So, you are the proud owner of a brand-new eCommerce website or may have used our Shop in a Box service to get started. You got a handle on your admin surface; you’ve set up all your social media accounts and you eagerly wait for traffic to your site and the very first order to fulfil.

But after the initial excitement and honeymoon phase passes, you may realise that both your website and your social media feeds are in dire need of content that you need to create. You knocked up a few blog entries about some of the products you sell, but you start to feel a bit stuck on what to write about next. Perhaps you would like to change up the banners on your site, but not sure how to create something quick and simple without getting a graphic designer involved.

Fear not, we have the best tips and advice for you to get started in content creation even if you have no experience with it at all. Check out our fool-proof web-resources below and pick up some ideas for your business’ creative output.

Content Creation – Handy Online Resources for Website Owners

Blogs, Buyer Guides & Product Descriptions

You may have heard before that search engine optimisation (SEO) is the most important thing right now in the world of eCommerce. Google and other web search providers rank websites based on a rather mysterious algorithm that crawls and checks websites against multiple criteria. One of the best ways to stay ahead of the game and maintain a good ranking on search sites is by providing unique content on your website, content that answer questions frequently asked by people browsing the internet, content that is loaded with keywords but makes sense and reads well.

This means that you cannot just chuck a bunch of words together and hope that keywords will be picked up by the algorithm, you need to write genuine text that is jampacked with relevant information. Blogs, buyer guides and unique product descriptions are all great vehicles for this. But how do you go about finding sources and information for your content?

Google

While this may seem redundant and obvious, your best bet to find out more about any sex or sex toy related topic is by searching on Google. Type in ‘sex toy’ and narrow your search to news too see interesting articles about the industry, new inventions, buyer’s guides and more. You can base your own articles on these or if you find something particularly interesting or fitting to your brand, you can share the link on your social media feeds.

Successful retail social media accounts do not just share posts about sales, offers and products, but provide content that informs their customers about the larger context of the industry – sexual health, sexual wellness, sex-positivity, body-positivity and more. Some websites where you can always find articles about sexuality are Bustle, Refinery 29, Metro, Cosmopolitan, Elite Daily and Mens Health.

Your Competition

There’s nothing wrong with having a look at your biggest competitors’ websites and see what they are writing and posting about. This is a great way to get ideas for your own blog posts as well as checking if you have all your bases covered when it comes to essential information on your website in relation to delivery options, returns, terms and conditions.

YouTube

Most brands have their own YouTube channels where they post informative videos about their products. If you feel stuck with product descriptions, these videos can provide you with all the details and measurements you may need to write a great bit of sales text describing the item. Writing good product descriptions is a balancing act as you want to include as much information about the functions, size and potential uses of the product as possible, but you also want to make the text appealing and at least somewhat fun to read. Content created by the brand itself should help you achieve this as it will also usually give you an idea of the target market the item was originally designed for.

Your Own Experience

Thinking about your own experience with buying anything from an eCommerce website and your experience with sex toys more specifically should inform the topics you tackle in your buyer’s guides. What are the questions you would have about buying a vibrator for the first time? What is it that you think your customers would like to know about a brand or a product type? What hurdles have you encountered the last time you were shopping for something you weren’t 100% familiar with? As you accumulate customer service experience with your website and encounter enquiries from your visitors, you will be able to see what questions come up more often than others giving you a great opportunity to write a blog or a guide.

Graphics, Banners & Social Media

When it comes to visual content, it’s easy to feel intimidated if you have no graphic design experience and the last digital drawings you’ve created were on MS Paint. Your website, on the other hand, will need to be updated regularly, you will want to add new banners, maybe even new category images to keep the site fresh and appealing to both returning and new customers.

While you can find plenty of ways to drive traffic to your site, the real hurdle is getting customers to stay, browse and purchase. You can improve your drop-off rate by making your site as visually appealing as possible and the imagery you use on your site has a major role in this.

Luckily there are easy to use resources that you can take advantage of now that will help you lend an attractive, creative look to your website.

Online Graphics Design Tools

Free sites such as Canva and Xara Cloud can help you create professional flyers, banners, social media posts and more. With great, modern templates and an easy to use interface that lets you pick and mix shapes, images, text and symbols, you can whip up good-looking banners within minutes. Do make sure that you use images that are labelled for reuse, but don’t be afraid to play around and don’t forget that you can always take inspiration from your competitor’s banners or even from imagery not related to the sex toys industry – you can never know where your next idea will come from, so might as well keep your eyes open for fresh visual designs wherever you go.

Some other online visual aids and resources that you can use if needed:
Word Cloud Maker – lets you create free word-clouds based around any uploaded image, great customisation options and attractive results.

Background Burner – if you need to remove the white background from an image to be able to use it on a banner, you can do it on this site. If you open a free account, you can save your previous burns and have access to more customisation when it comes to the end results.

Giphy Gif Maker – you can create great looking gifs from photos or a video on Giphy. The process is very straight-forward and fast, and the resulting moving image will be great to use on your social media feeds.

Stock Images

There’s only so much you can achieve by using Google Images and their “Labelled for reuse” filter, most of the time you just need some really good looking, professional picture to jazz up your website or social feeds. Use Unsplash and Pixabay to find free, license-free photographs that will look great with some text on them. Search for things that are usually photographed in a sensual way, eg fruit, vegetables, balloons, sparks, love etc.

Social Media Tools

If you need help making your social media posts more interesting or want to hit all the right hashtags, you can use sites like Emojipedia to browse and insert emojis into your tweets or All Hashtag to generate the best hashtags for your posts.

Net1on1’s Resources Page & High Res Product Images

We have manufacturer supplied banners, high resolution logos and videos available for you to download from the Resources page. Don’t forget to log in to your account to be able to access the images though, it’s one of the privileges of trading with us! You can also find high resolution images for our entire product catalogue by navigating to your Dashboard, selecting Download from the left-hand side menu and using our Dropbox to find the pictures organised by brand.

Ecommerce requires a constant desire to learn and improve, so by deciding to run your own business, you really set out to become a real all-rounder dealing with customer service, sales, marketing, social media, copywriting and graphic design. We hope that this post will help you put that creative hat on and get started in content creation a little bit easier.

But as always, we’d be really happy to hear from you and read about your experience with eCommerce sites and content creation in the comments section below. Alternatively, drop us an email or give us a call if you want to discuss how Net1on1 can help you set up your own business, be that on eBay or your own shiny new Shop-in-a-Box website.