Amazon Apparel Display Sample

I’ve always said that everything on a store page should somehow lead a visitor to add a product to cart and hopefully the visitor will end up successfully completing the checkout process.

Our ecommerce solution offers lots of tools that can both improve conversion as well distract visitors when not applied wisely.You don’t have to use every single tool that’s available. Chill a bit and look at your store from the point of view of a visitor, a potential buyer.

If you find yourself asking, “Would it be nice if feature ‘x’ was available?”, then it it would probably be wise to add that feature. If you find that certain available features do not add any value to the persuasion process, then it would probably be wise to remove it from the page.

For example, surveys reveal that visitors to web stores selling party or clubbing dresses are not too interested in having a closer look at the dresses. Visitors to those sites have not much use for zoom tools, user reviews, and rating systems.

What they do want to see more of are different product views. So each dress should have at least two different angle shots accompanying it, preferable with a ‘hover to change view’ feature for better user experience.

Also, as mentioned in another article, try to use real models instead of mannequins. And believe it or not, if you find that a a particular dress design is not selling well, put in on your prettiest model and see what happens. If you’re selling such products, you must remember that you’re not selling a dress. You’re selling a look.

Distractions come in many forms. One common distraction lies in the choice of cross-sell items. If you’ve managed to persuade a visitor to add a dress to cat, it would not be a wise choice to cross sell that person similar dresses. If that person only has the budget to spend on one dress, she might be torn between the design she just added to cart and another which just appeared in the cross-sell section.

If she decides she needs some time to think it over, you’ve more or less lost a sale.

Cross-selling accessories and shoes would be a better bet as it would complement the dress which has just been added to cart and not compete with it.

A new year is almost upon us. Many of you would have budgeted to give your store a whole new look or at least a fresher-upper.  Though having a nice looking store helps in getting visitors to stay longer and browse along, having a store with customized features targeted at your customers can help you convert better.

How Do You Know What Features To Add?
Well, ask your customers or visitors. You can do this by creating a questionnaire and placing it on your site or include it with a newsletter. You can even ask them while on chat or phone. Many a time, you’ll be surprised that they want the simplest of features which you easily accommodate or turn on in our solution..

Sometimes, visitors just want better pictures, bigger pictures but not so big they’d have to scroll all over to view the whole image, or more views of a product. There are some instances where shoppers would like to have an Easy Checkout option or view product videos.  However, some requests do require custom work to fulfill.

Another way to find out what features you can add to your store is by sneaking over and having a peak at what your competitors have on theirs. However, just because they use a certain feature, does not mean it works. They could be just trying something new and doing a little split test to see if it works. Testing rules!

You could also request that we have a look at your store and see what we can do to take it to the next level.

One Shoe Does Not Fit All
There is no one feature that converts well for every single store. The dynamics involved are just to great. So, there is no point in stuffing every feature you can find into your store. That would mess everything up.

If a particular product does not need the Zoom tool for its image, don’t turn it on. If a product only requires 2 images from different angles, don’t upload 5. More is not always better. In fact, it might even be distracting. You want to hook your visitor in the most efficient way possible and convert them.

So, how can an image can be used to influence an action? Well, that depends on what information is shared with the viewer. The type of information shared would depend on the type of product on display.

When deciding on what kind of product image to display on your web store, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your customers and figure out what would grab their attention and what kind of information would they be looking for in such a simple thing as an image.

Types Of Product

Some product images do not really need to present that much detail about a product. Others do. It all depends on the product.

Products such as jewelery or branded watches may benefit from closeup shots whereas dresses would look better if the shot captured the whole product. So before you set up online store, be sure to give factor some thought.

Point Of View
Jewelery and branded watches usually come with very fine details so a closer look at it from the very first view would probably be better than a zoomed out view. When you look at dress watches, what do you look for? I would guess it would be the face of the watch since that’s usually the nicest part of the watch.

If shoppers would like an even closer view of a product, there’s always the zoom tool.

With that in mind, it does not make much sense to have models posing with every single watch on a site with 90% of a product image real estate taken up by the model.

It’s a different story with dresses. That’s a product shoppers would like to have a full view of because they’d like to imagine how it would look like on them. Which is why dresses and apparel in general usually come with more than just one view.

