How to prepare for an eCommerce campaign launch

Launching a new eCommerce campaign requires careful planning and preparation to ensure success. From setting up the right tech stack to creating compelling content and testing for performance, there are many steps involved in getting ready for a successful campaign launch. 

In this guide, we will walk you through the key steps to take before, during, and after your campaign launch to maximize its impact and effectiveness.

Pre-launch preparation

We've divided this guide into three parts to examine each step in the smallest detail. Let's go.

1. Setting up the tech stack: CMS and eCommerce platforms

While the campaign launch is a huge stress itself, dealing with insufficient software and fixing bugs is the last thing any marketer or developer would like to do. According to our latest research, 47% of companies use 2–3 CMSs to achieve omnichannel capabilities, minimize delivery risks and add new technologies to their stack.  

However, this could all be avoided by adopting a headless content management system such as Storyblok. Unlike traditional CMS platforms, a headless CMS decouples the content management backend from the frontend presentation layer. This architectural approach offers unparalleled flexibility, allowing content creators to seamlessly structure and deliver content across various channels and devices — all within one CMS.

Integration with eCommerce platforms is another critical aspect. Platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, commercetools, etc., provide robust eCommerce solutions. This enables brands to manage product catalogs, process transactions, and track sales effectively. Integrating your headless CMS with your chosen eCommerce platform facilitates seamless data synchronization, ensuring that product information, inventory levels, and customer data are always up-to-date across channels.

2. Setting up roles and permissions

Collaboration is key to effective content management, especially in large teams with multiple contributors. At the same time, large teams, or brands that are also working with agencies or freelancers, require more control.  

For example, Storyblok's Roles and Permissions system allows administrators to define granular roles and permissions for each user, ensuring that only authorized individuals have access to specific content and functionalities. 

3. Crafting compelling product descriptions

Importantly, due to the integration of your chosen eCommerce platform, you can simply pull product details from the platform directly to a CMS, avoiding the creation of silos. For example, you have a watch store, and you are creating a blog post about the history of a particular brand. You can add a product component to the text so that customers can buy it directly from that page. Due to the integration, the product will have the current price and availability, so customers can instantly make a purchase.  

Storyblok provides a user-friendly interface and intuitive content editor that empowers marketers to craft compelling product descriptions. With features like rich text formatting, embedded media support, and customizable fields, Storyblok enables content creators to effectively convey product features, benefits, and unique selling points, capturing potential buyers' attention and driving conversions.

4. Setting your content ready for all markets and audiences

Creating optimized product pages is essential for capturing and converting visitors into customers. Leveraging the capabilities of your headless CMS, you can design product pages that are visually appealing, informative, and optimized for conversions. From high-resolution images and detailed product descriptions to customer reviews and interactive elements, each component plays a crucial role in guiding users through the purchase journey.

Additionally, by leveraging data insights and user behavior analysis, you can deliver personalized content and product recommendations tailored to each visitor's preferences and interests. Whether it's showcasing recently viewed items, suggesting complementary products, or offering exclusive discounts based on past purchases, personalization enhances the relevance and effectiveness of your marketing efforts, driving engagement and loyalty. 

Omnichannel publishing is an essential aspect of eCommerce marketing campaigns. With Storyblok, companies can efficiently distribute and optimize content across multiple channels to reach and engage customers wherever they are.

This approach provides access to various touchpoints, including websites, mobile apps, social media platforms, email newsletters, AR, VR, and more. When combined with Display ads, Google ads, social media ads, media, etc., brands can significantly improve brand visibility and drive engagement across all channels.

Finally, providing multilingual support demonstrates a commitment to inclusivity and expands your reach to global audiences. With Storyblok's localization capabilities, you can easily create and manage content in multiple languages, ensuring consistency and coherence across different regions and markets. At the same time, you can personalize your content for each market to fit into local preferences and create compelling content for each target audience.

5. Optimizing your content for SEO

Search engine optimization plays a crucial role in driving organic traffic to eCommerce websites. Storyblok's built-in SEO features, such as customizable meta tags, structured data support, and dynamic URL routing, empower marketers to optimize content for search engines effectively.

Furthermore, Storyblok's integration with popular SEO tools, such as Semrush, and various plugins simplifies keyword research, analysis, and implementation, helping eCommerce businesses improve their visibility and rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).

