E-Commerce for All

One of the singular most important things you can do for your online store is define a clear easy to follow navigational structure. The benefits are really astounding. Today I will cover a few common mistakes, and some very easy and logical fixes. You will see that the results can come very quickly… So in a couple of days you will be able to tweak any obvious flow issues still existing or that you may have created.

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!

Many seasoned shop owners are only too aware of the peaks and plummets in their sales volume with seasonal factors. To succeed you have to effectively make profitable use of peak sales seasons and improve off peak sales times. Today we will cover some great tips, plans and ideas for improving both peak and non-peak sales periods.

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…