Not Just About Product
Over the years, we’ve got feed back from merchants carrying out their own experiments to see why certain products sell better than others. Sometimes, it’s got nothing to do with the products. Sometimes, it’s the model posing with the products which matters. I’m not kidding.

If you’re selling womens’ apparel or mens’ sunglasses, try placing a not-so-hot selling item on a very hot model and see what happens. Both men and women like to imagine themselves as the hot model wearing those products so their eyes are usually drawn to those models. So if you find it difficult selling an item, think out of the box. It may not be the product, but the way it is presented.

Brand Matters

Some products sell because of the brand. Items such as branded handbags and watches fall into this category. Which is why brand names are prominently displayed in some product images. You can find out if brands make a difference by doing a little keyword research for a generic term like – handbag.

From the results above, it is obvious that shoppers for such items place great value on brand name. Thus, it would be a good idea to display brand names on product images for these types of items to help get customers attention.

If you’re thinking about tweaking your current online store or are waiting to set up online store from scratch, spend a few minutes pondering what kind of images would best suit your products so that they generate the results you want.

However, this should be a clear sign for online business owners to get their store ready for the holiday shopping season and not wait till the last minute.

Please make sure that your store’ s SEO has been tweaked properly. If you’re unsure on how to get that done, click HERE for a reference to our SEO Wizard Green Thumbs Up article.

Here’s a short list of stuff that you need to consider showing on your FRONT PAGE :

- the LOOK of your store (let it have a holiday ‘feel’ and show clearly your BEST SELLING product images or the products that you want to promote)
- make sure your product images are of GOOD QUALITY (should NOT be blur, too small or come in weird sizes)
- SALE prices or DISCOUNT percentage clearly shown (show how much customers will SAVE)
- FREE shipping or fixed price shipping
- GIFT recommendations (your target group of customers in mind – boys, girls, men, women, kids, family, friends, colleagues)

Have a SOCIAL Plan ready to start getting the word out on what are the product offers that your store will be launching through your social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. This is also a great way to FIND OUT and engage your customers on what kind of products that they would like to see ON SALE or looking for. And it will also build momentum to your store’s Season Shopping Sale Launch. Remember, feedback is IMPORTANT so that you don’t end up wasting your time.

Lastly, make sure that your store is mobile optimized (just click on the Mobile Commerce icon in your Admin panel and select the mobile commerce template of your choice). Not sure how it works? Here’s a short video about it.

Why is it important? Based on the data by Techcrunch below, majority of users begin surfing with their smartphones which is then continued on to their PC followed by their tablets. So you want to make sure that your store is accessible to these smartphone users as they search, browse and shop online with their smartphones as a first point of contact.

Credit Image : Techcrunch

If you need any help or more advice on how to get your store ready for the holiday season shopping, do drop us an email. We’re here to help in any way that we can. Have a great weekend!

Other than getting your social sites all set up (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Google+, Pinterest, etc) along with your SEO, have you ensured that your product images are of the best quality? Because you could have a terrific site with tonnes of traffic coming but if the fish ain’t biting, maybe it’s time to consider the look of your online store and product images.

Questions that you need to consider :

1) Is your front page attractive enough with the RIGHT product images and their SIZE?
2) Are your product images CLEAR and of high quality?
3) Is the current template that you are using for your store suited for the type of products that you’re selling?
4) Is the layout helping to guide your customers to find out more about the product or to even click on it to buy?

Drop us an email if you need help with your store’s template or are looking for some design advice. We’d be more than happy to offer our expert design advice for FREE. Or if you want to get it done FAST and without any hassle, you could try our Template Spruce Up Service for only $197.  Happy selling!

But, something is amiss. Your sales figure is lower than Usain Bolt’s 100m world record. What gives?

We’ve already touched on how to make your sites sticky and how to improve conversion in earlier articles. So, in this article, we’ll look at the things a little differently. We’ll try to help you figure out if you’re driving potential customers away.

Are You Pestering Visitors Too Much?
Using CTA (call-to-action) text and images is a must because sometimes people need a little nudge to get them to do something. You may need to tell them to ‘Buy This Now’ or ‘Get 50% Off Right Here’ in order to persuade them to make a purchase. However, if you overdo it, you could end up chasing people away.

