Why ecommerce is now more important than ever
April 2, 2020

As we are currently witnessing a historical moment and global pandemic in the form of COVID-19, industries, sectors and businesses are being disrupted around the world. With entire countries in lockdown and people advised to stay and work from home, the retail landscape is looking pretty grim as even more people opt for online shopping.

As social distancing becomes the norm, ecommerce is more critical than ever. The ability for retailers to embrace the technology, leverage online customer behaviour and utilise digital marketing will help them survive and thrive through what is looking like an inevitable recession.

In this post, we will look at what makes an effective ecommerce site as well as digital marketing channels that can help you through the turbulent times ahead.

Leveraging eCommerce

Small to medium-sized businesses may need to re-think their go-to-market channels due to the coronavirus. Ecommerce businesses, in many sectors, are experiencing considerable increases in demand. Online food delivery is booming as fear sets in and people order-in instead of eat-out or risk going to the supermarket and becoming infected. With restaurants being forced to offer take-out only, adaptation is crucial for survival. Smaller players who don't already have an ecommerce set-up might be thinking about launching an ecommerce branch to reach customers who are afraid to go in-store.

But where there is fear and uncertainty, there is always opportunity. Life does still go on. But there is undoubtedly an opportunity to use digital technologies to allow staff to keep working, selling and interacting with customers online. Remote working was already on the rise, and I believe after COVID-19 has blown over working remotely will become even more the norm.

Furthermore, online shopping has already taken preference over the brick and mortar stores for most shoppers. Now, with COVID-19 setting in, the choice for online shopping will dominate. It's time to adapt.

If you are looking to start an ecommerce site or revise your ecommerce advertising strategy, there are several factors to consider. A quality digital agency or web developer can help design and optimise your ecommerce site to function optimally. 

Conversion optimised
Streamline the sales funnel by providing a seamless journey for your customers. A good web designer can apply the principles of psychology to improve conversion. It's possible to condition your users to a "buying experience". The major ecommerce players spend millions & millions researching the psychology behind their websites.

User experience (UX) designed
You will want a clean and beautiful digital end-user experience for your customer journey. Furthermore, a custom ecommerce design that reflects your unique brand identity and point-of-difference will help you stand out from your competitors.

Mobile Responsive eCommerce
With more people shopping online on their mobile phone than on a computer nowadays, it is essential to carry that great UX over to mobile. Provide a clean and seamless mobile experience of your customers to shop from anywhere and anytime on their phone.

A customer experience (CX) they love
By designing your ecommerce store with your customer's experience in mind, you are providing them with something they love. As a result, you will find this reduces churn, creates positive word of mouth and builds a loyal customer base who enjoy engaging with your brand.

When developing ecommerce websites, every detail matters to help boost your revenue. From site structure & navigation, page-load speed and the mobile experience, each aspect will impact the end-user experience and, consequently, the sales generated. Even details like fonts, colour schemes, and location of calls-to-action have an impact on your revenue.

Engage across channels
There are also areas to engage homebound workers and customers across channels. With people staying home, their in-store touch points reduce, so knowing how to capitalise on this behaviour by using digital channels to communicate is vital. You can work with digital agencies to develop strategies around communicating with your target customer through online channels, enabling both a great customer experience and sales opportunities.

A good digital agency will help you use social media to communicate information such as your opening hours and supply. Moreover, by investing in paid advertising you can connect with users just at the time they're searching for products and services like yours.

Ecommerce marketing

There are a range of marketing options to get your products in front of your target customers.

Google Ads (PPC)
Appearing in organic search results is helpful but can be difficult to attain, especially if you’re brand new or in a competitive market. If you need to be seen instantly, investing in paid advertising will help to get your products and services in front of your target audience at just the moment they are searching for them.

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is where you pay a small fee each time one of your ads is clicked in the search results. Essentially, you are "buying" clicks to your website, as opposed to getting those visits organically (SEO). Search engine advertising (SEM) is one of the most popular forms of advertising through Google and Bing ads. There are a range of ways you can do this with Google, including Google Search Campaigns and Google Shopping Campaigns. 

