Author: Franz Malten Buemann

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Sometimes you have to make your own luck, especially when it comes to email marketing. There’s no better time than right now to adopt the email marketing best practices that will propel your campaigns to success. And while at the end of the day, you only have so much control over what happens once you…
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 Furniture. Clothing. Software. Posters. Maps. Experience. Buildings. Websites.
These are all things that can be designed. Heck, design has so many different meanings and application you wonder if the term can be defined at all.
Answer: It can. Design has a variety of definitions, but in its simplest form, it can be defined as both a verb and a noun: It can refer to the act of creating a composition or or to the composition itself.

Design is about creating feasible, functional solutions to a variety of problems, and always happens with a particular goal in mind. — Amanda Chong, HubSpot designer

As ambiguous as it seems, design can be defined … particularly when it comes to how it applies to marketing. That’s why we compiled this guide — to help you better understand design and it’s principles and types. Bookmark this guide for future reference, and use the chapter links to jump ahead to any section that interests you.

Design has many different connotations depending on its application. It’s is an incredibly fluid industry. In short, design can be whatever you want it to be — as long as you don’t forget some of its predefined tenets. These are known as the principles of design.

There are many additional terms related to these principles: movement rhythm, symmetry, and white space. These design concepts fall under and/or are based on the above tenets and therefore aren’t considered standalone principles.
Let’s break down each principle of design and their associated design concepts.
Feeling stuck? Take our Design for Non-Designers workshop.
Balance
Balance is how objects in a composition are arranged and what visual weight they carry. Balance can be achieved using the following methods.

Symmetry (Formal balance): When objects are arranged evenly around a vertical or horizontal axis. Objects are arranged around a central point (or a radius) is known as radial symmetry.

Asymmetry (Informal balance): When objects are arranged unevenly around a vertical or horizontal axis. Typically, there’s one dominant side or element in an asymmetrical composition.

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Contrast
Contrast refers to how elements in a composition differ. This principle is often paired with the principle of similarity, which is how composition elements resemble each other. Contrast can be established using design elements like color, space, form, size, and texture.
White space is also an important element of contrast. Often called negative space, which space refers to the empty parts of a composition. White space can help organize the elements in a composition and emphasize the most important ones. It also creates an aura of luxury and minimalism.
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Dominance
Dominance refers to the varying degrees of emphasis within a composition. Emphasis is typically achieved using elements like size, font choice, and certain color combinations (that may create contrast). There are three main stages of dominance in design.

Dominant — The object of primary emphasis. It’s given the most visual weight and is typically found in the foreground of a composition.

Sub-dominant — The object(s) of secondary emphasis typically found in the middle ground.

Subordinate — The object(s) of tertiary emphasis typically found in the background.

Fun fact: The visual center is where we naturally focus on a piece of visual design. It’s slightly above and to the right of the actual center of a composition and is often referred to as “museum height”.
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Movement
Movement is the visual path a viewer follows when viewing a composition. With proper movement, a composition can create a narrative and provide a high-quality user experience (UX). Movement can be established using design elements like lines, shapes, and colors.
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Proportion or Scale
Proportion refers to the visual weight and size of a composition’s elements and how they relate to each other. This principle is also known as scale.
The relative size of one object to another can help create a focal point or movement along the composition. Also, varying sizes of objects can help communicate the importance and dominance of one element over another.
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Unity
Visual unity has been said to be the main goal of design, although that opinion differs among designers and certain design communities. Unity, or harmony, refers to the relationship between the individual parts and the whole of a composition. When a composition’s elements are in agreement, there exists unity; when the elements aren’t in agreement, a composition is said to have variety.
The following design principles are associated with unity.

Alignment — When objects are lined up on a certain axis or cadence

Continuation — When a line or pattern extends

Perspective — When there’s a distance between elements

Proximity — When objects are placed close together

Repetition — When objects are copied multiple times

Rhythm — When objects recur with a slight change or interruption 

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While the principles of design are considered universal, they look a little different as applied to different design communities and practices. Below, we’ve reviewed the top seven types of design in marketing.

Types of Design in Marketing

Graphic Design
Branding and Logo Design
UI and UX Design
Web (Front-End) Design
Multimedia Design
Environmental Design