To avoid this, try to focus on just one major promotion per page, especially if you’re using a banner and not a content slider. The main promotion will take up the coveted real estate at the top-fold, eye-level area of the page. Position, color, size and text must work together in drawing viewers attention and persuading them to take action.

You can have other CTA elements on the same page as well but they should not attempt to steal the thunder from the main promo.

Do You Take Forever To Reply Customer Inquiries?
Many merchants run their business all by themselves. Which is fine since we built our solution with these merchants in mind. However, this means that such merchants may not have much time to attend to customer inquiries. And neglecting customers is something you never want to do.

If you do have a limited amount of time, let your customers know that they can expect a reply within an acceptable amount of time, say 24 hours. While you’re attending to inquiries, take note of what is usually inquired about. Then, try to provide these answers on your store itself. This should help reduce the number of inquiries.

Also, when communicating with customers, it does not hurt to be human. I once came across a business poster which read ‘Customers don’t buy from companies. They buy from people.’ Don’t reply customers like you’re just repeating from a prepared script.

Of course, once a while you will come across a very difficult customer but in general, people are nice and would just like to be treated with a little dignity.

Are You Trying To Sell Ice To Inuits?
Cross-selling is a great way to increase sales, if you do it correctly. It makes sense if you try to cross-sell conditioner to someone who has just bought a bottle of shampoo. It might confuse the customer if you tried to cross-sell a totally non-related product like, say, a pair of jumper cables.

If you can’t find suitable products to cross-sell, then it might be better not to cross-sell at all. You a shopper to commit to a decision to buy as fast as possible. The longer shoppers ponder, the higher the chances of them aborting the order.

Do You Reward Only New Customers?
It is important to keep on getting new customers because that’s how you grow your market. Using incentives like discount certificates and special offers on new customers is a fantastic way to win them over. However, you might be neglecting your older customers.

Longtime customers provide repeat orders. Repeat orders are what sustains a company, especially in slower periods. These shoppers should be rewarded for their loyalty before they decide to jump ship.

You don’t always have to provide them incentives. Once a while, drop them an email asking them for ideas on how to improve the shopping experience at your store. This lets them know that you value their thoughts and not just what’s in their wallets.

Now, they may be still time to get in some competitor and keyword research done for the Christmas shopping online event coming up in a couple of months. But if you are really short of time due to some unforeseen circumstances, there are still a few things you can do to make the best of what time you have left to prep your online store for the online Christmas shopping season.

What you need to do is this:
1 – Put teasers for your upcoming sales to create awareness.
2 – Get your store’s holiday design ready.
3 – Select the items you want to place on sale.
4 – Use every avenue available method to drive traffic to your store.
5 – Prepare for post holiday sales for bargain hunters.

Teasers
Start placing Christmas online shopping teasers on your store’s content slider, Facebook posts and masthead, blog, Tweets, product videos and anywhere else you can think of.

Let everyone know that you’ll be having a sale soon. Remind them that they can always buy Gift Certificates if they’re not sure exactly what to get for their loved ones. Tell them about the usefulness of the Wish List too.

Important Note: When creating teasers and other promotional items, be sure not to mislead anyone. If there are Terms & Conditions, make it clear where users can read further on this. Also, make sure text are not obstructed by images, either on purpose or by accident.

Image blocking text on WHERE magazine cover

The thing about teasers is that you don’t want to tease shoppers too early. If you do so, the teasers might go stale very early on in the the campaign. Also, shoppers might start holding off making purchases from your store from a very early date in anticipation of the sale.

You want to time it so that the WOW! factor remains fresh. That said, 2 to 3 weeks before Cyber Monday would do just fine.

Holiday Theme

Shoppers associate festive decorations with sales and good bargains so make sure your store designs reflect that. You do not need a massive makeover. You can even DIY it with a little help from Photoshop or Pixlr. A silhouette of a Christmas tree here and a couple of snowflakes there and you’re done. If you want a profession web designer to work on your store, give Logo-Design-Studio a try.

On Sale Products
You don’t have to put your whole store on sale but you do need to give a number of ‘most wanted’ products a very nice discount. This will create a pull factor. If you know you have a really good price advantage for those products, make a big deal about it. Modify the HTML titles of those product pages to include their on sale prices. Then promote them everywhere. If you’re got it, flaunt it.

On the home front, place a bit of effort on selecting well thought out cross sell items. This can really add to your revenue if done properly.

