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.

We spend our days telling shop owners to write natural language describing their products to their customers, just as they would for example on the phone with a shopper. To this end, we get endless questions about keywords, density, traffic and more..... End result, most shop owners write spam. Why do you suppose that is?

Simple really, its quite hard not to grab a cookie while your hand is in the jar. Shop owners as a whole have a very challenging time being objective in their pursuit for great search rank. Honestly, shop owners who know little or nothing about SEO inevitably write better rankable content. Why?

Simple, shop owner's who are not trying to learn SEO... cannot be lured to the dark side and when they write, they write for their customers. Fact is, these shop owners are on a whole more successful with their content as well. Their shoppers are more engaged, they trust the store.... and most importantly, they convert better.

We have said to many a client after finishing up an SEO My Zen Cart package, that they needed only to create great content regularly and build links going forward to be successful. You see, once duplication issues and other foundation optimization values are handled.... It's really just that. Keep up with regular content (Google likes to know the lights are on AND someone is home) and build new inbound links.

If shop owners can manage these 2 things faithfully... Even if many foundation optimization issues exist, they can in fact be more successful.

Let's theorize for a moment, my desk phone rings... One the other end is a shop owner getting about 100 unique visits a day and converting at say 1.2%. This shop owner hardly ever tends to his content and has probably NEVER even been all the way through his own checkout.

What would your first steps be?

Many will say... Build links, write articles, you need a press release... No you need pay per click.

None of the above is the answer, for those who were playing along. While all of those things in themselves can bring traffic and rank (more traffic), not a damn one of those things will help you make the sale.

So we have this shop, making 1 or 2 sales a day... willing to spend a wad of cash to bring in say another 100 visits so they can then do 3 or 4 sales a day! Isn't that kinda like putting the cart before the horse?

My answer would be to do a proper usability study of the website, optimize the checkout and trust factors on site and segment their Analytics data to troubleshoot bottlenecks and troublesome areas. Cost, maybe $400... Reward, now you can take those same 100 original unique visitors a day and instead make 4 to 5 sales a day to fund your then convertible traffic campaign! So, small investment, return immediate... and 75% more sales!

Sometimes, we just have to pull our heads out of our little web bubble and use them for the greater good =-)

Article Writing

One way of promoting your web store and products can be achieved for free. As an additional bonus, this “free” marketing method can boost your store's backlinks too.

Article marketing is one of the easiest ways to promote your website in order to generate traffic and increase your earnings.

How does article marketing work?

Write articles relating to your shop and products and submit them to “free content” submission sites. This is easy to do, takes little time and can increase your website traffic, sales and of course, your income.

How can article writing boost traffic and income?

The article on the free content site contains a link to your own website. Readers, after reading your articles, may choose to click on the link and pay you an unexpected visit. Having them on the free content sites is also making these articles available to other webmasters who may wish to publish that article on their site.

If they do pick up your article, your article will include a link back to your online store. And anyone who reads the article on that site can still click on the link to visit your site.

As the list of your published articles grow larger, and more and more of them are appearing on different websites, the total number of links to your site increases also. Major search engines are placing a lot of significance on incoming links to your website so they can determine the importance and popularity of your website.

The more incoming links your store has, the more importance search engines attaches to it. This will then increase your store’s placement in the organic search results.

Promoting a products or services, the links that your articles have achieved will mean more potential and targeted customers for you. Even if visitors who only browse through, you never know if they might be in need of what you are offering in the future.

Search engines do not just index the websites, they also index quality content published articles. They also index any article that is written about your own website’s topic. So once someone searches for that same topic, the list of results will have your site or may even show the articles that you have written.

And to think, no effort on your part aside from writing a decent article was used to bring them to your site. Just your published articles and the search engines.

It is no wonder why many shop owners are suddenly reviving their old writing styles and taking time to write more articles about their site than doing other means of promotion.

Getting their website known is easier if they have articles increasing their links and traffic and making it accessible for visitors searching the internet. Since many people are now taking their buying needs online, having your site on the search engines through your articles is one way of letting them know about you and your business.

The good thing with article marketing is that you can write about things that people would want to know about. This can be achieved in the lightest mood but professional manner, with a little not-so-obvious sales pitch added.

If you think about it, only a few minutes of your time is spent on writing one article and submitting to free content websites. In the shortest span of time also, those are distributed to more sites than you can think of. Even before you know what is happening, you are getting more visitors than you previously had.

If you think you are wasting your time writing these content articles, fast forward to the time when you will see them printed and wide-spread on the internet. Not to mention the sudden attention and interest that people are giving your shop and your products or services.

Try writing some niche related articles and you will be assured of the sudden surge in site traffic, link popularity and interest. Before you know it, you will be doubling and even tripling your sales.

Nothing like getting sales for something you got for free.

Online Retail

When you get right down to it the fusion of the web and business is a bold lesson in abstract thought.

Think about your grandparents and the work they did. Their job could have been on the farm, in the factory, in a store or in the work of their hands.

If your grandparents were business owners most of their customers were met face to face. Customers may have gone to church with your grandparents or attended high school sports events and concerts. They knew each other and that made marketing much less taxing and far more trusting.

Advertising was often in the form of an print ad in a school program or a booster club for the airing of the local high school football games. The advertising wasn’t always essential to the success they had in their business, it was often used as a way to support the local reputation associated with their business.

Your grandparents knew the other business owners in town and often worked together to keep the local spirit of a town alive.

As larger retail businesses began to paint the landscape these small businesses (like your grandparents) often died when no one was really paying any attention. The vast number of empty storefronts in rural America pay tribute to the radical change in the 21st century retail market.

Why has online business created the need for abstract thinking?

Internet stores are composed of graphics and text... Not friends and family. These shopping carts are developed with software and not brick, mortar, glass and wood. These online businesses can operate 24 hours a day including holidays and the owner does not have to be present for a customer to make a purchase.

The business owner cannot see the site's visitors or customers, they can simply track the number of visitors and some analytical data.

