• Posted by Melanie
• 19 January 2009
• Ecommerce SEO

If you are a shop owner and subscribe to the "Build it and they will come" philosophy, you can leave now... This post will most certainly not help you. These are VERY common mistakes that business owners and developers alike make with online shopping sites. We see these problems all the time and the excuses that follow as well.

I can appreciate that many shop owners have no clue as to how much hard work will be involved... I really do understand. But, when your store has been live for a year and you have 3 sales... You might consider some research and good old fashioned hard work to turn it around. So here are the top mistakes we see shop owners make... Many of them seem like real bonehead moves, but you would likely be surprised at the excuses we have heard for these matters.

1. Duplication of published content: If you are using the supplied manufacturers descriptions and textual content for your store... JUST STOP, everyone else is using them too! Google knows these descriptions and phrases from many other websites and has no desire to rank your copied content for their searchers to find a whole search results page of uncreative and duplicate content. You MUST use unique text to succeed. If its too much work for you, then you are in the wrong business.
2. Duplicate Content in Your Store: Do you have a bear minimum of 250 characters of UNIQUE text on every page of your site? No? Well consider this... Your template makes up about 60% of any page in your store. These pages are generally 60% duplicate out of the box, so if you do not specifically use unique text for every page, you are just wasting your time.
3. Page Real Estate: Whats in your store page's eye line? Even know what an eye line is? The eye line is the top content on any page which is above the fold (Scroll Point) yet about 25% below the top of the page. We know from many qualified research studies that this is your hot spot... Your opportunity to engage the shopper. So what have you done with this area. Quick tip... You have about 15 seconds to engage that visitor before they click away... and believe it or not, they are 80% more likely to spend all or most of that 15 seconds reading text.
4. Navigation: Clearly shoppers have the advantage with online shopping. If I can't find a trail to what I need from your store quickly... I can more easily find another store. Believe it or not price is NOT everything. In development and maintenance of your store, navigation is an area to spend a great deal of time on. Shoppers, Google and other search engines want usability. They days of eye tracking a shopper in to a hard sell or heaven forbid a pop up are GONE. Shop your store and have others shop it as well... Get feedback, offer vertical browsing and search options, but most of all, think your navigation through.
5. Relevant Content: This is a very confusing notion for many shop owners... Even well seasoned ones. The very nature of the term relative seems unknown. If you have a store selling bananas.... You will not effectively sell either if you also try to sell PCs. Lets face it you do not have Wal Mart's marketing budget.
6. Monetizing your Online Store: If you are doing this... You have VERY clearly screwed yourself. What kind of business owner would send away a potential sale to a competitor? Answer: None that are successful. So I come to your store looking for a bananna... Great you have what I need, but while I am shopping I see a PPC Ad for wholesale bannanas and click away... Never finding my way back. So for a dime spot, you have blown the sale, screwed yourself out of any other future sales I may send you and you look really stupid.
7. Store Contact Info: These things really irritate me as well. Is your phone number posted clearly on your website? What you don't have one... I'm leaving, this store is probably a scheme run by some eBayer and I'm gona get screwed. How about this one? I come to your store and have a question... So I email you. Your response comes from some GMail or AOL address... Do you also hand out business card printed on the back of used business cards? You must build trust with your shoppers to succeed... This is no longer 1997 and we don't fall for every trick anymore.
8. Shipping: Is your shipping reasonable? Easy to find and estimate? If not, you lose. eBay has certainly burned most of the global shopping public with outrageous shipping cost tricks. If I have to wait until I have entered my information to see my shipping cost... I'm going to assume you are about to screw me over and leave.
9. Disclaimers: Have you posted tentative shipping or pricing in your checkout? A disclaimer like "All Shipping Costs are and Estimate, Final charge may Vary"... I am so leaving, al be damned If I am giving you carte blanc opportunity to charge my card whatever you feel like. When you build your store... You really do have to think like a shopper!
10. Checkout: Ok I have decided to give you money... Wohooo. Not you torutre me with 5 pages of checkout asking for everything but my underware size... Screw this I'm leaving! ONLY collect the information you need to complete the order. Take all distractions out of your checkout to keep shoppers on track, and please make it as painless as possible.

Seriously, many of these items probably seem very stupid... Easy, whatever. I am telling you we see these things everyday and its a shame that businesses are launched, money invested and time spent to fail. Having a web business is probably more work than any brick and mortar business... Have you commited the necessary funds, time and ongoing budget to succeed? Most don't.