Get Word Out, Get People In
So you’ve covered SEO and social networking but have you considered PPC? PPC is worth considering if you can make a profit out of it.

Would it be worth it to spend $100 on PPC if you are only going to get back $105? That’s a $5 profit for every $100 spent. I’d say yes. After all, you’re not making a loss. But there’s more to PPC than just profit. If done properly, PPC brings in targeted traffic. If this traffic likes your store they will be a source of repeat orders later on.

Also, your Adwords account will let you know which PPC keywords convert the best. You can then use these keywords in your SEO later on.

Post Holiday Promotions
This shopping season comes but once a year so you’d better milk it as best you can.

Bargain hunters will be on the prowl so you’ll need to target them specifically. Again, don’t forget to cross sell intelligently. Also, this is a great time to push items which might end up as dead inventory so get a bit creative when bundling products or mystery gifts.

Take calculated risks when doing business

“The risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people and systems or from external events” – that’s how the Basel committee defines operational risks.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at a couple of external events that may affect your ecommerce store.

Search Engine Algorithm Changes
It’s been over a year since Google released Panda onto the masses and many sites are still feeling the effects from that update. So how do you protect yourself from such changes. Well, you can’t but you can hedge your risks.

Instead of placing everything you have into SEO, try building your brand through social, image and video sharing sites. It’s a slow process but it’s definitely worthwhile. And besides, Google is looking more and more at ‘signals’ from these type of sites. Once you have accounts on these sites, it is important to keep them updated.

Many merchants also make the mistake of creating Facebook pages and not opening them to public for fear of receiving bad comments. When these pages are closed for public viewing and only open to members of ‘friends’, Google will not be able to pick up on the Likes and Shares that these pages might have generated.

Do not be overly worried about negative comments. And remember to never brush off bad comments. Reply them professionally. Take criticisms as an impetus to improve your store. Most good natured people will appreciate the effort you put into trying to solve a problem which customers encounter.

Price Competition
Competition is good, mostly for shoppers, because they know they can look forward to lower prices as the competition heats up. But for store owners, lower prices means lower margins. So what do you do when your competition starts slashing prices?

It is true that in times when the economy is not so good, a product’s price is the biggest factor in the decision making process of a shopper. But when people start having more disposable income, other elements come into play.

Though it is important to remain competitive pricing wise, it is also important to remain profitable. So instead of just focusing on product pricing, try to highlight other aspects of your store like pre-sales service, after-sales service or special promotions.

Here’s an example of a pre-sale service. I remember once coming across a sports shoes store which enabled shoppers to download and print sizing charts for different shoe models from different brands. The owners of this store took a common issue with buying shoes online and turned it into an opportunity. This little gimmick increased sales

Final Say
So you see, there is a solution for everything. Focus on coming up with a solution and you will. Just be careful not to overlook the obvious.  That is usually the case in hindsight.

The important thing is to not lose focus. Find out how to rank well in Google with these Google search ranking tips.

Natural Evolution Of Search

The reason for this drastic change is simply because Google wants to provide even more accurate or relevant results to search queries fast. But instead of just looking at how well you have done your SEO, they are also starting to look more at other signals to help them reach this end. So apart from keeping to SEO best practices, you’ll also need to do a bit more from now on to meet Google’s requirements.

Find out more on how to rank high on Google after the break.

Content Is Not King But It’s A Good Start

Content is key but it’s not King. Why? Because no matter how good your content is, people still need to find it first. And to help people find it, you need to be proactive. You need to optimize your site and go where all the people who might be interested in your content are – related forums, blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter, YouTube, etc – and tell them about it.

So while it is definitely important to have good content on your site, it is equally important to promote it.

Build A Reputation

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. – Warren Buffett

Now who in their right mind would listen to, let alone follow, a total stranger. This is why you need to build a reputation for yourself.

To do this, you need to take a page out of the experts in their respective fields. Why do people visit their blogs or Facebook pages or follow their Tweets? It’s because they share good information or helpful tips freely. Essentially you have to give before you can receive.

Building a reputation can take a bit of time but the rewards are long term. You can start by contributing constructively to the community you are targeting. Don’t be afraid to share tips and give sound advice. And be sincere about it.