Let’s break down each type of design and how they apply to the marketing industry.
Grab 195 free visual marketing design templates on us.
Graphic Design
Graphic design is probably what you picture when you think of design in the marketing field: social media images, email marketing headers, infographics, postcards, and much more.
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Since visual content is a highly valuable and engaging marketing medium, companies rely on graphic designers to create assets that represent their brand and communicate with their audience.
Need templates to help you create content for any online channel? Download our free library of over 195 visual marketing design templates.
Branding and Logo Design
Branding and logo design is a subset of graphic design. It includes the visual elements of a brand and brand identity, such as logos, typography, color palettes, style guides, and more.
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Branding and logo designers create assets that represent a brand, illustrate the brand’s mission, vision, and values, and promote brand awareness for the company.
Learn the fundamental concepts of graphic design and how to use them to create high-quality graphics by taking the HubSpot Academy Graphic Design Essentials course.
UI and UX Design
User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design focus on improving how website, app, and software users interact with and experience a product.
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While some roles combine UI and UX design, the two practices are quite different. UI designers are responsible for creating a visually-pleasing, on-brand experience for users through web page design, app design, and theme design on sites like WordPress and Shopify.
UX designers, on the other hand, are responsible for making sure a product actually solves a problem through usability testing, user flows, and digital prototypes.
Web (Front-End) Design
Web design applies to the front-end (public-facing) side of a website. Front-end designers are like UI designers equipped with coding knowledge — they design static UI mockups for a website and then translate them into HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. (But don’t confuse this practice with front-end web development.)

Web designers create assets that produce an attractive and fully-functional website, such as splash pages, navigational elements, sitemaps and pages, scrolling and clicking features, and content management systems.
Multimedia Design
Multimedia (or motion graphic) design is designing graphics for a variety of media, particularly video and animation. Because of its time and cost requirements, this type of design has historically been reserved for those in TV and film. But with advancements in technology and a recent rise in video content marketing, motion graphic design has become more accessible than ever.
 

 
Multimedia designers are responsible for creating moveable assets that communicate and delight with an audience, like moveable logos, GIFs, animated videos, tutorial videos, and animated websites.
Environmental Design
Environmental design, also known as environmental graphic design, is intended to improve a person’s experience by furthering the purpose of an environment, whether that’s to be memorable, exciting, informative, motivational, or easily navigable. The practice merges interior design, architecture, graphic design, landscape design, and industrial design.
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Environmental designers create assets that connect people to their environment, such as, murals, office design and branding, store interiors, event space design, and signage and interactive advertising.
Marketing Design Tips
We’ve covered the basics of the most common types of design in marketing: graphic, branding, UI and UX, and web, multimedia, and environmental. Now, we’re going to dive into some tips for the top four.
Note: Keep an eye out for the principles of design we discussed above … they’ll make an appearance in this section, too.
Graphic Design Tips
1. Start with the purpose
What type of content are you designing … a social media ad, email template header, or ebook? These are three different pieces of content with three wildly different purposes and goals. Before you create your piece of graphic design, jot down the purpose of the content. This can help keep your design goals aligned with your content goals as you create your piece of art.
2. Apply your style guide
When deciding on what design elements to include, consider your company’s branding style guide. (We’ll get into how and why to create a style guide next.) This guide will immediately show you what colors, fonts, and other design elements to use when designing your content. From there, you can make small tweaks depending on what type of content you’re creating.
3. Create order with lines and alignment
Lines and alignment in your graphic design can create movement and order. Align the text in your graphic to guide your viewer as they read, or incorporate horizontal lines to section off your text and imagery. Similar to how you format long blog posts in small paragraphs, lines and alignment make pieces of graphic design easier to digest.
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4. Pepper in some icons and illustrations
Colors, text, and images make for gorgeous graphics, but don’t limit your elements to those three. Icons and illustrations can also spice up an otherwise text or image-heavy piece of content. Icons might also be able to illustrate concepts that photos can’t, and they serve as creative bullet points for long lists.
Spruce up your graphic design today with our 135 free icons to use in your marketing graphics.
Branding and Logo Design Tips
1. Design the aesthetic of your personality
How do you visually present the personality of your brand and company? If your brand was a person, what would he or she be like? Your branding design should reflect the answers to these questions.
Before starting your design, make a list of adjectives that describe your brand, company, and culture. This will help you choose color combinations, images, fonts, and other design elements and bring out the key points of your personality. Also, using your brand adjectives as guidance, build a collection of images, graphics, color samples, and similar logos that represent the “mood” of your brand — a.k.a. a mood board.
2. Get a little funky
Your logo and brand assets don’t have to be a straightforward representation of what your company does. Heck, HubSpot’s logo has really nothing to do with marketing, sales, or service software. Yet, it represents our company perfectly while being memorable and distinctive.
As you design your brand’s visual identity, don’t be afraid to get a little funky and incorporate some unique design aspects. Doing so may help your brand stand out from the rest.
3. Keep it simple
Your branding should communicate your aesthetic in a less than a second. Impressions are made in the blink of an eye, and your logo and brand identity is no exception. Consumers will decide if they like, dislike, are impressed by, or want nothing to do with your brand in a split second, so keep your design simple and to the point.