It is this uncommon sense of intangibility that may makes online stores seem more like some elaborate computer game and far less like traditional business.

In order for some businesses to move in to the Internet marketplace there was a need to hire younger more computer savvy employees who were schooled with an insatiable appetite to learn and utilize the skills associated with online marketing and business.

Early on many business owners did not believe the web was even worth their while and ecommerce was never going to be successful. Many of those business owners sat back as time passed, the Internet grew and online sales improved, equaled and then surpassed what the business had previously been able to do with a local brick and mortar shop.

Many brave businessmen were early pioneers in ecommerce, and while they may not have understood everything there was to know about ecommerce, the results were crystal clear – ecommerce was a force much more powerful than they would have ever thought and was the road to continued success and the future of business. Many business owners who could not break out of their brick and mortar box have since had to sell that brick and mortar business.

As time passes more and more online business owners have accepted their new role as Internet marketer, dream maker and web design professional. They have grown accustom to this brave new world where faces are not associated with the sale, where customers probably aren’t your neighbor down the street and where the online store doors are always open.

Online business defies the notion of a simple local marketplace by tapping into something more global and more deliverable. Many small shops around the world have become staging areas for a worldwide customer base. Niche products once lost in a sea of big retail shops can now be the primary thrust of a successful online company instead of just one of many diversified products one might have found in an old general store.

Online business has challenged our way of thinking and changed the way the world does business.

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.

Ecommerce Confessions

Confessions of a shop owner:

Yes I can admit when I am wrong and make stupid mistakes and I have made plenty of them. I am writing this as a reference for anyone else that is considering diving into the wonderful world of eCommerce, feel free to learn from my mistakes and succeed.

Not Testing the REAL Market

Well I did, but how I went about it was all wrong. I simply took surveys on price and interest in each individual product. I received nothing but excellent feedback, yet only to sold two products in the first 4 months. Alaskan Salmon sounds good in theory but gaining the shoppers trust is a completely different step. If I were to start all over I would probably just put my products on eBay just to gauge the response to the product, this would allow me to plan for any unforeseen market issues and adjust my services accordingly.

Extremely High Overhead

And the sad thing is I started this business with nice, manageable low overhead in mind. There are many shopping cart systems (Like Zen Cart) out there that will do all of the dirty work for you. For some dumb reason I felt my site needed a custom system from scratch which ended up costing me around $12,000. Now I am implementing a more functional and user friendly system that is FREE! Yes open source and FREE! My cost has only been $800 to implement the open source cart and the additional of this blog on my site is a part of that as well. Needless to say I feel like a big, BIG idiot.

Check References!

Another mistake I really overlooked, I found my first two web designers on car forums that I frequent. That would be the equivalent of looking for a home builder at a car dealership. Between these two snakes alone I lost $5,750 and ended up with nothing. A portfolio does not tell the full story, talk to the people that have hired the design company you are considering, and ask tons of questions.

Offline Marketing for an Online Business

There is a local publication here in Douglas County Georgia, where I live,  that caters to the community. I read that offline marketing generally does not convert to online sales but I am the type that has to touch the iron several times to know its really hot. (I actually did that as a youngster) The publication hits 30,000 homes in the area and I just knew at least 10% of those would visit my site. I ended up with 10 visitors and no sales, just another one of those hard and expensive lessons.

Content is King!

For an eCommerce site content and page real estate is tough, other than product descriptions and store policies there is not a great deal to say. This is why a new business blog is so valuable, search engines love the rich, unique content and what better way to present it? It also allows better communication between the business and shopper. I finally understand this and that is why I have added this blog to my site.

Patience

I still struggle a bit with this one but I have learned that while we would like to have an easy, overnight success it does not usually happen that way.  Some online stores take off immediately, others it may take years but I have learned that you work just as hard today as you did yesterday.

Discounting the Importance of Search Engine Optimization

I really thought this whole SEO thing was spammy BS. However, once I had failed miserably and was forced to really work hard and learn... My opinion have completely changed. I now realize that SEO, is really as much, if not more about the user as search engines. I also realize that SEO has nothing to do with spam or cheating... That is another kind of practice (black hat and positioning). So now I know that Google and my shoppers really want and need the same things. I spend 30 minutes 5 days a week surfing my site and trying to determine what is best for my shoppers... This keeps Google very happy! Viola!

1 Extra Tip

Be flexible and open for change, and I'm sure this holds true with any business out there. You can plan every aspect of your online business, but over time things will change and you really have to embrace that. I had no intentions on carrying Cheesecakes or Gift Baskets but saw an opportunity to give my customers better options have not regretted that decision since then. The Internet is really a changing tide, everyday.. every dollar... every shopper and of course every product. Since this is the nature of your profit stream... You MUST be willing to change and grow along side of the web to succeed.

You see what can happen when you shop actually IN a store... Ohhhh my, your PC would never do that to you!

Have YOU got what it takes?

What every single ecommerce business wants most is for online users to type in their credit card number and make a purchase of their products.... Nice and easy, right?

You can have the best developed shopping cart of its kind, but if no one is buying, then you simply have a really nice website.... Which isn't making any money.

When it comes to ecommerce and online sales, how do you encourage site visitors to move from passive window shopping interest to a paying customer?

The short answer is easy enough... Prove yourself trustworthy and professional so the customer has the necessary confidence to make a purchase.

That, of course, is easier said than done.

This is the hardest concept in ecommerce to implement, but if you want more shoppers and less visitors, you will have to work hard and learn a great deal.

First and foremost, you and your store MUST make the shoppers your number one priority. Having said this, realize the treachery involved in that statement.... Yes, I mean 100% customer service from your and your site.... Even when you are sleeping.

You will have to do whatever ways you can to find a way to prove to your potential customer that you are looking out for their interests and are genuinely interested in passing along helpful information to them.