Once your reputation is right up there, people are more likely to trust you and follow you back to your site. And if your site has what they are interested in – good information, products, etc. – they will link to it, share it with friends and perhaps make a purchase.

For your information, the more successful affiliate marketers have been using this very strategy for years now. They research the products they sell thoroughly before writing in-depth reviews on them. Some even go as far as to purchase and use the products the want to review just so that they can give an honest first-hand opinion.

They include not just the pros but the cons as well so their reviews look legit. They also include useful suggestions, sometimes going as far as to offer alternatives. And you know what? People appreciate that kind of effort.

Improve The User Experience

The user experience is something many of us neglect but it is a factor Google is seriously looking at.

On page content needs to be seen as useful to viewers because it contributes greatly to user experience. So take a look at one of your product pages. Does it contain enough good information to convince a viewer to make a purchase or at least click a link to peruse other pages on your site?

Content could be in the form of text, images, videos and even links. Yes. Links. You could provide links to external sites which you think your visitors could benefit from.

For example, if you are selling running shoes, you could embed a video which teaches people how to run properly. You could also link out to blogs and medical sites which give advice on running, injury prevention or recovery.

All this will make your site a resource and not just a plain ecommerce site in the eyes of Google. This will certainly add to your site’s reputation.

You also need to ensure everything on your page works the way it is supposed to. Have a look at your site and see what you can do so your visitors will have a good experience while on your site.

Ask yourself these few questions: Do the images take forever to load? Do I have a one-page checkout option for shoppers in a hurry? Do I have an onsite search feature to make it easier for shoppers to make a search query? Are there too many Call To Action (CTA) images on my page? Does my page contain too many distracting elements? Is my site hard to navigate? Do all the links work?

Sending The Right Signals

Google will soon be looking at all sorts of signals when affording authority to a site. The signals Google will be looking at will come from various sources – social sites, video sharing sites, image sharing sites, micro blogging sites, blogs and even review sites. Google will not only be looking at Likes, Shares, Follows, +1′s and, possibly, Pins, they will be also looking at comments. This will give Google a better idea of a site’s reputation.

Now, don’t panic if someone leaves you a bad comment about you or your site somewhere. Google likes to see things done naturally so it would seem really unnatural if all the comments about you were positive. A spot of bad comments here and there won’t do much harm.

I’m guessing Google will also look at the reputation of those who Follow, Like or leave positive comments about you or your site. Just like how they look at what kind of sites are linking back to yours.

End Say

Try not to think of all these current changes and upcoming ones as obstacles. Expanding your reach over the Internet can only be a good thing. The more visible you are on the Net, the more traffic you are likely to attract. And I don’t need to tell you what more traffic could lead to. Lookout for more Google search ranking tips soon.

Prepare Early For The Holiday Shopping Season

Seeing as people shop as early as 6 months before Christmas, it would not be such a bad idea to start planning your holiday shopping promotions a little bit earlier than usual.

Let’s just concentrate on the holiday shopping season proper this time around. To make it easier, let’s set the cut-off date where we need to complete all our preparations at October 31st, 2012.  Now, let’s work backwards from there.

The purpose of a campaign such as this is to sell as many items as possible at a price which shoppers find hard to say no to. But at the same time, it should not be so low such that you end up making a loss.

Here is a basic checklist that you need to go through when planning your year-end promotion:

Products
You need to do some research on what products will be hot and available come the biggest shopping season of the year. This means you will need to work closely with your suppliers to find out what’s hot and what’s not.

When a product becomes hot, it is largely due to the promotional efforts of the manufacturer or the main distributor of the product. Timing is crucial. Publicizing a product too soon or too far away from its actual availability might create a cool-down period and negate the hype that has been created. This is especially true for high-end tech products like smartphones.

Hot products are not the only products that you can put on sale. You can also use this opportunity to avoid or get rid of dead inventory. You can offer such products as a standalone items at really low prices or bundle them together with other products. Remember to market them as super value-for-money buys and not stuff you just want to get off your shelves.

When to start this process: NOW!

SEO
Once you know what you will be selling, you need to start on your keyword research for those products. Naturally, if no one knows about those products, there will be no search traffic yet. What you can do is research keywords for the categories those products will be in. For example, if the product is a particular type of snowboarding helmet, then try to target snowboarding related keywords for starters.