4. Prioritize consistency
This is perhaps the most important tip when it comes to branding and logo design: Be consistent. You can spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars developing a gorgeous visual identity for your brand — but if it’s not reflected on every piece of print and digital content, all your resources have gone to waste.
Consistency applies on a couple different axes — horizontally along your content elements, i.e. in your fonts, spacing, and color combinations, and vertically across your content outlets, i.e. between your social media, email, website, and print materials. Create a style guide to encourage everyone to adhere to your new branding. Here’s HubSpot’s Style Guide as an example.
Learn the key elements you need to create a strong brand by downloading The Essential Guide to Branding Your Company here.
UI and UX Design Tips
Note: UI and UX design are considered two different types of design, but because they’re so similar, we’ve collected a few tips that can apply to both practices.
1. Adapt a user’s perspective
Whether you’re designing the interface or the experience of an app, website, or online tool, always adapt the perspective of a user. Why would someone use your site? What would they hope to achieve? What might their challenges be? It’s important to research your user base and better understand how they’d approach or your site or application. Consider doing first-hand user research through a focus group or by talking to current customers.
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2. Anticipate mistakes
Regardless of much you talk to users, there will always be a handful (or more) of people who’ll stumble through your website or application. Anticipate these mistakes by incorporating fool-proof mechanisms, such as not letting someone submit a web form if they’ve skipped a box or having a user confirm they’d like to exit in case they accidentally clicked off the screen. These mechanisms can help prevent mistakes before they happen and let your users know you’ve got their backs.
3. Don’t neglect standards and trends
Designers love paving a new path and “reinventing the wheel” with their designs. While this can create something unique and memorable for the user, it may also confuse them if you’ve gone too far. Consider sticking with known design patterns, standards, and trends, such as a navigation bar the top right corner or contact information along the bottom of the page. This can help your users already subconsciously know how to navigate your site without explanation.
4. Be mobile-friendly friendly
Responsive design is a non-negotiable for websites and applications, but is your design mobile-friendly friendly? Consider the spacing of your buttons, the size of the text, and any other navigational or organizational elements that might be inconvenient in a responsive design. Also, look at how your site may change when viewed on a desktop, tablet, and various types of smartphones.
Web (Front-End) Design Tips
1. Consider the fold
On a website, the fold is considered the bottom of the screen — where your page would “fold” if it were a physical item, like a newspaper. The most important information on a websites should always be placed “above the fold” (like in newspapers) so a visitor doesn’t have to scroll down to see it.
2. Leverage white space to draw focus
In the case of web design, less is often more. With lots of information to share with visitors, it can be tempting to clutter it all above the fold so folks see it right away. But less cluttered websites are easier to read, navigate, and digest. Keep your visitors on your website by putting plenty of white space around your content; it’ll be easier for them to focus on reading and understanding your content.
3. Use color to guide action
Color psychology plays a big role in marketing. Without us even knowing it, certain colors can encourage us to do certain things, such as click a button or continue on to the next page of a web form. Use colors to guide the same types of action on your website. Make all of your CTAs a bold color to help them stand out.
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4. Avoid generic stock images
There are lots of ways to use images in your marketing, but the one method to avoid is using generic stock images. Generic, cheesy stock images make a brand seem lazy and disengaged with their buyer persona. The images on your website should be a representation of your audience, and if you can’t capture your actual audience, you should work hard to find stock images that do. Tip: One great way to collect audience images is by running a user-generated content (UGC) campaign.
Download our free guide to growth-driven web design for even more web design tips.
Time to Design
Design comes in all shapes and sizes … literally. From websites to print graphics to office space design, it plays a major role in marketing our businesses and brands. Even if you don’t consider yourself a designer, we encourage you to become more familiar with the elements and types of design. You never know when you may have to consult on a project or whip up a design of your own.

Content marketing has seen a lot of changes during the past few years.
Many of these changes can be attributed to the rapidly evolving search landscape as well as a huge shift in the way people are actually discovering content.
New, more sophisticated search algorithms, changes in how people use search engines, and new ways that marketers go about actually developing their content are just a few of the contributing factors and outcomes.
All that said, many marketers still experience the same pain points that were commonplace more than five years ago:

“I struggle to measure the ROI of the content I create.”
We create great content, but we still don’t seem to rank high in Google for our target keywords.”
“So, I’ve done my keyword research. Now what?”

As a response to these problems — specifically the second one — a lot of marketers will create more and more content. Unfortunately, creating larger volumes of the same underperforming content will often result in the same underwhelming results — just at a greater expense.
In fact, adding more content to a poor existing site architecture can make it even harder for Google to find and rank your content. That’s not a situation any marketer wants to find themselves in.
The answer to these problems spans way beyond the number of blog posts being pushed out each week; the real problem lies in the way that most content strategies are being developed and organized.
SEO is evolving, and marketers need to change with it.
Fortunately, there are ways to overcome these obstacles and drive high-performing results for your marketing team.
Here, we’ll discuss the changing state of search and how marketers can keep up. Continue reading this page or use the links below to jump to a specific section.