Facebook Ads
Another form of paid advertising with a high ROI is Facebook Ads (which also includes Instagram Ads). Like Google, Facebook's reach is extensive, with over an astonishing one billion people having a Facebook account around the world. It makes sense then, to target your product or service to the right audience through Facebook.

Facebook also allows you to get your ads in front of the right audience at the right time. With metrics such as age group, location, and even interests, you can narrow down your ads to a specific target audience to help you get the best ROI.

Media plays a vital role in Facebook ads. It is proven that readers respond better to ads with an image or video to accompany the text. As for the copy, you’re able to tell a story about your brand, products and services. Doing this in a compelling way which entices further action can be hard as users are usually on their mobile devices and not specifically looking for your products and services when they see your ads. In saying that though, they can be extremely effective when set up right and constantly being monitored and adjusted based on the response you receive. 

Management vs DIY
A quality digital agency knows how to identify your target market and understand their web browsing behaviour. They design ad campaigns that optimised for specific platforms, including Facebook and Google Ads.

It's worth investing in a digital agency who will design your ads, write compelling copy and ensure that there is a seamless flow of traffic to your ecommerce site. They will continually test and refine your ads, working towards optimal conversion optimisation. Furthermore, a digital agency will track pixels and retarget ads so that visitors are reminded of your business as they journey through the internet.

Managing your own campaigns might seem easy at first, however there are a range of campaign settings that you need to have a strong understanding of in order to create campaigns that will achieve your goals. Furthermore, there can be a lot of technical knowledge required to connect platforms and integrate your product catalogs. Beyond initial set up, proper data analysis and interpretation is required in order to optimise and get a strong ROI from your campaigns. Not only do you need the knowledge and skills to do all this, but you also need to dedicate time each week to review and adjust your campaigns.

Demonstrate full transparency
As we know, trust is an essential factor that today's consumers look for in a brand. When it comes to coronavirus, full transparency around customer frustrations and fears will further enhance your brand's reputation and foster customer loyalty.

Be open about the coronavirus protections you're actively putting in place. Moreover, consider training your team on handling any COVID-19 enquiries with appropriate sensitivity.

To wrap it up

There are many factors to consider when setting up and managing an ecommerce store that looks great and converts. Design is crucial, but beyond that you need a marketing strategy that will target the right audience, obtain site traffic and convert that traffic into customers. If you need any help with your ecommerce strategy, get in touch to chat to one of our directors today.

About PupDigital

PupDigital have your digital marketing needs covered. From online advertising to website design, we can help. Based in Canberra, servicing the world with quality, down to earth digital marketing services.