There are far too many sites that exist that ooze with insincerity and even more with a complete lack of professionalism. It is a very tough sell to believe that these site owners care about anything beyond their wallets. Certainly, you can’t fault them for having an interest in their financial future, but online users want need you to prove to them you can be trusted and that you are worthy of their business.... This is especially true in these uncertain economic times.

I haven’t done exhaustive scientific research on the following statement, but I have performed enough research and management that the guess is very well educated...

The online businesses that will be most successful in the next decade will be ones who are honestly interested in the needs of the customers.

For those of you who are fixated on the bottom line you really need to know that customer satisfaction is tethered to your bottom line. Consider it the cost of doing business, something you pay forward for the ability to live with yourself and sleep at night.

Most of my teen and adult life I spent in restaurant/food management... I can tell you in no uncertain terms, you MUST earn your customers trust, approval and patronage. There is just no other way. So maybe you got in to ecommerce thinking it was a great deal... Easy money? Sorry to disappoint you, but when a customer entered one of my restaurants I have the GENUINE opportunity to look them in the eye and demonstrate my concern for them and their experience in my restaurant. Your online store DOES NOT give you that ability... You have to must work even harder than any brick and mortar small business. This I promise you.

The quickest way to grow your sales is to earn them with trust and professionalism..... and if you watch your bottom line too closely with regard to your customer's satisfaction.... It will move for your, indeed as it falls through the floor. The mix is quite unique, but you must find this balance in your business.

Inspect Your Design

Website design and usability are paramount influences for online shopping. If your store looks 1997 or relies on inferior website design methodology it may be holding you down. Existing shoppers are used to the site and its quirks, but what about new customers?

What impression do new shoppers get from your shop? What have you done cause them to come back?

Take some time and deep introspect to research your competitor's websites... Not so much to "Be Like Mike", but rather to be better. What seems to work well on their store? What have they done really well? How does this research stack up with your shop? What have you learned and what are your going to do about it?

Many ecommerce shops will phase in new site designs every two years or so to stay current and fresh. There are always new techniques, innovations and software applications to assist in the development of something that catches attention and is highly functional for users and business owners alike.

Redesigning your store in a hasty and unplanned manner will only lead to dysfunction and dissatisfaction. Build your new store on a test or development account so you can test the links and the new functionality of the shop's design. Have friends, kids, grandmas and colleagues test your development site to catch any flaws in the design. Make a promise to yourself that you will not discount even suggestions or concerns from your tester, which you deem dumb or untrue.... You will never see things like they do. Suggest you give them each a product to search for and buy, testing your search, navigation and very important checkout. There is nothing worse than launching a new site design that is riddled with errors and broken links.

The use of flashing text, unprompted sound or multicolored text should be avoided... Think about the user. The text may certainly get noticed, but generally for very wrong reasons. Simple, compact text and easy to read will provide the best means for shoppers to understand what your shop is designed to provide.  You may have both visually challenged and portable device customers that may use technologies that have space constraints. Many new site designs keep these limitations in mind... Sadly, many do not.

Anytime you are developing a new or redesigned  ecommerce shop enlist the help of several trusted individuals who are willing to tell you exactly what they think of the store. Honest feedback is important and invaluable when considering something with as much potential as an online store. A traditional businessman wouldn't dream of constructing a building without consulting an architect... So why should online business not strive to enlist the help of web professionals in ecommerce development techniques, design, usability and website appearance?

"People often say that motivation doesn’t last, Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily."
– Zig Ziglar

Humanity is impatient and desires acknowledgment, we’re not used to delayed gratification. We want what we want – and we want it right now... Yesterday even!

There is an unfair proposition in online marketing and commerce as a whole. This inequality can be found in list building, blogging, search engine marketing and virtually every other area of establishing a web presence.

Delayed Gratification

For the website owner there is no such thing as instant gratification. You are not likely receive the feedback you’re hoping for initially and it can seem as if you are improving your website for only one person and quite frankly you’re getting tired of impressing yourself.

Many times it can seem like establishing your ecommerce store is a bit like being asked to fill the Grand Canyon with a teaspoon. You persevere, but it’s hard to see the results.

The silver lining is while you keep working to establish your web store and its position you are finding better ways to describe your products, better content/copy to present, and all of the rough edges are slowly getting smoothed out. Still you have great difficulty measuring your progress.

Ecommerce is really a thankless job that is best suited for individuals that understand the true virtue of patience and are willing to work grievously hard to envision a future when the present doesn’t look so great.

"The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable pre-requisite for success"
– Brian Tracy

We live in a modern time when immediacy is so important to so many people, that a significant number of businesses come and go simply because the owner failed to understand that delayed gratification is the payoff for perseverance, hard work and patience.

In 2006 there were 671,800 new businesses created and 544,800 businesses closed according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

We know that many of these small businesses did not have a clear understanding of the long term trench warfare that comes along with the territory of a new business start up.

This post is actually plotted to encourage you to think long term. Your ability, as a small business owner, to look further ahead than the next sale is crucial if you want to succeed.

Ecommerce can certainly provide a substantially improved market for your products, but you still must do the hard work, and put your best face forward even when your website statistics may seem as if your playing in an empty concert hall.

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts."
– Winston Churchill

In pursuance of the PCI Security Standards Council's current license agreement (10/2008), SSL Version 2.0 with previously noted vulnerabilities will no longer be supported by credit card gateways.

Authorize.net, has specifically decided to drop all legacy support for SSL V. 2.0 during the week of March 16 - 20, 2009. If you plan to accept credit cards you will need to be certain your web hosting is not only designed for your
Zen Cart, but also that the web host is PCI compliant with V. 3.0 SSL as well as the other PCI standards required & recommended.

Authorize.net has clearly noted the following in a recent email alert.

Failure to upgrade their applications or integrations may result in a lost
ability to successfully process transactions via the Authorize.Net Payment
Gateway.