Search Engines are Changing
Before we jump into solutions for finding success in the changing world of content marketing, let’s dive a bit deeper into the driving forces behind that change.
First, we need to chat about search engines. Updates to how search engines process and evaluate content have created drastic changes in recent years for SEO. As a result, the old metrics of success aren’t as reliable as they once were.
For example, one of the ways in which content producers evaluate the performance of content is by looking at keyword rankings within the search engines. However, there’s been a lot of debate around the actual credibility of keyword rankings as a metric, and the reason for this largely stems from the fact that rank changes depending on context.
To put it simply, depending on how and where you’re searching from, you’ll see different search results, which makes it difficult to evaluate success based on keyword rankings alone.

A simple search for the term “where to eat pizza” illustrates this perfectly. If you’re searching for this query from Boston, you’ll receive a completely different set of results compared to someone searching in San Francisco. In fact, the results page for this query probably has thousands of different variations at any one moment in time.
With this in mind, how do you accurately determine your ranking for this keyword?
Outside of keyword ranking problems, the search engines have also been dictating how content should be structured, most notably with the increased appearance of featured snippets.

Google has been rolling out more and more featured snippets within the search results — one 2017 study found that of 1.4 million queries, 30% showed a featured snippet. These numbers have likely increased since then.
These boxes try to answer the question that the searcher has without them needing to navigate through to the content.

The reality is that content ranking within the featured snippet section often gets a much greater share of the traffic for the given query when compared to non-featured snippet SERPs.
Publishers now have to restructure their content to try and appear within these featured snippets, of which Wikipedia reigns supreme — owning an estimated 11.2% of all featured snippets.
On a more general level, Google in particular has been making big investments in machine learning and has introduced RankBrain into the core algorithm it uses to index and rank content. Ultimately, RankBrain enables Google to better understand the intent behind specific queries without the search query explicitly stating them — all with the goal of providing more relevant results to the searcher.
This brings us to the next big change in search: the searcher.

How People Search
More significant than the way in which search engines themselves are evolving is the way that searchers are communicating with search engines.
Amplified by the rise of mobile and voice search, queries have become more and more conversational. A few years ago many people entered fragmented terms into search engines. Now, it’s more common for people to ask complex questions using full sentences. Google’s updates over the past two to three years have focused on understanding these types of queries better through natural language processing, most notably with the rollout of Hummingbird in 2013.
The introduction of this new search algorithm, which began analyzing phrases instead of solely relying on keywords, marked a major switch for the search giant from keyword to topic-focused SEO. In 2016, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that one out of five queries on its mobile app and on Android devices were voice searches. Based on these new developments, the increasing importance of search topics shows no signs of slowing.
The takeaway here for content marketers? The traditional view of “keywords” in search has changed. Where a few years ago there were maybe 10-20 “big keywords” that would be sought after for ranking within a topic, there are now hundreds or thousands of long-tail variations that are regularly searched within a topic and change based on location. Simply dominating a few words is no longer enough to produce successful results.

Content Strategy in 2021 and Beyond
Considering the advancements in the ways that both the search engines and searchers are evolving, there needs to be a shift in the way marketers determine their content strategy — especially when focused on driving organic search.
The way we approach this at HubSpot is to look at our visibility across a topic, as opposed to a specific keyword. By organizing content within topic clusters instead of individual disjointed posts, we’re able to capture a large amount of search traffic across an ever-increasing pool of relevant keywords. This also allows us to align our brand with several recognizable core topics. Embracing the topic cluster model has allowed us to completely transform how we create and organize our content.

A great example of this is around “inbound sales,” an area that we’ve been covering a lot. You can see from Google’s autocomplete section that there are a number of big links to HubSpot — with our Inbound Sales Day, Certification, and Methodology being the top three, as well as a direct mention of the HubSpot brand.
We’ve managed to align our brand with topics that directly relate to our buyer personas, and as a result of this topic cluster model, we generate millions of relevant visits to our web properties.

What’s a topic cluster?
The basic premise behind building a topic cluster content program is to enable a deeper coverage across a range of core topic areas, while creating an efficient information architecture in the process.
You’re probably thinking, “This sounds difficult to implement? How can I start using this strategy for my own content marketing?” Don’t worry, it sounds more complicated than it really is.
In simpler terms, a pillar page is a broad overview of a specific topic. You can think of it like a summary or road map. We built pillar pages for each of our major focus areas. Linking into the pillar content is a range of content that covers individual, more specific subtopics, otherwise known as cluster content. Each cluster topic page for the pillar focuses on providing more detail for a specific long-tail keyword related to the main topic. The pillar links to each cluster page and each cluster page links back to the pillar with the same hyperlinked keyword.
The benefit of this model, in addition to organizing your site architecture, is that one high performing cluster page can elevate search rankings for all the other pages linked to the same pillar.

By aligning sets of web pages this way into topic clusters, you can manage the internal linking between each page more efficiently, boost your search ranking, and also provide a better user experience for visitors.