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The Client AGA Air Conditioning is a Canberra-based heating and cooling specialist delivering residential and commercial installation, servicing and maintenance across the ACT. AGA had built a strong reputation through quality workmanship, referrals and customer service. What it needed was a digital and acquisition sy stem that matched the standard of the business and its growth ambitions, one built to support serious, sustained investment rather than one-off campaign spend. PupDigital was engaged in a multi-year partnership to bring the website, conversion tracking and paid media strategy together into a single, connected acquisition system. The Challenge AGA was already a trusted local provider, but its website and advertising weren't working together as one system. The site needed to better communicate the quality of the business and give prospective customers a clearer path to enquire. At the same time, the advertising account needed to become far more commercially disciplined. Heating and cooling demand shifts significantly through the year, and customer intent moves quickly between installation, servicing, evaporative cooling and gas heating, each with different commercial value. Residential and commercial enquiries needed to be treated differently, and the business's own capacity to take on work had to be factored into how aggressively the account was scaled. It's the kind of complexity we see all the time working with trades, services, and building and construction businesses. It's genuinely where we do our best work. A broad, static campaign was never going to cut it here. The goal wasn't more traffic, it was a system that turned demand into real, valuable enquiries, built to scale as the business did. Our Strategic Approach 1. Rebuild the Conversion Experience The first priority was improving what happened after someone clicked an ad. PupDigital designed and developed a new website that better reflected AGA's positioning and made its services easier to understand, with: Clearer service pathways for residential and commercial customers Improved mobile usability and more direct calls to action Tighter alignment between ad campaigns and the landing pages they led to Simplified enquiry journeys The website was built as part of the acquisition strategy, not a separate branding exercise. Every campaign needed to send customers to a page that matched their intent and made the next step obvious. 2. Improve the Quality of the Data Better optimisation depends on measuring the right things. PupDigital strengthened conversion tracking across the site and ad account, including enquiry forms and tracked phone calls, and critically, stopped treating every conversion as equal. AGA's feedback made clear that phone calls often represented stronger opportunities than lower-intent web actions. Tracking and optimisation were refined accordingly, shifting the strategy away from simply increasing reported conversions and towards improving the quality of the enquiries being generated, the metric that actually matters to a business owner's bottom line. 3. Structure Campaigns Around Demand and Commercial Value Rather than one broad, always-on campaign, PupDigital structured the account around AGA's core service categories and how demand moved seasonally, giving granular control over which services were promoted, how budget was allocated, and the messaging and landing pages each audience saw. This meant investment could be increased where strong opportunities existed, pulled back where intent was weaker, and kept continuously aligned with the work AGA actually wanted to win, not just the work that was easiest to generate leads for. Scaling Investment With Confidence As performance and enquiry consistency improved, PupDigital progressively scaled AGA's monthly ad investment, growing it 300% over the course of the partnership. This wasn't a case of increasing spend and hoping volume followed. Every scaling decision was informed by conversion performance, search demand, lead quality feedback, seasonal opportunity, and AGA's real capacity to service new work. Growth in ad spend only compounds when the wider system, website, tracking and campaign structure, can convert that investment efficiently. Building that system first is what allowed AGA to keep increasing investment with confidence, rather than second-guessing where the budget was going. The Results Following the website launch in May 2025, AGA's Google Ads performance improved substantially against the preceding period: Conversions up 14% 18.71% conversion rate, a 77% improvement Impressions up 22% Monthly ad investment scaled 300% across the partnership The standout result was conversion rate, not raw traffic volume. The campaigns didn't need to chase the largest possible audience. They became more focused on reaching people actively searching for AGA's services and directing them into a stronger website experience. The result was a materially higher percentage of visitors taking meaningful action, a more efficient acquisition system, not just a busier one. Broader Business Growth: A Harvey Norman Commercial Contract Throughout the partnership, AGA continued expanding its residential and commercial workload, including securing a significant commercial contract with Harvey Norman Commercial, alongside a growing volume of rough-in and fit-off work. 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The Client AGA Air Conditioning is a Canberra-based heating and cooling specialist delivering residential and commercial installation, servicing and maintenance across the ACT. AGA had built a strong reputation through quality workmanship, referrals and customer service. What it needed was a digital and acquisition sy stem that matched the standard of the business and its growth ambitions, one built to support serious, sustained investment rather than one-off campaign spend. PupDigital was engaged in a multi-year partnership to bring the website, conversion tracking and paid media strategy together into a single, connected acquisition system. The Challenge AGA was already a trusted local provider, but its website and advertising weren't working together as one system. The site needed to better communicate the quality of the business and give prospective customers a clearer path to enquire. At the same time, the advertising account needed to become far more commercially disciplined. Heating and cooling demand shifts significantly through the year, and customer intent moves quickly