You are advised to contact your web host and/or web developer immediately to secure proper SSL 3.0 if your web host has not already upgraded. The upgrade should yield little or no downtime or disturbance.
Please note that this is no mistake and if you do not have SSL 3.0 compliant hosting, you will not be able to continue to process credit cards, as the gateway communications MUST be transmitted via SSL 3.0. SSL 2.0 is no longer supported under the compliance requirements. For additional support please contact your credit card processing provider.

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.

So you want to be a Shop Owner Part 1

The first logical decision needed is a solid determination of your company's need, ability and budget to build a web store.  There are many factors to consider...

1. Are your products really salable in a shopping cart environment?
2. Can you provide the stock and manpower necessary to fill orders from the web?
3. Does your business answer the phones for extended hours?
4. Can you afford the development and maintenance cost involved to develop and build a great online store?
5. Can you and your co-workers manage the high dedication and demand of a great shopping website?

Does your company have products that can be properly ordered online or are they far to complicated, perishable or fragile to make it a good shopping venue?  There are in fact many products, regardless of their great profitability are just NOT suited for a shopping cart format.  Sometimes a nice informative static site with great content and a strong funneling or flow control to generate email or phone leads is just the ticket!

E commerce  is short for electronic commerce, and it seems like everyone has or wants an online store. Online stores are popping up for all different products types of industries... Its really amazing what you can buy online these days!  Many consumer based products are a  good line to sell on an e-commerce shop: all types of clothes, household gadgets and decor, all kinds of supplies, lighting and electrical, pet supplies, consumer electronics, and even cookies. However, as I eluded to earlier... Not all products are at all suited for the web shopper.  Very high dollar purchases that buyers will want to test drive and overly complicated items with many  of options and information requirements just do not have the potential to convert shoppers in to sales.

#2 Can your business fill the web orders in the event you are successful... Or will shoppers just complain about your service and delivery.  You see, even if the store obtains only minimal sales you and your staff have got to plan to deliver the expected level of service for your company... Even on the web.

I have seen very highly organized companies hit the web and fall on their proverbial asses.  You must develop the proper integration and procedures to connect you cart to your existing business.  This is not an area to work around, the integration needs to be seamless.

Absolutely plan to extend your phone hours.  Just because your store is on the web does not mean shoppers don't have questions and problems.  That lie perpetrated by many e-commerce schemes "Make money in your home just 2 hours a week and gross 100k".  If that's what you think... Then play the lottery your odds are better.  The simple fact is this... Shoppers have become VERY aware of the abundance of online shopping stores and are EXTREMELY wary of shops who do not display hours, contact information.... and a TOLL FREE PHONE NUMBER.  You cannot hide from your customers and make any money.

The general cost of developing just a very basic shopping cart with NO other site pages is going to run you about $700 plus and you will still have monthly costs in maintenance, process, hosting and blah blah blah.  These additional costs depend very significantly on your level of dedication.  Lets face it, anything you can do properly yourself... Is basically FREE!

Next...Part 2 Choosing the Proper Shopping Cart Software - Due 8/11/2008

Part 3 Development Options and Choosing Proper Web Hosting - Due 8/13/2008

Part 4 Shop Necessities, Integration and Functionality - Due 8/15/2008

Part 5 Got My Store in Development, Now What? - Due 8/18/2008

See you there~

First things first, if you are running a Flash or Java menu while they look cool, the search engine's spiders cannot effectively follow the links out from them. You don't necessarily have to get rid of them, just make some hard links with great anchor text somewhere, like in the footer.
The rule of thumb seems to be 3 clicks... Anything more than 3 clicks from your main page is going to have to have serious promotion and flow of it's own to develop properly. People just don't statistically click that far out without becoming sidetracked. So its just good practice to stay within 3 clicks when possible. I generally like to use a "landing" or "category" page type scenario from the main page, this helps your shoppers find the location in your store containing the most relevant information for what they are seeking. I would advise against tricking users in to clicking into areas, I really think if they click once and find what they thought they would...Then they are far more likely to click again.

Linking all of your products from your main page is not recommended. Google itself recommends less than 100 total URLs on any single page. Yes... Perhaps they should improve GoogleBot, but until then you want a good crawl. There is much navigational value in the "landing" page or "category" page setup, not to mention these types of pages will likely have higher Ad scores in your PPC (Pay per Click) campaigns as well. These "Category" pages which are likely linked from your main page navigational menu, act like little web stores all of their own. Give them rich textual content, unique Meta and title information and tight relevant content to reflect the category's product line. You will start to see these pages ranking for their content without your main page and this is exactly what we want. A little on page attention and they will gather some organic backlinks for themselves too. If you really want to boost this process, submit these pages to some deep link directories for their page's theme using concise yet keyword rich anchor text. Remember to vary the titles and descriptions a little to make your scope broader and more effective. Stay away from the reciprocals... Building links is hard work, why would you do the same work for less than full link value?

Another very serious consideration and issue with e-commerce platforms is the amount of products or listing in any given category. When you have too many products in a category and users are expected to click that next button 14 times you might as well just hang it up because they won't! Properly organize your categories so that there is never more than 2 pages in your product view this will help to keep your shoppers on task. Many time web surfers and shoppers alike will be put off by too much information or opportunity.

A nice way to improve your crawl efficiency from the search engines is to either convert your Google sitemap or create a sitemap html static page or a user sitemap if you will, then link it in the footer of your main page or all pages. It is also helpful for misdirected shoppers as well as spiders.

A very good measure of your shop's health statistically is time on site, and bounce. Good navigation can improve both of these metrics significantly and quickly. It makes perfect sense... They are likely to be more engaged when less frustrated.

Now that you have a nice clear navigation, be sure to make a new Google sitemap. If you choose to create or is you already use a user type sitemap scenario... DO NOT BLOCK IT! Its not a whole lot likely to rank for anything, but you will receive no value from it at all if Google cannot crawl it.

I know seems like a fairly simple concept, but I visit many shops where it is clearly overlooked. So, even if you think you have your navigation nailed, take a look at your logs and see what files Google and Yahoo are grabbing when they crawl. Use a heatmap and check out how your users navigate your store. My favorite is to choose a couple of products and ask test shoppers to find them without using the search function. It's worth your time and it can pay the bills!

