According to Google, search queries can be classified into action queries ("do"), information queries ("know") and navigation queries ("go").

So the very content we use on our pages to drive conversions can also help Google deliver you more "doers" than"knowers". The challenge, as it has always been, is to create content which:

• Answers all of the shoppers questions
• Engages him
• Causes him to make a purchase (add to cart)

Some of these things we are inherently going to be quite good at, based on our own personality and experiences.... However, I rarely see shop owners who hit all 3. Lets have a look at some examples:

This example is your basic "Information Overachiever". There is so much information here that as a shopper I am perhaps even overwhelmed. The lack of natural content coupled with the very direct add to cart area may make this page uncomfortable for many shoppers. Kind of like that guys who follows you around the store from the door and won't leave you alone.

Here we have a much softer sell, but it lacks the "wow" of the informational listing. This format creates trust better and delivers a more comfortable feel to the decision to make a purchase. Keep in mind that many times your needs will be specific to your products or niche as well.

This is a nice product page layout. Easy to read, scan and understand. It is a significantly "softer" sell, but instills confidence to make the purchase. Visually the images are large enough and plenty, while the information is both natural and detailed.

So we can see that different layouts have different strengths, but what about the actual words?

The words that you use to describe your content should be presented naturally in the same manner as you would attempt to sell the product on the phone. Using alternate names, slang and layman terminology will help Google deliver your products for the natural language people search with. There is not point in ranking number 1 for a roro widget, when everyone refers to it as a rooo for example.

Lastly, to help the search engines understand the actionable nature of your product pages you should includes words such as "buy", "purchase", "shop online" etc. When including these types of action phrases it will be most effective to string them along a keyword for the product. something such as "When buying a roo online, you have several options for color, size and delivery". It's way too easy to get spammy when trying to create actionable content... so pay close attention to the perceived intent of the words you chose.

Most ecommerce stores have some season trending. This is very unique to both the store and the product line. So a store selling green widgets can be expected to trend sales in a similar manner to another shop selling green widgets... But not exactly, as they are many additional metrics that influence one's sales.

So you should be planning for your spring and early summer products, marketing and trends now... So that you are prepared for this period in your business. Even especially if traditionally spring is a low volume period for sales.

Here is a checklist of sorts to help you get started for planning any marketing period, including this spring.

Trending: Unless you site is brand new, you should have some sales and traffic data that you can use to trend or predict the data for the upcoming period. I tend to concentrate on sales and traffic. I use both as they can be very unrelated for some websites. There are clearly some periods where even if the traffic is there, conversions are down... So to properly trend our potential for this upcoming period we should use both. You may even have other metrics such as, bounce, average order or similar that are specifically a target for your store.

Gathering the data is the easiest part, as you should be using a proper analytical stat program to record your data. We will use Google Anayltics for our example, as it is very popular.

When gathering your data, we are looking for specific trends within the matching period from previous years to predict, affect and produce a proper marketing plan for the upcoming period. So login to Google Analytics and lets get to work.

So we will pull data for all of March, April, May and June to cover our bases and provide some overlap. You will want to pull at least on year, more if you have them. I would not be concerned with using more than 3 years as things in your business and on the web change very quickly and it's not likely to be very relevant any longer.

The example store I am using had a 2009 average daily visits of 279 uniques a day. There conversion rate for the year was 3.87%. You can see by the graph that holiday traffic is a crucial part of this store's success and that spring is rather soft by comparison. You can also see that our spring period it right at or just a bit above average for them.

2009 Unique Visits

We can clearly see from this data, that traffic could be improved for this period.... Especially because they have a genuine promotable product line for spring sales. Now let's have a look at conversions in relationship with this traffic... Do they convert well in this period?

2009 Conversions

We can see that last year, while traffic was average, they converted pretty well the end part of spring. looks very much like March should be our focus area.

Next you will determine your trend. You can use data from previous tears to do this... But if you lack that data no worries, this old restaurant manager has the equation to get you close.

