Ecommerce Article Index
Online Store New Year's Resolutions
This weekend everyone will be thinking about and possibly writing down things that they would like to do differently in the coming year. These New Year's Resolutions often include a fitness goal, a social goal, an education goal, or experience goals. These same goals for the coming year in your personal life can be applied to your business' website. Below I have outlined a few New Year's Resolutions for your online store's website for this coming year.
Push to Christmas - Emergency Preparedness
Cyber Monday is over, you have a little calm before the last-minute-Christmas-shopper storm. Now is the time to do your emergency preparedness. Getting ready for those frantic shoppers needing their orders on time and those customers who ordered and expected their order by the holidays is essential for making your business' holiday season finish smoothly. One of the best ways to do this is to let customers know approximately when they will receive their order.
Advertise Cyber Monday Deals with Post-Purchase Share ON SALE!
The post-purchase share to Facebook and Twitter enhancement is regularly $50, however if you "Like" LaurenHillsDesign.com on Facebook, you can receive 70% OFF this enhancement feature by using the coupon code "sharenow" at checkout. This coupon goes until Dec 1, 2011. You can encourage your customers to share their purchases with their friends and family by including coupon codes or sale announcements in the Facebook post or Twitter tweet. Advertise your Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales through post-purchase advertising.
Reward Your Tired and Weary Shoppers
By the time Cyber Monday rolls around you have some pretty exhausted and sleep deprived shoppers. They have not been able to get all the items that they wanted at local retailers, so they are turning to the internet to solve their gift giving problems. So show your tired shoppers some love by offering them free gifts or bonuses. They can purchase the gifts for their loved ones, then get a guilt-free bonus gift for themselves.
Post-Purchase Share On Facebook And Twitter
I have begun seeing messages on facebook and twitter from my friends such as "I just pre-ordered the new Amazon Kindle!" and "I just purchased this new phone case. You can save $10 on a new phone case using promo code 'fonekase'." Allowing your customers to advertise your products on their facebook and twitter accounts easily is a great way for you to get new customers, and it's free advertising.
Is Your Site Ready For Mobile Commerce? (blog)
Many top websites have optimized their website for mobile or have mobile pages. So many sites have done this that smart phone users are beginning to expect that sites will have a mobile version. Pinching to enlarge and squinting at the content is no longer acceptable for many smart phone users. So is your website ready?
Favorite Tips From American Express (blog)
On American Express's Open Forum blog they posted "30 Ways To Boost Sales Without Discounting." I have picked out my favorite tips for online ShopSite stores including future use coupons, upsell, features, customer reviews, reward levels.
How To Add A Tabbed Section On Your More Information Pages (blog)
Adding tabbed sections to your product more information page gives you the ability to display more information for the customer, in an organized fashion, without taking up too much room. Tabs give the customer a sense of the information that you provide right at the beginning, and make it so that the customer can skip right to the information that they want without scrolling through your product more information page to find where the information is.
Web Page Speed - How Does Your Site Rank? Part 1 (blog)
Yes, it is true that one of the factors on how your site ranks in Google is page speed, but it is only one factor of well over 100 factors. Some of the basics for making your page speed faster include caching, image sprites, and compressed files. I did a test on my own website to see how various factors affected my page speed according to Google's Page Speed Online: http://pagespeed.googlelabs.com/.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Getting Started
When you are designing your website, you'll want your pages to look good and you want to have a design that is specific to what you are selling and your target customers. You'll also want to take into consideration how you will be ranked by search engines. Building your website with search engines in mind is often more important than the visual appearance of your store. Below are some tips for both SEO, search engine optimization, and design tips for driving traffic to your website.
25 SEO Tips You Shouldn't Overlook (blog)
A blog list went through and numbered 30 different SEO tips for your website, and all of the tips were ones that would be listed in SEO 101. I was surprised at the number of responses to this post. There were many people who were really glad for this post. I thought to myself that these are things that people who own websites should absolutely be doing and that they probably are doing. However, I quickly realized that there are many people who may know some of these, but not think about others, and there may be some people who forget about some of these basics and need a reminder. Whatever the case may be, here is a list of all-purpose SEO tips for your website.
Websites Don't Work Sitting Down (blog)
Keep your site active, make it work a little. Slim down and trim up the excess fat and unnecessary code. Exercise the site's content and know what makes the site do better or what makes the site run smoother. Constantly check-up to make sure the entire site is functioning properly and that there are no broken links, missing images, or misaligned pages or elements. A happy healthy website will reflect to your customers.
Link Building With Other Similar Websites
Linking to other websites and having those websites link back to you is a great way to get ranked higher in search engines. In ShopSite's Keys To Seller Success they say the following about link building. "It is a very common practice for businesses to provide mutual links on their Web sites at no charge. Find other sites that your target customer would visit and offer to share links with non-competitors and their complementary sites. This simple agreement between businesses can bring a lot more traffic."
Increasing Conversion Rates In Your Online Store
Wonder why you are getting lots of traffic but not many sales? Click for some tools for increasing conversion rates in your store.
Streamline Your Checkout Process
There have been many studies done regarding why customers abandon their shopping carts. Here I have provided a list of tips from a few of those studies, as well as links to resources to improve your checkout process.
Website Hype, It's Infectious (blog)
Have you ever noticed that things that other people are excited about, you get excited about? When a small crowd of people starts causing noise and gathering tight, all the people within range are drawn to the small crowd. Everyone wants to see what the fuss is about. Everyone wants to be part of the excitement. Advertising your business should not be any different. If you are excited about your business, show your excitement Make your customers excited about your business. When your customers are excited about your business they will want to tell their friends. I have a few personal experiences in this area.