First of all, and certainly unnecessarily, lets define a conversion...

In marketing a conversion occurs when a prospective customer takes the marketer's intended action. If the prospect has visited a marketer's web site, the conversion action might be making an online purchase, or submitting a form to request additional information. The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take the conversion action.

So you see a conversion or the act of converting a visitor to an action, not just about a sale. It is in fact a general term referring to getting them to do what you want such as sign up for a newsletter or click an Ad even. Now lets dig in...

I really hope you are using a great Analytics program like Urchin or Google Analytics which tracks conversions (completed sales and funnels) for you. Without these types of analytical tools you are pretty much popping caps off in the dark. We will assume you are using Google Analytics for our purpose.

On your main account stats page, the "dashboard", you have several statistical summary boxes. We are going to concentrate on your "Ecommerce Overview". In this summary box within your dashboard you get very basic conversion information. While I would never argue that your overall conversion rate is important, its just not enough information to grow your business. So click the "view report" link and lets dig deeper.

Before we go any further I want to debunk a very common misconception, something I hear far too often...

No, we always sell more beta widgets... That's always been our top product. The alpha widgets just don't sell, so lets concentrate on the beta widgets.

Personally, I really don't care in the least "what you have always" sold more of historically. Have you considered the search rank, volume and potential sales of the other widgets? No, probably not. Here's the thing, ALMOST 100% of the time when a customer tells me that, their lack of sales/conversions for the under performing widget is related to either their site or its lack of rank and therefore search phrase traffic. Only one time that I can remember was this actually related to a "bad" product. So throw everything you think about your products and whether you think they will sell out the window and rely on the data.

Ok, so we have or page one Ecommerce view up in Analytics. Some cool stuff here and some things I want you too look for...

1. In the top graph is about 30 days of conversions. The blue vertical line indicates the weekly separation, by default this is a Monday. I want you to look at the graph and try to discern if you have weekly sales bursts and plummets related to the days of the week. For example, the site I am using has very poor Friday sales.
2. In the next section there is some interesting data, including the amount of sales generated from your site in the 30 day period. I certainly realize many store convert a large percentage of sales on the phone and that this number is in fact skewed for those types of stores... However, you should always be looking for ways to convert more sales on your website and less on the phone. Better usability, search functions, descriptions and perhaps live help will help you to spend less money to make those sales.
3. Average Order Value. This is a highly important metric! For example the site I am using has an overall conversion rate of 12.14%, but the average order is only $40.87. I know the products on this site are in that 40$ range and this tells me quite frankly that shoppers are not being converted in to bigger tickets, additional products are not being added. There are many reason for this, the biggest one is a complete lack of any cross selling technique. Looking at the transactions vs the products purchased confirms this theory. Making no effort to boost your order average is like agreeing to work for the same wage the rest of your life.
4. On the right hand side of the same box is some very detailed revenue information. We'll cover just a few, but I encourage you to poke around in here. In the traffic sources, under Revenue Analysis, click keywords. This is all of your converting keyword traffic. In the same area you can select just paid or non-paid (organic). Here you will look for high converting keywords... Even if the visits are low. You should also seek out some very badly performing keywords and jot them down as well... They are likely to have big traffic and low conversions. These are shoppers that you dropped the ball. They got there and you/your site consistently failed to convert them.
5. OK pack to the previous E commerce main page. In the same area click on the map overlay. There is significant value in knowing where your shoppers are coming from. Perhaps you are getting a great deal of traffic from a region you don't currently ship to... This you can fix. Maybe you can add some products with regional flavor to better convert those regional shoppers in to larger orders. This is good info all the way around.
6. The last section on the E-Commerce main page is "Top Revenue Sources". Lets check out the "products" section which is on your left by default. Here you can determine a few things about your purchased products... My favorite is "Unique Purchases". Depending on your shopping cart system this number means the number of purchases used to purchase the total number products purchased. On some shopping cart systems, like Zen Cart, it will track combined cart results and additional purchases from logged in shoppers in the same "purchase". This is a nice indication of repeat business from satisfied shoppers!
7. Lastly, click back to the main E-Commerce screen and lets have a look at your traffic sources. This is last, but likely to be your best change to get a handle on your site and its potential for sales. Sure you want to look to see what converts best, but consider the source! For example this site is using AuctionBlox for their eBay auctions and clearly they are converting best... Um-mm 100%. So remember, look for opportunities, not just things converting well... They can be quite deceiving.

All in all, you have to get a feel for your site. I would very highly suggest that you checkout a heat map if your visits are high, but conversions are low. Make use of the tools available to you... Things like software/mods to recover cart sales from shoppers who have bailed from checkout are invaluable. Don't be afraid to think outside the box... And please do your own thing, its ok to learn from others and you may find some success in copying their techniques... But you will never be as successful as you could be with fresh ideas. Your store will give you the answers, just put your ear to the ground and listen.

While I would advise against pumping your brand /company name in things like page titles, there is a very long reaching value to marketing your brand in your domain name.  While your brand name very likely does not carry any search volume or notoriety yet, you cannot exclude your brand from your development.  If you for example go with a keyword rich domain name and fail to register your brand of company domain names and derivatives you may find yourself with a traffic sucker in the future.  Certainly for the traffic sucker or domain flipper there are valid reasons for registering domain names like your business name.  How would it suit you to have a spammy Ads page at a domain name which seemingly represents your company?  This WILL happen if you do not register them.

Since this is such a big decision we have some pointers below to help you make a solid domain name choice for your store.