Obviously, any data you do have is clearly relevant... But let's say you have little or none. To determine your current rate of growth in both of these metrics we will poll the last 4 months. This is a weighted process with the greatest weight on the most recent data.

This applies to any metric. Gather the data for these metrics for Nov 2009, Dec 2009, Jan 2010 and Feb 2010.

We will start with March's data from last year 8,043 unique visits and a conversion rate of 3.13%.

• Nov 2009 8,789 & 4.85%
• Dec 2009 14634 & 4.5%
• Jan 2010 7,604 & 3.67%
• Feb 2010 6,395 & 3.52%

For this purpose, with holiday data so much higher we will exclude Nov & Dec, unless we have 2008 numbers... Which we do. Nov 2008 7,419 & 3.18%, Dec 2008 8,861 & 4.00%, Jan 2009 6,146 & 2.99% and Feb 2009 5,742 & 3.22%.

Here is the math:

The math is easier than it looks....

Step 1: YOY growth, which is simply current year minus previous year.

Step 2: Trend. Like I said we will weight this for the most current monthly data. So 100% being the whole, we will use 12.5% from Nov & Dec, 25% from Jan and the remaining 50% from most current Feb. Something like this:

• 1 part : Nov. 18.49% plus Dec. 65.15% = 83.64 divided by 2 = 41.82%
• 1 part: Jan. = 23.72%
• 1 part: Feb. =11.37%
• 1 part: Feb. =11.37%

= The whole (88.28) divided by 4 = (22.07%) Current Trend

Last year March (8043) apply trend 22.07% = (1775 growth) This year March forecast (9818) unique visits... Into 318 average daily visits.

Check our math:

Last year average daily visits March = 260

This year forecast = 318

% of predicted growth = 22.3%

**Note that rounding changes these just a hair, but not to worry this should be pretty reliable data.

So this "math" can be applied to the entire period as a whole, or each month individually computed. The point here is to have an idea of what to expect, AND and basis to measure the effectiveness of your marketing this spring. For example if you did nothing last spring, and you know (above) what to expect if you do nothing this spring... Then you have a pretty good benchmark to measure the effectiveness of a marketing campaign this spring.

Losers?

With the current climate of Google's new algorithm, I have had cause to reflect on a basic idea.... Seemingly long forgotten. Are you getting the sales you need from your existing visits? Or are you a "build it and they will come" person?

If you plan to increase your traffic to meet your sales needs and never worry about what you could be missing... Stop reading, this will bore you =-) However, if you want to build your qualified traffic and get the sales from them you need, then read on.

Conversions! Yes folks SALES! This is the point right?

So in light of all the indexing and rank changes, we sent our SEO clients a "Biggest Losers List". The concept here is that these visits are lost sales, for some reason. Price? Usability? Information? Something is missing and the page cannot make the sale.

First off, lets find your top 5 biggest losers for the last 30 days. Login in to your Google Analytics account, hopefully it is set up properly to track conversion data. Unless you have moved things around from your lower dashboard click "View report" on the "Traffic Sources Overview" box. Then under the sources area, choose Google Organic for example.

In the gray bar, there is a dropdown set initially for keyword, drop this down to landing page. Now click the header link in the "Visits" column to sort them by visits, more visits at the top. Now click on your ecommerce tab.

We are looking for the pages with many visits and no conversions. I have one of my own sites open right now to provide some examples.

Loser Page #1 had 52 visits and no conversions.

Loser Page #2 had 29 visits and no conversions.

Loser Page #3 had 20 visits and no conversions.

Now, we can clearly see without going a step further there is something wrong here. In this shop, for example, the "per visit value" in the upper bar is $4.86..... So we know that for some reason these losing pages lost at least $490.86 in potential sales..... OUCH!

Now lets gather some more information. In the dropdown next to "Landing Page" select "Keyword" to add the column. This complicates things a bit, but sometimes, Google needs more information from you to send your pages qualified leads. If you find that one of your losers is getting a bunch of seeming unrelated search traffic, then it is a good bet that the text on the page is not clear enough to Google.