Building a solid information architecture is incredibly important for ranking well in organic search across a broad topic area. Creating hyper-focused clusters of content geared around a specific topic will not only help solve for that, but also enable you to keep focused on creating content that your target audience actually cares about. That means higher efficiency for your search marketing and less time wasted on producing repetitive content that doesn’t help advance your search goals.
The typical way to structure a topic cluster of content, which we outlined earlier, is with one larger piece of content that broadly covers the core topic, otherwise known as pillar content. Here’s an example to illustrate this:
 
In the above example, the core topic is “workout routines.” Each of the surrounding subtopics focuses on a more specific branch of the core topic, for example, “workout routines to build lean muscle.”
The role of the pillar content is to cover the core topic broadly while also converting visitors into leads (or whatever your conversion goal is). The cluster organization also signals to search engines that the content has more in depth information on the topic, in turn giving your pillar page a higher level of authority on the topic while gaining higher search placement from orderly linking.
The beauty of this model is that you can spend a lot more time optimizing your pillar content for conversions and your cluster content for traffic. This saves a lot of time compared to the traditional model of optimizing each individual post. It also makes it easier for you to give a better user experience while sending a positive signals to the search engines with this site architecture.
For example, the typical organization of a blog may look like the below, with lots of overlapping and repetitive posts on a few focus topics:

A blog using topic clusters would look like this, with multiple posts all linking back to their respective pillar pages for each core topic:
An example of pillar content that we’ve produced at HubSpot would be our Blog Topic Generator tool.

This pillar content brings in a substantial amount of new leads every month and gets a considerable amount of traffic. Tools work particularly well for pillar content because they’re often evergreen content and get shared a lot.
We’ve built out a wide range of cluster content that ties into specific subtopics. An example of this would be our blog post titled, “How to Think Up a Year’s Worth of Blog Post Topics in an Hour,” which has an internal link pointing to the Blog Topic Generator tool. For more inspiration, check out these great pillar page examples.
This content will drive traffic to the pillar content and push positive link signals to the search engines in the process, increasing both the organic search visibility and leads generated from the overall topic cluster.

How to Create a Topic Cluster Plan
Before you get started creating new topic clusters of your own it’s important to determine if this is the right approach for your site. You can figure this out by asking yourself three simple questions outlined in the chart below.

Does the topic you want to rank for have enough search volume to be worth the time and effort?
Do you already have content covering the topic? If so, you may be better off using what you have and adding internal links.
Is the topic something you want to cover in detail? If you’ve made it this far and the answer is “yes”,  you can start creating your own topic cluster.

When it comes to actually mapping out topic clusters, there’s a general process that works particularly well. Follow these steps to create your own pillar page:

Map out 5-10 of the core problems that your buyer persona has (use surveys, run interviews, and do some secondary research within online communities).
Group each of the problems into broad topic areas.
Build out each of the core topic with subtopics using keyword research.
Map out content ideas that align with each of the core topics and corresponding subtopics.
Validate each idea with industry and competitive research.
Create, measure, and refine.

This is a simple overview but should help you to begin to prioritize content ideation and production. Following this process will help you to structure your editorial calendar for the topic cluster content model.
But how do you figure out what content to focus on? This is where keyword research comes into play. Keyword research is a helpful way to determine what content your target audience already is looking for so you can reach them in a way that is relevant and impactful to them.
To get started, create a list of broad topics that are important to your business. Then fill in each topic with potential keywords you think your audience will search for. It’s better to not self-edit during this stage and write out as many keywords as you can think of. For example, if your main topic is Instagram marketing, your subtopics might include Instagram business accounts, Instagram captions, Instagram hashtags, and Instagram analytics.
Once you have your list, search for these terms or use a tool such as Ubersuggest to find related keywords and terms you may not have initially included in your list. Make sure you have a mix of long-tail and short-tail keywords.
Now that you’ve finalized your keyword list, see how your competitors rank for each of them using a service like SEMRush. This will allow you to find gaps in their search strategy as well as single out important words and phrases to aim for in the pillar content you create. After all of those steps are complete, use Google’s Keyword Planner or HubSpot’s keywords tool to narrow down the keyword list.
Once you’ve developed your core topic and cluster content, create a tracking document to keep track of your existing content and cluster strategy. Tracking documents can help organize your clustering process to make sure all of your content has been linked correctly. For HubSpot customers, you can automate clustering using HubSpot’s content strategy tool.

 

How to Measure the Success of Your Topic Cluster

You’re probably wondering, “how do I measure the success of a piece of content?”
The answer to this question is complicated because, for the most part, it’s not a great idea to evaluate the success of your campaign on a content-by-content basis. Just looking at the success of one blog post is difficult at the best of times, but more often than not, the definition of success is too narrow to account for indirect benefits that it has.
A good example of this would be with more brand-driven content. The focus here isn’t around generating sales or even capturing email addresses, but instead it can be around elevating the brand, attracting new talent, or even earning backlinks or press coverage.