6. Scheduling the publishing time for your campaign

Timing is very important in any campaign, so marketing teams often have to stay late in the office to tune everything and hit the publish button on time. With Storyblok's content scheduling feature, you can forget about manual publication tasks, as you can schedule your content release — from a single page to product launches, promotions, and other campaign activities with hundreds of pages. 

Deployment and testing: tech side of the campaign launch

Now, let's run through the technical side of preparing an eCommerce campaign.

1. Creating separate environments for testing

Before rolling out updates or new features to your live eCommerce site, it's crucial to test them thoroughly in a staging environment to minimize the risk of disruptions or errors. With Storyblok's multi-space management capabilities, you can create separate environments or spaces for development, staging, and production. This allows your team to test changes and experiment with content updates without impacting the live site. Isolating testing environments ensures that any issues can be identified and resolved before deployment, maintaining the integrity and stability of your online store.

2. Setting up development, staging, and production spaces

Storyblok simplifies the process of setting up and managing multiple environments for testing and deployment. With intuitive tools and workflows, you can easily create and configure development, staging, and production environments to support your campaign launch. By standardizing environments and automating deployment processes, Storyblok streamlines the development lifecycle, reducing the time and effort required to roll out changes and updates.

3. Load testing: preparing for traffic increase

When planning an eCommerce campaign launch, ensuring that your website can handle increased traffic and maintain optimal performance under load is essential. Storyblok facilitates load testing by providing tools and resources to simulate real-world traffic scenarios and identify potential bottlenecks. By analyzing performance metrics and scaling resources as needed, Storyblok helps you prepare your website for the influx of visitors during peak periods, ensuring a seamless shopping experience for customers. 

4. Cross-browser compatibility testing

With a wide range of browsers and devices in use today, ensuring cross-browser compatibility is critical for delivering a consistent and accessible user experience. Storyblok simplifies cross-browser compatibility testing by providing tools and features to preview and debug content across different browsers and devices.

5. Mobile responsiveness testing

In an increasingly mobile-centric world, ensuring that your eCommerce website is responsive and optimized for mobile devices is essential for attracting and retaining customers. That’s why Storyblok offers a preview mode where you can see how your content looks on different devices. You can preview your content by selecting various device sizes, such as mobile, tablet, or desktop. Additionally, you can integrate various third-party tools like Google's Mobile-Friendly Test to test the responsiveness of your website.

Post-launch optimization

After launching your eCommerce campaign, continuous optimization is key to maximizing its effectiveness and achieving your business goals. 

Monitoring performance metrics

After your campaign has launched, it's important to monitor performance metrics such as traffic, click-through rate, conversions, and engagement. You can easily integrate various analytics tools to the CMS via API, including Google Analytics, Amplitude, Hotjar, etc. By tracking these metrics, you can identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaign's effectiveness. Additionally, eCommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, commercetools, and others typically offer built-in analytics.

Iterative content updates

Leveraging user feedback and conducting A/B testing are effective ways to continuously optimize your content for better results. By making iterative updates based on user behavior and preferences, you can improve engagement and drive conversions over time. While some eCommerce platforms offer built-in A/B testing features to experiment with different content variations, design elements, and calls-to-action to determine which performs best, you can also extend this capability with specialized tools such as Optimizely.

Scaling infrastructure for increased traffic

Whether your traffic spikes are temporary, such as during a flash sale or promotional event, or sustained over time due to the success of your campaign, cloud infrastructure can scale up or down to meet your needs. This ensures that you only pay for the resources you use, making it a cost-effective solution for handling traffic increases.

Storyblok uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enable you to dynamically scale resources to accommodate fluctuations in traffic and demand, ensuring that your website can handle increased traffic during peak periods without sacrificing performance or reliability. 

By leveraging cloud scalability solutions, you can maintain a seamless user experience and avoid downtime or performance issues, even as your campaign attracts more visitors and generates higher traffic volumes.

Wrapping up

Planning a campaign is a big hustle, but when done with the right technology stack and compelling content, it becomes much less stressful and more efficient. Adding a headless CMS to your eCommerce platform will significantly broaden your capabilities and ultimately drive more conversions.