1. If the .com and .net versions cannot both be registered to you then move to another name.
2. If you are going with a keyword rich domain name... Dashes are NOT required most of the time.  Google and other search engines will pull or stem these keywords from other connecting letters as long as there is enough volume in the keyword's search volume.  If you want to know for example, whether Google stems your keywords simply search for that keyword by itself and look to see that Google has bolded it in urls or domain names.  If you find it anywhere in the url in the search query, then Google knows this word.
3. Plan on registering a few domain names.  Misspellings, product based, brand/company names, and your second choice/runner up domain name as well.  This is like an insurance policy for your company.
4. Domain names as a rule are now required to be 3 or more characters.
5. Skip the dashes and underlines.
6. Shorter is better and snappy is awesome!
7. The terminology should be natural.  If you are looking to register "store4u", then you would also seek to register and redirect "storeforyou", "store4you", and "storeforu" in both the .net and .com versions.  Again, do not become easy pickens' for traffic suckers.
8. Avoid "my", "your", etc and other pronoun based domain names suggested by tools.  These will only send traffic to the name that does not use the pronoun as users will frequently forget these.
9. Register your main name (at least this one) for more than one year, as the search engines tend to favor the investment with a small bit of trust score.
10. If you are in the US your REALLY need to have the .com, it is the most common and recognized tld extension.
11. Avoid very hard to spell or commonly misspelled words, unless you register those misspelling also.

Domains that are easy to remember will fare better in all of your marketing campaigns.  If a shopper is using email or a social media type venue to convey your "Great" store to another... You might want them to type is right, as this is not only a top notch referral, but very likely to be a good old fashioned organic backlink as well.

There is no arguing the fact that there is some ranking value in a keyword rich domain, it is not however enough benefit to lose the ability for users to remember your domain name.  Just like anything else... Balance.

Let me guess... You want to spend hundreds of dollars on PPC and not convert the visitors? You want to build your traffic up so you can brag, then do things to prevent the shoppers from buying anything? Seriously, we all want to make money.

Business: A continuous and regular activity that has income or profit as its primary purpose.

Ok now we know why, but how on earth are we going to convince people to buy... Better question yet, convince shoppers to buy more, more often and more easily. The way I see things is this, shoppers have become "web experts" (at least they believe so). The average online shopper is in fact far less likely to be tricked or misled.

"It only takes on bad apple to spoil the bushel". Fact is, as a very generalized whole, we the webmasters, shop owners and SEOs have brought this suspicious Internet surfer to their present un-trusting and un-loyal state. Lack of transparency, tricks and general shenanigans to take advantage of visitors has caused an Internet disease among web surfers. All the squeeze pages and spamming has honestly cast a shadow on all site owners in the eyes of the public. So how do you exclude yourself from this group?

There are some very specific techniques to improve your shopper's trust, but generally speaking you only have to earn their trust... Hmmm just like any other business. Before you read on clear your mind of what everyone else does, what you used to do and most importantly put yourself in the shopper's position.

1. Can customers easily find your contact information? Or do you look like your store is a scam? There is no valid reason in this age of technology for a shop not to display a contact number... Shoppers know this too.
2. Do you display "Trust Seals" yet fail to offer simple trust to your shoppers in return? This is simple, if you feel you need such symbols to elicit a visitors trust, then very obviously you have put a band aid on your trust issue and tried to take the easy way out. Seal or no seal if your store has less than honest elements shoppers will still find you unable to be trusted, seal or not.
3. Spam is a big one and in fact some of the spamming techniques used by site owners borders on criminal. How pissed is a shopper searching for "red blocks" and clicks in to your site to fine "blue blocks"... Oh yeah pissing off shoppers will convert them, right?
4. Are you one of those shop owners cross selling 16 unrelated widgets on every product page? Internet users are not only hip to this, but you come off like a car salesman in a brown plaid coat chasing them around the site.
5. Can shoppers find your products without have to click through 10 pages of what they don't want? Keep you navigation within 3 clicks to product and sorted in a fashion shoppers can understand. TIP: shoppers are not search engines.
6. This one really get me... I will leave a store for this one. When a shopper adds an item to their cart are you taking them to their cart and offering them the option of checking out or are you letting your sales is king mentality screw you over. Heres the thing, many times shoppers miss a "added to cart alert" and then have to search out their cart to confirm the price and addition. Are you so sales hungry that you would prevent a customer from checking out with one item? Offer them a choice, continue shopping or checkout!
7. Do you have a proper SSL? I don't care if you use PayPal only, get an SSL and tell your shoppers how to determine if the page is encrypted. Then make damn sure you have NO unencrypted items on those pages. Google may be able to get away with this, but you're not Google.
8. Display your sale or discount prices in the very first page of checkout. If you don't shoppers will likely assume your cart is broken and leave for the other hundred million results for the product.
9. Product descriptions must be designed to inform and gain trust. This is a key piece, not only do you need to text to rank that product page with... But you have to provide all the details to convert the sale. No trickery here, just the facts.
10. If you are automatically adding customers to a newsletter or email list by default, STOP NOW. Even if they catch the default checked box you have just convinced them you are a spammer.

Certainly gaining the trust of your shoppers is a very complicated area and we have not even covered 5% of the things you need to do. So PPC, banner Ads and squeeze pages are failing... We know this, hell even Google knows this. What do you suppose is the new marketing vantage in this web 2.0 surfer savvy marketplace? It is trust, pure and simple.

Let us concentrate on your peak sales season(s) first. You will find below that this is not only extremely important, but requires a great deal of preparation and planning as well.

1. Generally speaking, web traffic is highest will be winter months per region. The chart below indicates the amount of traffic percentage regionally for March, 2008. So the first thing you must do is determine where your traffic comes from.