A good example of this is our pet store example, the 29 searches are for "bows in bulk"... which we sell, except they are dog grooming bows. So I will be updating this page so Google can deliver it for more proper search queries. This part is easy....

What if these losing pages have good, relevant searches?

In this case, we have to have a good old fashioned, come to Jesus look at the page. Is the price too high? Information unclear? Terrible images? Missing selections? Or just plain poorly organized even. Trust me when I say, you must train your eyes to shop like a consumer. In reality it doesn't matter what you think or what your competitors do.... Matters that there is a problem with this page you need to solve.

These things can really be very small... Layout, color, button positions etc. So your best course of action is to have some friends look at it. The trick here is two fold. First, whatever you think about what they say doesn't matter... You are not an average consumer. Listen to them, analyze what they have said and act on it. Secondly, don't go changing a hundred things on the page.... Nothing you cannot measure can ever be successful. Take your list, make a few logical changes and watch it for 3 weeks.... Then measure your results and continue to implement the needed changes in small doses as well. Pretty soon this page will not be a loser anymore!

Need a hand? If you post your page link in a comment, with your own thoughts and the visits & conversions... I will be glad to have a look and make suggestions as I can =-)

Eye Tracking

Eye tracking is defined as  research to track where a user's eyes look while reading, then analyze the data to reveal behavioral patterns. In essence eye tracking is a core part of usability & accessibility.

So we know that you can drive thousands of visitors to your website a day and not make a dime.... These issues related to the usability of your store are the most common reasons for poor conversions and sales.

We are going to specifically go over some big issues for shop owners in the realm of eye tracking today. I promise to revisit the full usability side when I finish Steve Krug's, "Don't Make Me Think" 2cnd Edition.

Recent behavioral eye tracking studies have identified some very useful metrics regarding eye tracking and how user's navigate your online store. We learn more and more everyday about the user interaction and emotional responses to our content and pages. What I'm covering here are just some basic, fairly unconsidered facts, to help you gain some insight in to your shoppers habits and needs.

Eye Tracking Tips for Ecommerce

• Heading Tags - I have said this before and I'll say it again... Visitors read text first upon hitting your page about 1 second is spent scanning for text to identify the page as relevant or irrelevant to the visitor's query or need. Yes, that's right you have about 1 second to get them interested! Heading tags are a perfect way to grab the attention of these text scanning machines we call visitors. Keep your heading tags, short, logical and highly relevant to engage shoppers more quickly.
• Eye Movement Patterns - Your visitors will averagely read/scan your pages in a particular order (shown below from Eyetrack III). Notice where the user starts his quest to determine if your page is useful... Top Left. Ask any search marketing professional and they will tell you this is one of the most highly effective advertisement areas of a page. While I certainly don't want to see you with PPC ads in your store, utilizing this space properly is key to visitor engagement.