between installation, servicing, evaporative cooling and gas heating, each with different commercial value. Residential and commercial enquiries needed to be treated differently, and the business's own capacity to take on work had to be factored into how aggressively the account was scaled. It's the kind of complexity we see all the time working with trades, services, and building and construction businesses. It's genuinely where we do our best work. A broad, static campaign was never going to cut it here. The goal wasn't more traffic, it was a system that turned demand into real, valuable enquiries, built to scale as the business did. Our Strategic Approach 1. Rebuild the Conversion Experience The first priority was improving what happened after someone clicked an ad. PupDigital designed and developed a new website that better reflected AGA's positioning and made its services easier to understand, with: Clearer service pathways for residential and commercial customers Improved mobile usability and more direct calls to action Tighter alignment between ad campaigns and the landing pages they led to Simplified enquiry journeys The website was built as part of the acquisition strategy, not a separate branding exercise. Every campaign needed to send customers to a page that matched their intent and made the next step obvious. 2. Improve the Quality of the Data Better optimisation depends on measuring the right things. PupDigital strengthened conversion tracking across the site and ad account, including enquiry forms and tracked phone calls, and critically, stopped treating every conversion as equal. AGA's feedback made clear that phone calls often represented stronger opportunities than lower-intent web actions. Tracking and optimisation were refined accordingly, shifting the strategy away from simply increasing reported conversions and towards improving the quality of the enquiries being generated, the metric that actually matters to a business owner's bottom line. 3. Structure Campaigns Around Demand and Commercial Value Rather than one broad, always-on campaign, PupDigital structured the account around AGA's core service categories and how demand moved seasonally, giving granular control over which services were promoted, how budget was allocated, and the messaging and landing pages each audience saw. This meant investment could be increased where strong opportunities existed, pulled back where intent was weaker, and kept continuously aligned with the work AGA actually wanted to win, not just the work that was easiest to generate leads for. Scaling Investment With Confidence As performance and enquiry consistency improved, PupDigital progressively scaled AGA's monthly ad investment, growing it 300% over the course of the partnership. This wasn't a case of increasing spend and hoping volume followed. Every scaling decision was informed by conversion performance, search demand, lead quality feedback, seasonal opportunity, and AGA's real capacity to service new work. Growth in ad spend only compounds when the wider system, website, tracking and campaign structure, can convert that investment efficiently. Building that system first is what allowed AGA to keep increasing investment with confidence, rather than second-guessing where the budget was going. The Results Following the website launch in May 2025, AGA's Google Ads performance improved substantially against the preceding period: Conversions up 14% 18.71% conversion rate, a 77% improvement Impressions up 22% Monthly ad investment scaled 300% across the partnership The standout result was conversion rate, not raw traffic volume. The campaigns didn't need to chase the largest possible audience. They became more focused on reaching people actively searching for AGA's services and directing them into a stronger website experience. The result was a materially higher percentage of visitors taking meaningful action, a more efficient acquisition system, not just a busier one. Broader Business Growth: A Harvey Norman Commercial Contract Throughout the partnership, AGA continued expanding its residential and commercial workload, including securing a significant commercial contract with Harvey Norman Commercial, alongside a growing volume of rough-in and fit-off work. Landing a contract like that comes down to the quality of AGA's work and reputation, not an ad campaign in isolation. What it does show is the broader trajectory of the business during our partnership, and the part PupDigital played in making sure AGA's digital presence could keep up with, and represent, that scale of growth. Winning commercial-level work like this means having a website and digital presence that looks and performs the part, and that's what we focused on throughout. The Business Impact The most valuable outcome wasn't any single campaign result or website metric. AGA moved from a fragmented digital setup to one connected system for attracting and converting customers, and gained: A website that reflects the quality and scale of the business Clear visibility over what's actually driving enquiries, not just what's easy to report Granular control over service-specific and seasonal demand Confidence to keep increasing investment because the system converts it efficiently A digital foundation that supported the business's move into larger commercial work This is the throughline in how PupDigital works with trades, services, and building and construction businesses: advertising is never managed in isolation. It's shaped by the type of work a business wants, the enquiries it actually values, and the capacity it has to deliver, because that alignment, not spend for its own sake, is what drives real business growth. Conclusion AGA Air Conditioning shows what's possible when a website, tracking and paid media strategy are treated as one connected system, working together, rather than three separate pieces bolted on side by side. PupDigital's role was never simply to drive more clicks. We rebuilt the customer journey, strengthened measurement around what actually matters, aligned campaigns with seasonal and commercial priorities, and built a structure capable of supporting significantly increased investment, investment AGA could scale with confidence because the underlying system was built to convert it. The result: a 77% improvement in Google Ads conversion rate, a 300% increase in monthly ad investment, and a stronger digital foundation that helped support AGA's move into larger-scale commercial work.
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