   

2. Planning is everything! New products, good supply veins, navigation, conversion improvements, marketing, design and indeed, optimization also.
3. Re-designing your store is usually a very good move, as technology changes and better platforms and functions arise constantly. However, this should be TOTALLY completed 3 months before the arrival of your peak sales period... So you have ample time to test and complete usability studies.
4. Send out a marketing newsletter to previous customers, sorted by the shoppers during your peak season (if you can). Invite them back, offer them a special discount or sale item. Do this about 30 days before you begin to pick up in traffic and sales.
5. Get new products, no one can grow their rank and sales effectively without the addition of new content... Your content is products. Keep the new products relevant to your store, if you get too far away from your main product line it will only dilute your content. The best opportunities are usually items that compliment your existing inventory, like accessories and replacement parts.
6. Give your page titles and content a SEO freshen up. Are your page titles targeted and highly relevant? Do your pages have enough content to rank effectively with?
7. Test your PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns and tweak them well before you want them to perform in the peak season.
8. Answer the phone! Obviously, you should have a customer service number on your website... Staff it well for your upcoming peak sales. If you haven't already, get a toll free number and post the hours you will answer customer service calls with the timezone.
9. Test your site and optimize your checkout, you only get one chance to make a first impression.
10. Pull your annual stats for the sales period and plan out your rate of sales increase. You see ideally, your sales are improving... So determine your rate of improvement and plot is against last years sales to determine about how busy you will be. Add 5 or 10% for good measure.
11. Call your suppliers and reps, let them know you expect a large increase in your sales and when. Sometimes you can even negotiate a better price with larger expected sales for a certain period. Make very certain they will be able to supply your site appropriately in the upcoming sales boost.
12. Offer free shipping, gift wrapping and other amenities to bring shoppers to your site... And hopefully share it with others also!
13. Deliver, deliver, deliver... Excellent service, website operations, shipping and selection so that shoppers return and send you some referral traffic.
14. Use "logical" cross selling to offer shoppers additional products and raise your invoice average sales. Logical means they might actually need it! If I am shopping for a shirt and you offer me a hammer, I'm not only not biting... But I may generate an not-so good opinion of your store's ethics.
15. Offer referral discounts. Hey, if a customer can supply you a referral lead... Reward them period.

These are just some of the things your should be concentrating on to survive and even grow your peak sales. Never be afraid to use your imagination and try new things, clearly you want to think them through and monitor the results... But you never know until you try.

What about that time of the year when shop owners are sitting on their butts? Well, first of all if you are content to sit on your butt instead of growing your non-peaks sales then you may go... This will not interest you.

1. Offer off-peak sales promotions designed to target different demographic groups. Have you considered taking your show on the road? If your peak sales are in the winter... Then target a different region where its winter!
2. Offer special sales offers and free shipping to help you convert the traffic you do have. Give them a reason to shop now.
3. Use your newsletters to bring your shoppers in for special sales and coupon opportunities. Buy some trinkets and give them away with every order for a month. Send gift certificates... Did you know that gift certificates convert better than coupons?
4. This is the time to make those heavy navigation, product and design changes. Send a newsletter to your current customer base asking for ideas and letting them what changes you are considering. Want to really get your off peak sales popping? When the changes are complete send them a gift certificate or coupon and ask for their feedback!
5. There is really no better time to target your local market than off peak sales times. Let's face it, you have more time to dedicate to a great local marketing campaign.

Once again, I don't think I can stress this enough... Use your imagination. Great ideas were thought up by someone who used their imagination and took risks to make the idea great. If you think you will fail... You most likely will.

Referral sales convert higher and are more consistent than any other sales technique. Additionally, the local sales market is far more likely to deliver dependable residual sales. I am certainly not saying you should concentrate solely on your local market, but neglecting it is passing up a valuable sales opportunity.

What do you have to offer the local market? How about no shipping costs as they can pick their item. Pride is a big one, believe it or not many Americans would much rather do business with a local merchant over a larger faceless business. Many times shoppers will even pay more to shop locally.

There are some very specific optimization techniques to help your store better attract a local market as well as your www mass market. Very simply put, you can optimize your site for both, very easily.

1. Always display a toll free and a local phone number.
2. Use your address in your template pages.
3. Register your business with Yahoo Local Directory, Google Local Business Directory, and other local offerings. Most are free.
4. Offer local free pickup of purchases, or even deliver them yourself!
5. Link out to local attractions and community sites.
6. Advertise on local sites.
7. Offer a price break or coupons for local shoppers exclusively.

These are just a few great ways to better get your store noticed in web search by your local market. Do be afraid to think outside the box, the ONLY bad marketing idea is the one you don't try. Some of the greatest marketing success stories of all time were expected to fail.

Local hands on type marketing can be very labor intensive, but I have some easy ways to get your name out there for little or no cost and very little work!

1. Get business cards, and not home printed card either. Put your picture and location on these cards, and spend the extra 5 bucks to include a local coupon or special deal on the back.
2. Ask businesses you normally patronize to display your cards... Hell, give then a link in return as it also benefits you. Do this right, buy some cardholders for .50c a piece and display your business in a professional light.
3. Leave a couple of cards on the hand dryer in the bathrooms you visit. Okay, I know this sounds crazy, but folks who find them assume you put them down to wash your hands and forgot them. Hmmmm, they were valuable enough for you to pick up, so they are given the impression that the cards were important to you... And thus they are interested in why.
4. Flyers are okay too, but I tend to use business cards as they have a much greater retention rate. You see, brochures and flyers can be bulky and therefore far more likely to end up in file 13. Business cards on the other hand are often collected like someones own personal directory and easily slip in to a pocket or purse without damaging them.
5. NEVER, EVER leave home without a few cards in your pocket. Opportunities will arise, be ready!
6. We have been doing something rather interesting, my husbands idea actually. We bought decent looking promotional pens and have been distributing them in a most unorthodox manner. Just tossing pens out at local events really converts little, but we are not doing that. In this digital age we live in, we use our bank cards to pay for almost all purchases... Just like over 40% of the rest of the American public. So, we stock the vehicles and every time we sign a receipt we use our pen and leave it! Folks take pens from businesses regularly out of habit, accident, and even because they liked the way it wrote. If they take and are not given it, they are more likely to hang on to it!
7. We always leave several pens at businesses who are likely to have to purchase many replacement pens. Places like restaurants (servers), local carryout food shops, gas stations, banks, and yes... Your local schools. Our kids have a ton of these pens in their book bags and lose them regularly to our advantage.
8. Support your local charities and schools. Sports are very successful advertising opportunities in most local markets. Buy an Ad in that football program, the investment is small and the return is local notoriety.
9. Sponsor a local ball team or bowling team, this is also pretty inexpensive and carries a great deal of weight for your local reputation. When you do this, make sure you visit a few events (games)... Your presence only strengthens your local reputation.
10. Join your local BBB (Better Business Bureau), they will provide you with plethora of great marketing opportunities locally. Additionally, other local merchants and potential customers alike recognize this as a mark qualifying your business as dependable and trusted.
11. Offer special deals to other BBB merchants... Increase your own local network, receive special prices and service in return and fantastic referral business.
12. Offer a few free or pro-bono products and services locally a year. People like merchants with a high community conscience and are very likely to use your services or products in the future if you are charitable, locally.
13. Put your web address for your store on your vehicles. Something simple and unobtrusive will bring some sales in and again bump up your notoriety as a local business.