Then, 1-2 months before the manufacturer or main distributor gets the ball rolling in terms of publicity for the products, start working on the SEO for those product pages. It very easy to get those pages ranked at this point because competition would be very low. So this is your chance to get a head start.

For keywords, make smart guesses. Use the actual product name as a keyword or as part of a keyword phrase. To get a better idea of how to fit in product names into keyword phrases, look at existing search phrases for similar products. You can add more keywords later on once there is search traffic for the product.

When to start this process: Preferably, by June 2012.

Design
Remember the deal about dead inventory I mentioned earlier? Well, one of the key methods to ensuring you are successful in selling those is having well designed CTA (call-to-action) images. Copy and image must work together in convincing the shopper that the product is a steal at that price.

Of course, do not fill the whole page with CTA images and text. That will just confuse customers. Prioritize your CTA images and text. Use size, color and placement to differentiate CTA images and text. The main CTA image should be bigger than the rest, utilize bolder – but not garish – colors, and be positioned at the focal point of the page. The main CTA image should plug the product you want to sell the most.

Do not hard sell every product image on the page. Some product images will do just fine with the phrase ‘Just Arrived’ or ‘Limited Units Available’.

When to start this process: September 2012.

Email And Social Marketing
Email marketing can give you a head start to your campaign. Give subscribers sneak peak previews and additional discounts on certain items so that they feel privileged to be a subscriber. A strong subscriber base is key to follow-up sales especially during off seasons.

Create teasers of your upcoming promotions on video sharing, micro blogging and social networking site like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook . Make sure you tag all your content with the appropriate keywords so that they can be found easily within those sites’ search facilities.

When to start this process: October 1, 2012.

Christmas may be quite a while away, but it’s never too early to start planning and preparing your store for the holiday season. We hope these tips will give you some ideas and help you get started.

To understand what good page content is for an online store, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your customers. You need to understand what information they need in order to be persuaded to make a purchase at your store.

I like to run and hike and so I often go online to certain running shoe stores to do some research before making a purchase. Sometimes though, I get all the information I need at a single store and end up making a purchase almost immediately. In a nutshell, good content is adequate, helpful and timely information.

Read on to find out more…

Types Of Content

Many merchants put up loads of information up on a store but that information may not be considered useful to shoppers. It may help SEO-wise but might not be that helpful in terms of visitor-to-sales conversion. So you may need to take a look at the information you put on your site if the fish aren’t biting.

Also keep in mind that content isn’t just text. Audio, video and images are also content, and very important content at that. Text should be relevant and concise; audio and video should be comprehensible and concise as well; and images should be optimized and sharp.

Information Delivery

Sometimes it’s not what you say but how you say it that matters. Two sites can be selling the same thing at the same price but one will sell more than the other just by rephrasing or tweaking the way information is delivered.

For example, Site A might have a CTA (Call-To-Action) image that says “Product XYZ On Sale NOW @ $100”. Site B might be a little more creative and state “Save $20 When You Buy Product XYZ @ $100 NOW”.

Site B is using an age-old psychological trick which targets shoppers who need to validate their decisions. It’s not good enough just to buy something that’s on sale. Certain shoppers need to know that they will be saving $X amount of money as well.

According to Google how fast information on a page loads can affect the bottom line of a store. The faster the information loads or is delivered, the more likely a shopper will browse through a store looking for products. With this in mind, make sure all you images are optimized so that they download fast. Unoptimized images are usually the culprit behind slow-loading sites.

A picture paints a thousand words so sometimes, depending on the product and the campaign, it could be more effective to use a banner or a slide with well chosen text to deliver information instead of just writing long copy.

With the festivities now over, it’s time to focus on business once again and how to get more of it! With any online business, the main aim is to get as much traffic and visitors to your site in the hopes that they WILL buy something from you, right? Sometimes just driving traffic to the site just won’t cut it anymore. Many get disappointed when they see tonnes of traffic heading their way but still the sales just aren’t what you’re hoping for.  Your visitors are just not buying off your store and simply bouncing off your site. Yes, you did your SEO homework really well, got your site sprinkled with the keywords that you’re targeting and you’re ranking well on the search engines and hence the visitors are pouring in. That’s good but still you need to turn this visitors into customers…..