Basic Eye Tracking Path of Average Visitors

• People scan the first few words of a paragraph and then quickly make a decision to read it or move one. Back to high school with this one. Remember that English teacher teaching you to use a power sentence to start your paragraphs. Creative and visual writing skills have never been more important.... The first sentence is the hook.
• Keep it short! We know from that same high school English teacher that a paragraph is a container for a single thought. In keeping with that shorter paragraphs actually are less daunting and encourage better reading.
• People naturally seem to migrate top and left when seeking navigation. Right hand navigation has its place indeed, many blog surfers have come to expect right hand navigation from the reading they do... This has not yet, however, transferred in to the general reading and shopping ranks. Topside navigation while interestingly more effective according to the study can be a real nightmare for shoppers to navigate in ecommerce applications. In essence the top navigation is only going to work for your simpler menu options... Not 50 categories and children fly outs. So, standard left hand navigation is still going to be more effective and engaging in your online store.
• Categories are the key to every store's navigation, but also the biggest area of confusion and bottlenecks for shoppers as well. On one hand we know that the fewest number of clicks to get to paying you is most effective, we also know that logical and clearly categorized navigation will yield a better average order value. The biggest issue is when  a shopper is forced to browse through page after page of product index. Most times these products, say numbering 80 can be just 4 pages. However, we also know that the click through drops about 50% from page 1 to page 2 and by the time we get to page 4 only about 3% of the shoppers remain... The rest bailed. So shorter product indexes, ideally one page with your most popular products first will keep the shopper more engaged and on track.
• This I found most interesting, smaller fonts seem to engage readers. So those of you running those 14px fonts are actually encouraging scanning as opposed to reading! The standard is a 10px font, and I would recommend never larger than a 12px. If your visitor profile demands it, then get a text sizer tool for your pages.
• Textual ads within your store will be far more effective than graphics. Aside from the entire banner blindness issue, people are just more willing to click text ads. So just having a neat and crisp "Free Shipping" heading tag will do the trick nicely.
• I have been telling shop owners about the power of color psychology for a while now..... But here you go. In this study a HUGE contrasting red font containing information was completely missed 86% of the users tracked! BAM@!
• How about product pricing? This can really be a heated topic.... But here we see the nuts and bolts of how those numbers came to be .99 and what they should more effectively be .47 or .49 to catch price scanning eyes.

The basic point of this is to establish one thing in your mind... You have no idea what your shoppers need until you ask them. Doing a simple usability study with friends will reveal problems you would have easily missed.

Never stop improving your store, solicit the feedback of your shoppers. Most importantly whether you pay for a usability study, conduct a small usability study on your own or ask for feedback... YOU MUST LISTEN!

Remember, it's not about what you think... It's about making a living.

I think that most everyone would answer NO! We get calls all the time from shop owners who are just not making it. They reach out to us for help... Well kind of. Most think there is some magic wand we can wave to make them rank. This is a common myth among shop owners.... EASY MONEY! Yep, that's what we hear...

Shop owner: My online store has been live for 6 months and I have made 3 sales!

PRO-Webs: What have you done to promote your store? Build links? Build usable content? Updates?

Shop owner: I really don't have time to do those things, why do I have to promote my store? Won't people just find it and give me money??

Easy Content

Ok, so that is a bit dramatized... But we get calls very similar to that all the time! So today for you shop owners who lack the time to properly promote your business AND the funds to hire PRO-Webs to do it for you, we are going to give you 5 easy ways to add additional content to your website and pick up additional longtail and niche searches.

How does adding some content help?

This is a very simple mathematical equation that everyone should clearly understand. Your conversions are generally referenced as a percentage of total visits... and average if you will. Soooooo, increasing the visits (qualified leads) will inevitably increase your sales.

How to Boost Searches with Content

These ideas to help you promote your store with content are NOT completely without effort. I would certainly rather see you sit down and write great content for your visitors... But, since you don't have time....

1. Buying Content: Buying content is really a simple matter of buying PLR articles related to your niche OR hiring a copywriter to write for you. Most importantly this content must be unique, so the smart shop owner will not just publish purchased articles, but rather change it up a bit for uniqueness.
2. Add a Glossary or FAQ section: Glossaries, dictionaries, FAQs and tutorials are excellent niche content, inexpensive to get going and easy to maintain. Probably the most common for shop owners is a Q&A or FAQ section. Many times this can be accomplished with a simple plugin for your ecommerce software. Our FAQ sections contains questions, answers and tutorials... We used WordPress to build it. Fact is this is very inexpensive to get going and easy to maintain. So when customers ask questions.... answer them and post it.
3. Product Reviews: Product reviews are very easy to manage. Most ecommerce software has this ability build in or a modification is available to add it. Biggest issue with this is getting folks to add a review. Some shop owners use a system to ask for them to post it, some make it open for guests to post (ill advised) and then wade through the spam to find good reviews... But our suggestion is far simpler! Just create a nice email master asking customers how their experience in your store went, did the receive their items and by the way can you reply to this email with a review of the product as you see it. Ahhhhh easy, many more will provide a review for you if they can stay within the comfort of their own email screen.
4. Forums: While web forums are not the gleaming star they used to be, if your products are very technical or related to a hobby for example... then a forum might just get shoppers writing content for you! Again, this is not easy task to get going, but a well structured and supported forum can supply an incredible amount of user generated content with little or no effort long term to maintain. Again, this would not be a very costly project to develop, but you would have to add content manually for a while and invite your shoppers at every opportunity to get it going.