These are just a few of the things we do locally and I wanted to share them with you. The honest return on your local campaign is very likely to be 40% of your business and will fast become your "bread and butter" sales. Our local sales are about 30% of our business and growing every month. We see about 5 to 10 referrals a month and have boosted our sales with our local campaign quite a bit.

So go local and build your business on a solid foundation of trust and reputation.

Melanie Prough

Overall Internet users have become more sensitive and aware of the factors which are considered "trust" violations. Surfers are quite skilled in identifying a "bad site" and are reacting accordingly. No longer do droves of Internet users mindlessly click ads or provide personal information, those days are gone. We are in the dawn of a far more savvy Internet user.

Some mistakes we see are in fact very common and very out of date, others are just plain lack of foresight. Today we will cover some of the most common trust reducing metrics we have found in the stores we have analyzed. You may well know that we develop and optimize Zen Cart, so some factors will be directly related to the Zen Cart software, but most of these store trust issues are very common in other e-commerce platforms.

• If you are using a shared SSL or none at all, you are sending a message of distrust to your shoppers. Even full PayPal or other off site processing accounts should make use of a private SSL. Customers don't even want to provide their email address without one. Honestly for the cost involved there is no valid reason not to use a proper secured protocol for your users.
• If you are using a private SSL, the battle does not stop there. Many times we visit a site and the secured pages include outside non-secure links or elements. Shoppers have no idea that these links or elements are generally just part of your template, and they don't care either. They only know the lock is showing broken and they feel unprotected.
• Let shoppers know you have installed an SSL to protect their transaction and what to look for to assure it is working. This is really not necessary as most know already, but it sends the message that you personally have taken steps to protect them.
• Collect as little information as possible on checkout. Shoppers do not want to answer unrelated personal information questions. Questions of this nature only lead them to believe you are somehow hording and using their information for other means.
• Enhance your checkout with helpful tips and notes to let shoppers know where they are in the checkout process and that they are on track. This includes a clear shipping policy for rates and delivery. They should know their shipping choices in the very beginning of checkout, as sites like eBay and such have burned shoppers with inflated shipping charges and they are very wary if they do not know the shipping cost before the begin to checkout
• Send ALL customers a receipt from YOUR store's domain email address and provide tracking or an update of shipment to EVERY customer without fail. Sure your processor will send them a receipt, but lack of your own receipt does not build any trust and makes you look less than professional.
• Do not under any circumstances allow your product catalog or checkout to have an unbranded template or theme. Shoppers have been abused by the entire affiliate sales phenomena and are very wise to such changes. I highly recommend you do not even redirect to a different url for anything, but if you must the template/theme must remain branded consistently throughout.
• Do not monetize your store or link out to sponsored ads and such. They have come to your store to make a purchase from you, not to be fed off to another site. Not to mention you are screwing yourself out of sales by letting them click away.
• If you use an off site processor like PayPal, you must return shoppers to a checkout success page. Otherwise you leave them wondering about the transaction and this is not likely to produce a return sale or referral from the shopper.
• Trust seals can be very costly. Most are pretty effective in gaining a trusting relationship from a shopper. However, if you are using a seal of any kind and have faked the resulting certification page... The shopper is leaving. For example, I see the PayPal verified seal on sites all the time that goes nowhere, no link at all. I have also seen such verification services lead the shopper to a self hosted page... Shoppers are not this dumb, they click these items as they already know what to expect on the other end. If you can't install or afford a proper verification result, then use none.
• Open your visitors experience with a mission statement or store information, do not hard sell them as soon as they load the page. Nothing is worse than that jewelry salesperson who stalks you around the store, and shoppers not only hate this, but realize good products do not require this type of technique.
• Provide good product images. Shoppers understand the color issue with monitor compatibility, but the do not want to see disclaimers regarding your product description or image. Statements such as "delivered product style may vary from image and description" do not exactly illicit trust.
• Cross selling is a very valuable tool if you understand suggestive selling and are keeping the shoppers needs in mind. Sell only related products to a customer, and only a few items as shoppers really do get confused as to what they "need" to buy in addition to the selection for compatibility and such.
• Your contact information, preferably a toll free number MUST be easy to locate. Contact pages are adequate, but a large font top side toll free number tells the shopper you are a "real" business.
• Never, ever send emails of any kind related to your store from a non-domain email account. How cheesy is it to buy something and receive a follow up email from the store owners GMail account?
• Provide an address for your store on your contact page, even if it is home based. Shoppers are very aware that many people work from home, but failing to do this only tells them you are hiding something. You do not trust them, why should they trust you. Even a PO Box is better than skipping this trust factor.
• Lastly, and you would really think this is the most obvious of all... Do not sell products you don't believe in or know well enough to provide customer support for.

Building trust is a highly effective sales tool, regardless of the fact that its the right thing to do. Shoppers are not alone in looking at these trust metrics, search engines use many of the above mentioned elements to score your trust within their ranking system as well. If you are not sending a message of trust to your shoppers, you are running a dying business as it will never build the referral and return sales you need to succeed.