-built workflows.
Bonus: Live Cart by WP Engine
It won’t matter if you bring customers back to their carts if your site is bogged down with cart fragments. Though necessary for performance, cart fragments can slow down your site, especially during high-traffic events such as the holidays.
Because they constantly have to be running to power parts of your cart, namely “add to cart” or live inventory numbers, the rest of your pages like “About Us” or “Contact” can become slower.
In favor of site speed, many developers opt to disable them altogether, but WP Engine customers have access to a better solution, Live Cart.
Live Cart makes sure those fragments are only running when needed. Simultaneously optimizing your cart and site speed. It comes built into all WP Engine eCommerce plans.
Conclusion
Even with the right advertising methods, customers could still leave your products in their carts. With the right tools, you can target these visitors and contact them with discounted offers. By simply reminding customers about their abandoned carts, you can increase your number of completed orders.
To review, here are some of the best abandoned cart recovery plugins for WooCommerce stores:
Metorik: A cart-tracking tool that identifies commonly abandoned products, recovery rates, and conversion stats.
Retainful: An email marketing plugin with a drag-and-drop editor, pre-designed abandoned cart email templates, and exit pop-ups.
Abandoned Cart for WooCommerce: A useful plugin for sending emails, texts, and Facebook reminders to customers who abandon their carts.
Do you have any questions about the abandoned cart recovery plugins featured in this post? Let us know in the comments section below!