So where’s the moolah? Why aren’t people buying stuff when they land on your site? In fact, why aren’t they staying long enough to browse through your products?  Some of you are probably already making changes to improve the bounce rate but still can’t see improvements. Here are some reasons that could explain why this is happening.

REASON #1:

– They couldn’t FIND what they’re looking for. Is your page way too cluttered with too many call to action? Are you showing them too many things which they’re not looking for? This is one sure way to drive visitors away! Try limiting your scope and stay in focus with the main objective of the page so that your visitors can easily browse and look for what they’re searching for. It’s always good to have a SEARCH box clearly indicated on your site because they can always use that to find the product that they’re looking for.

REASON #2

- Your product pricing is WAY HIGHER than your competitors. Especially with price comparison sites sprouting out everywhere, visitors can very easily get all these handy information at one glance! So be sure to find a good product source that can provide you with very competitive pricing so that way you can price your products competitively and yet the profit margin is still fine.

REASON #3

- Your website does not LOOK inviting enough to interest people to STAY LONGER. Always remember that people are very visual creatures. Your store’s landing page is like a shop’s window display. If they don’t like what they see on display, they will not bother to stay long enough to browse the site. It’s got to arrest attention! So pay more attention to how products are laid out at your store etc.  Give them a reason to want to browse further with exciting offers to entice them further but always remember to strike a fine balance. Multiple navigation bars, multiple search boxes, oddly placed ads — the more complicated the design the more likely a visitor will bounce.

REASON #4

- The keywords that you used which lead them to your site DID NOT match with what they are looking for. This is a very important factor. You have to match the page purpose to the call of action. You can always have different landing pages for the different keywords that you are targeting at. It doesn’t always needs to be directed to the Homepage of your store.  That way, the visitor will be able to see the product that they’re actually looking for right away without having to hunt high and low for them especially if your front page does not feature the product that they’re looking for. 

So do take the time to look through your pages and see whether they match their purpose. In fact, it would be good if you could get some of your friends or colleagues to find your site and tell you what they think about it as a potential customer. Or you can always just drop us a line if you need someone to review your site and give you a quick analysis on it. We also do provide a  competitive SEO package that you could check out if you don’t have the time to mess with the SEO nuts and bolts to get it ranking. Drop us a line or contact us for further info. Happy selling!

Last year I wrote about how Post-Holiday Sales (PHS) can contribute significantly to a store’s bottom line. Read the article here.

Here’s a recap of the stats:

• 6% of Americans will shop for gifts after the holidays
• 60% of Americans will shop for themselves
• post-holiday bargain hunting could add up to 15% to a store’s sales figure for the year

Those are pretty impressive numbers.

This year, I’m going to touch on PHS strategy. All it takes is to get a few elements right and the chances of you having a successful PHS will be higher.

Timing
Now it’s important not to promote your PHS too early. If you do, you might miss out on maximizing your holiday sales revenue. However, if you promote it too late, you’ll have to make do with the tail end of post-holiday shopping. Last year, a number of merchants began their PHS in mid January, just as the last of the bargain hunters had finished their shopping.

Gimmicks
Most merchants will start their Post-Holiday Shopping promotion the day after Christmas. You can use all sorts of marketing gimmicks:

• Boxing Day Sale – Save 50% On Selected Items
• New Year’s Eve Sale/Goodbye 2011 Sale  – Save 70%
• New Year’s Day Sale/Ushering In The New Year Sale

Shoppers have a love-hate relationship with gimmicks. They hate them because they all sound the same. But, at the same time, they love those tacky phrases because they give them an excuse to shop.

Respect Bargain Hunters
Post-holiday bargain hunters are a special breed of shopper, trained in the ancient art of bargain hunting. They would have probably memorized your prices and those of your competitors well beforehand. So, do not try to bump up the price and then place a massive discount on it. If you do, you might find your site mentioned – in a negative way – on some of those consumer or shopping forums.

Even though you would be preaching to the choir, so to speak, do place Call-To-Action (CTA) images or text with price comparisons or savings notices on selected store target pages, your store’s Facebook updates, Twitter posts and so on. Some shoppers need a little nudge before they click the Purchase button.

Also, try creating a sense of urgency by displaying time or unit limits on your CTA material.