• Posted by Melanie
• 15 August 2008
• So you want to be a Shop Owner Series

Starting an online business, specifically a shopping cart, has become a very popular thing to do recently. However, most new store owners are misguided in their thoughts of how the process works, make rash decisions and lack the essential understanding and research necessary to be successful in their new online business. This series of 5 posts is designed to serve as a guide for developing your own online store/shopping cart as painlessly and successfully as possible. Welcome to Part 4 Shop Necessities, Integration and Functionality!

So you want to be a Shop Owner Part 4

Every business will have specific integration or custom function they need or want.  This is the stickiest part of developing your online store.  In Part 1 of this series, we had you look at the saleability of you products, in doing so you probably came across some quirks or specific needs you have to effectively sell your wares. Whether its special information passed in orders on checkout, a specific sales report needed to manage your inventory or accounting, a software integration or a different payment method... You will need to accomplish these things to be successful.  A plan is only as good as the execution.

I sincerely hope you identified the custom features and integration you need and measured your shopping cart software against it by this stage of development... Lets assume you have =-)

Most developers will get $50 to $150 and hours to make customizations and functionality changes to your website.  If you have chosen a shopping cart that has packaged or developed modifications which you can install to change the functionality, look and feel then this cost is likely to be lessened quite a bit.  If you have need for all out custom programming, and it will increase your ability to sell products or rank better in organic search... Then make the investment.

We discussed early on some features that historically we know you will need to sell your products effectively and decrease abandonment.  Let dig in to a few of these things that shop owners commonly require from their shopping carts to succeed.

1. You will absolutely need a good search function for shoppers to find your products quickly and easily and reduce shopper frustration. You search function needs to be very near the top of your website, top left is optimum.  A search function is NO replacement for great navigation.
2. You will need a category menu to assist shoppers in navigating your products in a logical manner. While I can appreciate the desire to "stand out" or "be different" this menu is best suited on the top or top left.  Right hand menus just aren't as effective, as we have long trained visitors to look in "normal" places for the menu options.  Does your menu need moved?
3. Does your store have the ability to properly apply sales tax in your region/state and any distributors zone as well?  There is no headache like the IRS if you do not handle your sales tax collection properly.
4. Is your coupon and discount functionality suited for your products or do you need additional tools like quantity pricing or special prices for special shoppers?  This is likely to be a job for your shopping cart developer.
5. Does your store and checkout contain language that leads shoppers to believe they "have to" create an account to shop with you? Fix this now, trust me.  You see, even if the fact is they must create and account, the language does not have to scream the fact at them.  Use terminology like "shipping information" or "billing information" to reduce your shoppers anxiety about creating yet another web account.
6. How many pages or clicks does it take for a shopper to checkout with a product? This needs to be a few pages as possible, and you development money is well spent on optimizing your checkout.
7. Are your product pages laid out correctly? Is there a proper "call to action"? Can shopper easily locate the "add to cart" button?
8. Will you be able to integrate your payment processing yourself, or does your developer need to do this for you?  Do not settle for accepting JUST Google Checkout or PayPal, proper credit card processing will greatly increase your sales and rate of conversion.  Honestly, don be scared, its not that difficult to get a merchant account & gateway going for your shop.  In many cases you can additionally process all or certain credit cards types cheaper than PayPal or Google Checkout. You web developer should be able to advise you on your options for credit cards processing and the integration involved for your shopping cart software.
9. Is you shipping functionality going to do the job or does it need "tweaked"?  Remember, shoppers have been long burned on pumped up shipping charges on eBay and other similar shopping platforms, so you need to get this right to convert shoppers in to sales.
10. Are the systems in place for order and inventory management going to be effective enough for your business, or do you need added functionality here?
11. Do you have effective statistical software installed to tracks sales, conversions, visitors and other site metrics? You absolutely NEED a proper Analytics Solution for your web store... Not optional if you intend to be successful.  It doesn't have to cost a great deal of money at all... Google Analytics is not only free, but highly effective statistical and conversion tracking software.

All in all, I hope your are feeling pretty confident at this point that your choices thus far have been well informed and good decisions.  I have one piece of additional advice to pass on at this point...

You will NOT be successful in your web store, JUST because you have one.  Your shopping cart, like any other business, requires a high level of commitment and maintenance from you.  You must have your finger on the "pulse" of your business at all times, no matter who is managing it.  Lastly, you must be prepared to make a proper reinvestment of funds to your website for technology improvements, maintenance, proper hosting and many other marketing opportunities as well.

Stop by Monday (8/18/2008) for the final part of "So You Want to be a Shop Owner" series wrap up called "Got My Store in Development, Now What?" See you there!