A web site that grows it content in a sustained pattern over time gets better search engine ranking. You can also use content creation regularity to train the Search Engine Robots to visit your store more often simply by updating your web site content every week. The trick is in the perserverance, so don't run out and buy 10 articles and publish them all at once, you have far more to gain from publishing them once a week for 10 weeks.

First Impressions

E-Commerce landing pages should be like front doors… friendly, easily accessible and an inviting for the customer to enter. That’s exactly how you want your store visitors to perceive your landing pages. You are selling products and/or services on your e-Commerce site, and you need to have a landing pages that invite shoppers in to take a look. We have some tips that you can consider as you build your own front door to make it as friendly and inviting as possible.... and of course successful.

Once the visitor clicks on your well-placed ad or search result, he enters your landing page, your front door. His eyes go immediately to the area above the fold and to the upper left hand side of their screen. Put information there that you want your visitors to see first and be convinced to investigate further. Write headlines and titles that pop. Don’t add fluff and garbage words; make sure the visitor knows exactly what you are about. Your message should be clear to the shopper, and it should define the value of your products or services. Remember that pictures always speak louder (and frequently more effectively) than words, but that studies have shown visitors overall will start with text above the fold. Neglect nothing, your store is your 24/7 sales associate.

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify. Content on your pages needs to be organized so it’s easily followed and navigated. Columns help visitors browse your pages, and they help search engines identify who you are. However, research suggests a single column produces more conversions than multiple columns on a page. Take a look at the composition of your page and minimize columns if at all possible. Keep your copy very easy to read and understand. If your visitor has to wade through a forest of language that is difficult to follow, you will lose him. White space is also your friend. Pages that are overly busy provide very poor navigation and site flow, along with overwhelming your visitor as well.

You will also lose your visitor if you require a sequence of clicks on too many pages to make a purchase. If I’m shopping at an online store trying to purchase an item and find the checkout process lengthy or otherwise frustrating, I’m likely to leave and go somewhere else... Face it, click and gone is very easy. There are too many options in the world of commerce to have to put up with being challenged when trying to make a purchase as well. Try to make buying your product or service as fast and simple as possible; preferably, one click from the landing page should get the customer to the page to complete a purchase. No eCommerce site is likely to reach 100% CTR (Click Thru Rate). But your CTR will increase if you make the process simple.... Increasing the number of click thrus clearly increases the conversion percentage as well, by reducing checkout abandonment and bounce rate.

Finally, it’s very important to remember you are promoting your brand. Some of the tips and ideas you gather will need to be individualized for your particular store. You won’t want a page full of energy if you determine a less forceful approach is desirable. Likewise, don’t create a calm and pastoral page if you want an edgy feel. Your brand needs to be compatible with the tone and aesthetics of your pages; each needs to complement the other for maximum appeal for shoppers.

If you always keep the "front door" concept in mind as you create your landing pages and continually improve your store, your chances for shoppers to become customers will improve.

There are literally hundreds of checkout methods which are both effective and not effective. Many times something that is effective for one store will bomb in another. Your checkout process requires research and improvement. You cannot just add something and not follow its effects, this will get you nowhere fast. Don't be afraid to think outside the box, just keep the shopper in mind at all times.