If we based the success of our “Our Story” page on the number of leads it generated, it would appear to be performing terribly. However, this page has over 5,000 backlinks from external websites and gets a huge amount of traffic from potential hires looking to join our company.
Luckily, this problem can be solved by evaluating success on a topic cluster level instead.
Measuring the entire topic cluster against all of your core business metrics will enable you to include residual benefits coming from content that doesn’t align with direct conversion goals. Let’s say one of your blog posts is a study with a bunch of original data that gets thousands of backlinks — this page will pass on authority across all the pages in the topic cluster and grow the search visibility across the cluster. That’s difficult to measure in isolation, but can be done on a topic level.
Using this framework for measurement, you’ll be able to understand the following:

Which topics perform better at driving traffic to your web properties?
Which topics earn you the most leads?
Which topics drive the most revenue to the business?
Which topics earn the most backlinks/coverage?

Search Engines Aren’t Searching for Your Content, People Are

What this all works towards is ensuring that you’re actually creating content that people want to see, as opposed to content that’s designed specifically for the search engines. Don’t forget, search engines are pretty smart. In most cases, they don’t require you to ever mention a specific keyword in the copy of your content to understand that it’s relevant.
Shifting your focus to building content on a keyword-by-keyword basis and moving to owning topics is going to help you create better content, increase your visibility in the search engines, and provide a more positive experience for visitors.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The first ecommerce sale was made in 1994 … and can you guess what it was?
It was a Sting CD.
Dan Kohn, a 21-year-old who ran a website called NetMarket, sold Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales CD to a friend who purchased it with his credit card for $12.48 plus shipping costs. These exchanges are what we know as ecommerce today: Sales of services and goods made through the internet.

Ecommerce has come a long way since 1994, and it’s growing as more shoppers turn to devices and computers as the primary tools for discovering and buying new products.
Let’s take a deeper look at what ecommerce is and the growth trends around it, as well as some basic getting started tips.

Guide to Ecommerce
In this section, we’ll review the many benefits of ecommerce, major ecommerce trends, types of ecommerce, and sales tax. 
Benefits of Ecommerce
Ecommerce is not a trend, and it isn’t going away any time soon. Why? Selling goods and services on the internet highly benefits both the seller and the buyer.

Benefits to the buyer:

Convenience
Quicker and easier transactions
Informed purchasing decisions
Easier price and product comparisons
Improved delivery process
Targeted communication

Benefits to the seller:

Lower overhead costs due to the elimination of brick and mortar locations
The ability to sell goods around-the-clock (versus traditional store hours)
Ability to reach customers beyond geographical location
More control over the selling process and tracking, especially if there’s one portal that handles point-of-sale (POS)
Greater visibility to potential customers via SEO
More control over personnel costs and inventory management

Ecommerce Trends
The biggest trend around ecommerce right now is growth — and that growth extends far and wide.
1. U.S. Ecommerce Growth
Ecommerce has seen tremendous growth within the U.S. in the last 10 years. In fact, data from the U.S. Department of Commerce shows that in 2017, U.S. ecommerce sales grew faster than it had since 2011 and that it represented 49% of the growth in total retail sales. That growth trend isn’t slowing down, either. Statista data predicts that U.S. online retail sales of physical goods are projected to reach close to $476.5 billion in 2024.
2. Global Ecommerce Growth
Global ecommerce is rapidly growing, too. Emarketer trend data indicates that retail ecommerce sales may exceed $4.058 trillion by as soon as 2020. As more shoppers look for products across borders and from international marketplaces, an uptick in ecommerce sales is evident around the globe.
3. Ecommerce Growth by Category
ComScore data indicates there are a few particular industries seeing rapid change in regard to retail ecommerce growth. Jewelry and watches was at the top of the growth chart (as of 2016) with 39% growth, followed by furniture, appliances, and equipment (26%), and video games/accessories (24%).
Lastly, let’s review the three types of ecommerce. 

There are three classifications of ecommerce. The classification depends on who is selling to who.
1. Business to Business (B2B)
Goods and services are sold from one company to another. For example, HubSpot provides products to other companies that are looking to grow better.
2. Business to Consumer (B2C)
A business sells to a customer. This is one of the most common types of ecommerce. An example would be an online clothing store or the online segment of some popular brick and mortar business, like Walmart or Target.
3. Consumer to Consumer (C2C)
As you may have guessed — consumers sell directly to consumer via online marketplaces. Craigslist, Ebay, and Amazon are all examples of C2C ecommerce.
Sales Tax for Your Online Store
Now, you might be worried about how sales tax should be incorporated into your online sales. Let’s look at a state-by-state breakdown of sales tax. There are five states that do not currently collect sales tax: Delaware, Oregon, Montana, New Hampshire, and Alaska.
Sales Tax by State

