• Posted by Melanie
• 31 May 2009
• Ecommerce Marketing

Getting all the sales you need from your ecommerce business?

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.

• Posted by Melanie
• 31 March 2009
• Checkout, E-Commerce Design, Ecommerce SEO

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.