1. Colors! Have you considered the colors of your checkout buttons? Color psychology is a very real and effective method for eliciting intended responses from you visitors. At the end of the day what works is what works. As a rule I avoid red checkout buttons as I believe the bring a stop or pause from the shopper, I tend to use green... Green for "Go". Read up on some color psychology.
2. Perhaps nothing is more effective and time consuming as troubleshooting the location of your "Buy" or "Add to Cart" button. I am a firm believer that this button should be above the fold on your page, as near to the top as logical, and large enough to grab the shopper's attention. Many shoppers are in fact spontaneous shoppers and won't read a single word of your options and description... Fine, let them checkout ASAP! Most remaining shoppers will read a bit, scan it if you will, and then be ready to checkout. Once again, let the locate the button easily.
3. Shoppers should be immediately taken to their cart upon adding an item... But allowed the option to continue shopping at the cart summary level. Not taking shoppers to their cart inhibits their desire to checkout and causes concern as to their cart's contents, very simply its makes them less trusting of your store.
4. You want your checkout to be as short as possible. We have become a very impatient society and do not wish to be bothered with "fluff". The fewer steps in your checkout, the better it will convert shoppers... Its that simple.
5. I realize I just told you to avoid "fluff" in your checkout, but be advised I do not mean to avoid clear direction and navigation. Believe it or not shoppers still require a bit of "hand holding". Add text, colors, and enhanced navigation to your checkout so they can stay on track. If you do not have directional prompts and a progress indicator of some sort in your checkout process, you are losing sales.
6. Nothing perhaps is more counter productive than too many options to confuse a shopper. People do not require 5 shipping options or 12 payment options... Honestly, they buy online for convenience and too many options causes them to make decisions they would rather avoid. Keep it simple... For example what is the value of having PayPal and Google Checkout? Both of these payment options are similar and appeal to the same group type of shoppers. You absolutely need a credit card processor, do not be intimidated by the process and cost as this alone will double your checkout conversions.
7. Only collect the information you REALLY need from shoppers. Society has become more and more sensitive about the amount of information they provide for transactions and sign ups. Remember, shorter is better also... Do you really need to collect a business name on your silk flowers site? Or does the shopper become concerned you will spam him or worse if you ask for his company/business name?
8. Shoppers should be able to select their already provided "Billing" address as their "Shipping" address without typing a single word. Little things like pre-filling their name and details in the fields of the remaining steps will check shoppers out faster and convert higher. Remember, shopping online is a convenience.
9. ALL discounts and coupons must be visible or shoppers will assume they are not going to receive them. If you have a discount procedure that is only added on the confirmation or order total screen, then you MUST note that in your checkout. Let the shoppers know when and how the discount will be applied in a very easily located place.
10. Do not upsell or cross sell in your checkout... Options in the checkout section which cause shoppers to navigate away or feel pressured are defiantly counter productive. Some believe in turning off template menus and other click able options in checkout. I am of mixed thought on this... On one hand they are less likely to click away, but on the other shoppers feel like they may have been sent to another site to checkout. I think the answer is clearly to limit non-template options such as upsells and coupons and such... Deliver them after checkout.
11. I do not believe the number of shopping carts I do reports for that have monetized their site, and even their checkout! Why in the world would you allow a shopper to leave your site, especially in checkout, and collect a nickel for it? Seriously, if your product margin is that bad that the nickel looks good, then find another product.
12. Test drive your checkout, frequently. Make sure your processor is not too slow, your pages are loading correctly and fast, and you are sending the correct message for your store's checkout.
13. Lastly, and this one is forgotten most of all. On your checkout success or return page, thank you shoppers in a personal way. Do not leave standard or default text in here, let them know you appreciate their purchase. Invite them back and perhaps offer them a special offer or coupon for future visits.

There are a great many tools for optimizing your checkout. I strongly suggest you make changes slowly so you can monitor the results, if you change 10 things and your checkout conversions go down, how will you know what has caused the drop? I think the most valuable and effective tools for improving checkout are in fact human. Do usability studies, have many different people checkout in your store and research their comments. You can even use a simple comment form on your checkout success page to request feedback about your store and the checkout process.

Heatmaps can be extremely helpful in gaining insight in to your checkout process. Most of all, any serious store owner must have some analytic stats to track their pages and metrics for improvement, most importantly your rate of conversion.

Remember, whats the point if they bail from your cart?

Melanie Prough