State
Tax Rate

Alabama
4.00%

Alaska
0.00%

Arizona
5.60%

Arkansas
6.50%

California
7.25%

Colorado
2.90%

Connecticut
6.35%

Delaware
0.00%

Florida
6.00%

Georgia
4.00%

Hawaii
4.00%

Idaho
6.00%

Illinois
6.25%

Indiana
7.00%

Iowa
6.00%

Kansas
6.50%

Kentucky
6.00%

Louisiana
5.00%

Maine
5.50%

Maryland
6.00%

Massachusetts
6.25%

Michigan
6.00%

Minnesota
6.875%

Mississippi
7.00%

Missouri
4.225%

Montana
0.00%

Nebraska
5.50%

Nevada
6.85%

New Hampshire
0.00%

New Jersey
6.625%

New Mexico
5.125%

New York
4.00%

North Carolina
4.75%

North Dakota
5.00%

Ohio
5.75%

Oklahoma
4.50%

Oregon
0.00%

Pennsylvania
6.00%

Rhode Island
7.00%

South Carolina
6.00%

South Dakota
4.50%

Tennessee
7.00%

Texas
6.25%

Utah
5.95%

Vermont
6.00%

Virginia
5.30%

Washington
6.50%

West Virginia
6.00%

Wisconsin
5.00%

Wyoming
4.00%

D.C.
5.75%

Source: Based on 2018 Data. Refer to State’s Department of Revenue for up-to-date rates.
Now that we’ve reviewed some ecommerce basics, let’s review the steps you should consider following if you’re looking to launch an online business. 

While you’re working through the steps above and establishing your online store, keep the following best practices for ecommerce marketing and websites in mind.

Ecommerce Marketing Best Practices
What do you need to know about marketing for an ecommerce business? Here are a few best practices that can help jumpstart your efforts.
1. Test social media ads.
With 1.18 billion daily active users, Facebook has a huge audience that can be tapped. Consider targeting your audience with social media posts and videos and experiment to see what works best and drives sales and revenue.
2. Collect email addresses and stay in touch.
Recent data shows that three-quarters of companies agree that email marketing offers “excellent” to “good” ROI. By collecting email addresses on-site and asking customers to opt-in to future communications from you, you can give visitors a reason to keep coming back to your ecommerce site again and again via offers, sales, VIP discounts, and more.
3. Use personalization to tailor offers/messaging.
Personalization is more important than ever for online shoppers. In fact, research shows 74% of online consumers get frustrated with websites when offers, ads, and promotions appear that have nothing to do with their interests.
Make sure you’re leveraging personalized product suggestions, personalizing your email marketing efforts, and generally striving to make each customer feel like you’re speaking only to him or her.
4. Gather feedback via surveys.
The best way to keep a finger on the pulse of what your audience wants is to ask them. Leverage online surveys to gather feedback on everything from product to your marketing efforts to customer service interactions.
5. Choose ecommerce software that helps you meet your needs and goals. 
You may be wondering how to make sure you choose the right ecommerce software for your specific business. Here are some tips. 
How to Choose the Best Ecommerce Software
When searching for the best ecommerce platform and software — such as an ecommerce website builder —to meet your needs, there are many factors to consider. Look for:

Themes and customization abilities: You should be able to customize ready-made themes that allow you to personalize and add company branding.

Domain name customization: Make sure you can get a custom domain name and URL (so you don’t have to include the platform’s name in your website URL).

Expert, 24/7 support: Take the time to explore the platform’s service in detail. If an emergency crops up down the road, you want to be sure you’ll have fast, reliable support at a moment’s notice.

Flexible payment options: Customers want to pay in a variety of ways today — from credit cards to digital wallets and beyond. Look for an ecommerce software solution that is flexible enough to support many different secure payment options.

Multiple language abilities: Your customers may be coming from all over the world, so you need to be able to speak their language. It’s a good idea to work with a tool that supports many different languages.

6. Keep best practices for your website in mind.
When you’re ready to build an inbound ecommerce website, there are a few best practices to keep in mind that will help you get results out of your time and effort.
Select and customize a mobile-friendly theme.
BrightEdge data shows that more than half (57%) of web traffic now comes from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets — which means it’s essential to use a mobile-friendly theme when building your ecommerce website.
On ecommerce platforms, you can browse a selection of free and premium themes (all of which are mobile-optimized) and find one that’s best suited for your needs. Plus: From there, you can customize the templated website theme. By adding your color scheme and branding elements (like your logo), you can make your ecommerce website look 100% custom-made.
Take a look at this Shopify template example:

Source
Optimize for the web.
Web optimization encompasses a wide range of strategies and tactics that help convert more site visitors into customers, but let’s focus on two in particular:

Write enticing product descriptions. Use persuasive copywriting triggers to make your product descriptions sell. That means tapping into psychological tactics like fear of missing out, reciprocity, exclusivity, and more — all of which encourage site visitors to buy (and to buy NOW).