Don’t Go Overboard
For Pete’s sake, please don’t put your entire store on PHS. You need to focus the attention of shoppers on selected products or a selected group of products. If you put every single product on sale, your shoppers’ attention will be spread across many products. This will slow down the decision making process. You need to do everything in your power to encourage impulse buys. The longer it takes to make a decision, the lesser the chances of a sale.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Here’s a neat little trick to get people to buy from your store and spread the word on Facebook at the same time.

How Does It Work?
Well, the idea is to leverage that overused Facebook LIKE button to benefit your store. By rewarding those who click the LIKE button on your product page with a discount, you’re giving them a reason to purchase the product as well as share the ‘love‘ with their family and friends.

How Do You Activate This Neat Feature?
I’m not quite sure … Just kidding!

The first thing you need to do is log into your store. Then go to the Feature Activation page. Click on the Product Tab; that will automatically take you to the Products Related Settings section. Look out for Facebook Bookmarking and then check the checkbox to activate it.

Next, click the ‘place your Facebook button‘ link and choose where you’d like the LIKE button to be displayed on your product page. Once that’s done, click the ‘configure your Facebook button‘ link to customize your button and configure your reward.

What are you waiting for? Go try it out!

According to Google, a good site must have these two important features:

• it must be search engine crawler friendly
• it must contain good content

Since we’ve taken care of the “search engine crawler friendly” part, let’s look at good content.

What Is Good Content?

Simply put, good content is basically information that people will find useful. For example, if you have a Shirts product category, you might want to talk about the material used, the cut and how it affects size choices, care instructions and so on.

Why Should Your Site Contain Good Content?

To keep it simple:

1. To get into Google’s good books (does wonders for SEO)
2. You have a better chance of people linking to you naturally
3. You have a better chance of converting visits to sales if shoppers find all the information they need on your site

How To Make Use Of Readily Available Information?

Sometimes, vendors may provide you with a certain amount of product information. Unfortunately most of the time this information is not displayed in a very appealing manner. In such cases, you need to dissect the information, reformat it and present it in a more effective way.

Here’s an example:

Product Name: Super N Running Shoes
Gender: Men
Gait: Neutral
Color: Blue/White, Green/White, White/Red, Black/Red. With front, side and rear reflective material.
Size: 7, 7.5, 8, 8.5, 9, 9.5 10, 10.5, 11
Width: D, 2E
Weight: 8oz for size 9
Purpose: Race
Upper: Antibacterial, open mesh, memory foam collar, seamless sock liner
Overlay: Welded
Insole: Antibacterial
Mid-sole: Super lightweight foam
Out-sole: Carbon rubber, blown rubber and sticky rubber

What To Do Next

Now all you have to do is segregate the information into categories and apply benefits to the features.

Here is what it could read like:

The Super N Running shoes for men are perfect for those who want a neutral race day shoe which is durable enough to be used for weekly tempo runs, hill repeats or milers.

Lightweight

At 8 ounces for a size 9, the Super N Running Shoes are pretty light. You’ll hardly feel anything when you put them on and you’ll feel less lethargic after a 10k run.

Underfoot

The light weight is achieved with the help of a new mid-sole foam which is 30% lighter than normal foam. Also lightweight blown rubber is used for 70% of the out-sole, cutting down weight further. Sticky rubber provides extra grip when running in the wet while the antibacterial insole works well to keep odor in check.

Upper Material

The open mesh makes it a joy to run in on warm summer days and helps drainage during wet runs. The welded overlays help reduce irritation points and cut down on annoying blisters while the memory foam in the collar and antibacterial sock liner help provide a comfortable fit while keeping odor at bay.

Colors and Sizes

The Super N Running Shoes are available in half sizes from size 7 to 11 and in two widths – D and 2E. Runners can choose from 4 attractive color combinations: Blue/White, Green/White, White/Red, or Black/Red.

Safety

For those who like to run in the wee hours of the morning or at night, these shoes come with reflectors on the front, rear and sides of the shoes.

How To Avoid Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is frowned upon by Google. So it is important to vary your page content (HTML Titles and HTML Descriptions included).

Sometimes the information provided by vendors for similar products turns out looking almost the same and thus, in order to avoid duplicate content, you’d need to spin the content a little. You can do this by changing 2 or 3 words per sentence, adding a sentence or two per paragraph, changing captions and mixing the order of paragraphs.