Add beautiful product images. When it comes to marketing, visuals are extremely important — especially for online buyers who can’t see or touch products before making a purchase. Along with static product images, add context by incorporating images of models using the product and videos that give customers a 360-degree view.

Create a stellar customer experience.
Research indicates that customer experience will overtake price and product as the primary brand differentiator for sales by 2020. This means it’s important to focus on creating an impressive customer experience across all of your brand’s various touchpoints.
A few ideas to get you started:

Add a FAQ page. Answering frequently asked questions on your ecommerce website helps potential customers quickly and easily find the information they need to complete a purchase.

Reduce image sizes for quick load times. Survey data shows more than half of website visitors expect a page to load in less than two seconds. At more than three seconds, they leave the page (and aren’t likely to return.) Reduce the size of your on-site images so it loads quickly.

Leverage user-generated content. Including user-generated content (think customer reviews, images from social media, and testimonials) on your ecommerce site means adding elements of social proof — which can improve the overall buying experience for customers.

Next, let’s cover the ways in which you can work to increase your ecommerce sales. 

How to Increase Ecommerce Sales
Ecommerce sales in the U.S. alone gross $130 billion per quarter, which is nearly 10 percent of all retail sales (that number is increasing globally as well). That’s a lot of people looking for online products and services.
If you’re building an ecommerce business, you need to devise a strategy to increase sales and get a piece of that pie. You won’t have an ecommerce business without customers. So, consider this one of the most important sections in this article. Let’s cover a few ways that you can increase your ecommerce sales.
1. Hook prospects in the consideration stage.
If you only try to reach prospective buyers in their decision stage, you’re too late. Conversely, if you provide relevant content in the awareness stage and fail to follow-up, you risk them forgetting about you as they move along the buyer’s journey.
It’s also important to remember that people go through buying cycles and can move back and forth between stages before they commit to a product or service. Once you hook a prospect with your content keep them engaged and send them content that speaks to their present stage. Your goal should be to get on their short-list of potential purchases.
2. Use paid targeting to outrank your competitors.
There’s a reason why sites like Google Shopping are so lucrative — they work. Search engines return billions of results daily, and many of those results are for products and services just like yours. The problem is the competition. When done right, paid advertising can position your ecommerce store in front of the right audience and ahead of your competition.
3. Get (or give) some information before they leave your site.
Not everyone who visits your ecommerce store is ready to buy — engage them anyway. Think about reasons why someone would visit and bounce off a page (maybe they’re considering options or they find your product too expensive or they want to make a more informed decision).
Whatever the reason, your job is to provide them with something that will keep you top of mind as they continue their search. Ideally, you would gather some lead information but at a minimum provide them something useful that can assist them as they go about their search.
4. Invest in re-engaging shopping cart abandoners.
Shopping cart abandonment is inevitable but not irrevocable. Sometimes users just need a little nudge to get back to their cart either through remarketing or a simple email reminder. Before you reach out though, make sure to address some of the common reasons why prospects abandon their shopping carts in the first place.
5. Remember to integrate social.
Don’t underestimate the power of social media when it comes to online sales. Instagram reports that 60% of people find products on social, which makes sense with the integration of shoppable content. Meet your potential customers where they are and remove friction from the buying process by leading them seamlessly to a sale.

Examples of Inspiring Shopify Ecommerce Stores
Not sure what your ecommerce store should look like? Here are a few examples of inspiring stores to help get your creative wheels turning.
1. Tattly

Because Tattly offers a product that’s highly visual in nature, they’ve opted for a theme that’s photo-centric. This lets new visitors quickly get acquainted with the product offering and provides a few different paths for deeper product exploration, too.
2. Graydon Skincare

Graydon Skincare uses a website layout with a large rotating header image that helps communicate a feeling around the brand and product. The images feature different products sold by the brand, and the simple top navigation makes it easy for customers to quickly find what they’re looking for.
3. 18Waits

18Waits also uses large rotating photos on the home page of their ecommerce store — but they sometimes integrate them with promotional offers. This helps shoppers visualize themselves wearing the product, while also enticing them to check out a special sale going on, too. Overall, the theme they’ve used is fairly minimal, which puts all the focus on the photography.
4. Easy Tiger

Speaking of minimal … Easy Tiger takes minimal design to the extreme. With a clean white background and no distracting design elements, all the focus is on their products. The red text also pops from the screen, making it easy to read and consume.
5. BluKicks

BluKicks also uses an image-centric approach on their homepage with quick navigation to product types. The lifestyle-type images they spotlight here communicate a certain feeling to shoppers — and ups the beachy charm of their product.
The Future of Ecommerce
Sales tax is a hot topic in the news right now — and the Supreme Court may be making changes to the policies for ecommerce retailers. Be sure to stay up-to-date on the latest laws and regulations.
The future of ecommerce is a bright one, and with the right strategy and tools, launching an online business can be easier than you ever imagined. Tap into the audience of engaged online shoppers and get your piece of the growing ecommerce pie.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.