First it was a deal with Power Reviews Inc. a few months back. July actually. Recognized as the top review website destination for eCommerce shoppers on the web to date Google is planning on leveraging this platform to drive product reviews. Now we have the purchase of like.com a major comparison website that online customers use to browse millions of products visually.

Combine those two business relationships with the fact that Google has start ramping up it’s own product search functionality allowing searchers to not only read reviews, compare products and prices, and find specifications before they enter any shopping cart website and you have a pretty powerful e-commerce solution.

Does Google want to become a serious competitor to say Amazon or eBay both of which are known as the top eCommerce companies on the web? Likely, or hopefully not but this does change the game for you and any other e-tailer trying to run their small online business. Here are a couple of tips that you can bank on being critical for future success.

• Secure quality and unique images for all of your products. Google is keen on image recognition and their acquisition of like.com who also focuses on their own picture recognition tool only strengthens the fact that you need to have good quality images on your shopping cart’s product catalog. The more images per product the better you stand to rank in Google’s SERPs as well.
• Product definitions will also be key. That’s two partnerships Google has made are both in the review and comparison category. Having strong definitions for your catalog’s products is the only way you will have a chance of making yourself unique in these over saturated market conditions. If you are making your own products then you are writing your own product descriptions so keep it very detailed. If you are reselling products on your hosted shopping cart then disregard the manufacturers descriptions and write your own. Describe the product in a way that your potential customer would search for it. Brand names are good but model names may not be something searched as much as product description.
• Tag it good. Not only do you need excellent product descriptions but you need to provide very detailed and high quality tagging properties. In order to hit high on the SERPs take a key from the blogging industry. If you are selling belts then think more than just a tag for belts, think: leather belts, dressy belts, womens / mens belts, etc… Make sure Google can crawl through this information easily as well if you want your e-commerce store located on the first page.
• Start looking at alternatives your alternatives. Obviously, Google is king in the search world but Bing is creeping up. There are other locations you can pull your customers from and if you’re not prepared or don’t have the time to flex with the new potential challenges that Google jumping further into the e-commerce game offers you need to make sure you’re getting your customers from somewhere.

This is a dynamic market and just like anything else on the web there is a lot of saturation. That makes changing your strategy all the more critical. Some of those may complain that the infamous Google is making their life a living hell but they are a business just like you and they’re eyes are on the money. Keep up or top them right? I’m pretty sure none of us have a multi-billion dollar search engine to compete anytime soon so if you want to play in the online shopping cart world then you need to step up your game.

Now would be a good time to look at doing a complete overhaul on your shopping cart, it’s catalog templates, your product templates and descriptions, images, checkout page, etc… If you have a very large presence then start with your highest margin products and work down from there. If you have multiple e-commerce websites then start with the highest converting one. Talk on the forums and blogs and reach out to an e-commerce consultant if you are feeling lost or overwhelmed. Happy selling!

Something everybody is familiar with as a shopper but maybe not as an e-commerce e-tailer professional. When we speak about persistence we are not talking about pressuring your customers into buying, even though that’s what I’m sure we all want to do. We’re speaking about persistent cookies.

Keeping track of what your customers look at, almost order, or have ordered is key to return sales and increasing revenue per sale on your shopping cart. Take a hint from the eCommerce leaders. When you log into your Amazon profile you will not only know everything you’ve ever bought but you’ll be constantly reminded that “you may like this since you bought that” or “you forgot to buy such and such”. You know it works because you’ve bought from those lists.

So the question is how do we use persistence to our advantage as an online sales organization? Well here are a couple of tips for using cookies to improve sales.

• Let your customers know. Upon checkout you have the ability with any serious shopping cart software to inform customers that you will keep their order for a set amount of days. Some may view this as a potential threat to order commitment rate increasing cart abandonment rates but if you’re secure with your product and your on-page optimization this is an effective way to keep customers who may not have the money at the moment coming back to what they wanted with minimal effort to purchase on say, pay-day.
• Mini Shopping carts / Side cart. If you have an online store that generates plenty of return visitors or customers keeping track of recent orders and recently browsed items and placing them conveniently to the side of the target page they are on is an excellent idea. They may be browsing but if you keep what they’ve really wanted in front of their eyes long enough you’re bound to get an order.
• Persistence in cross selling. Related products can easily be cross sold. Let’s say your customer or potential customer has looked at item x yesterday. You keep track of their visit with a cookie and now their back looking at items y and z today. Upon checkout running a special buy both for this price offer not only has the potential to double your order size but get’s the emotional commitment needed on your eCommerce site to begin with.
• Some customers look for the prize, others run from the threat. Letting a customer know that something they’ve looked at in the past is running low on stock, about to become unavailable, or is in great demand threatening to delay their potential order has the ability to turn a potential order into an order. That’s leveraging their fear of losing out on something to get a commitment otherwise known as creating urgency. Don’t simply focus on the fear though. If a customer has been looking at something multiple times it may be time to let them know that there is soon to be a special or bonus. This drives revenue up on your shopping cart.

So there are a few ideas. If your eCommerce platform doesn’t support these type of functionality well you need to move on. The old saying holds true. You get what you pay for and if you’re not using these tools on your shopping cart website you’re leaving plenty of money on the table. Maybe setting some of these things are a little too complex or tricky to setup on your hosted shopping cart? If so, have no fear there are plenty of E-Commerce consultants out there hungry for your business. Make sure you relay your requirements and goals though when using the service. Happy selling!

Something brought up to me over the weekend. I was enjoying dinner with a good of mine who is a VP of Sales for a major software company. We were discussing his latest quarter and I started in on eCommerce and shopping carts. Something came from the conversation that made a lot of sense.

You see there are a lot of ways to sell a product whether it’s B2B, B2C, or whatever. You have your retail storefront typically utilized in a B2C or business to consumer sales model. This is a physical location that you draw customers into with advertising over the most effective media of your choice. Once customers are in the store your sales person is a combination of sales people and (or) customer service representatives and the in store advertising generated by you or in combination with your product manufacturers marketing efforts. You see, every product is a miniature commercial. The packaging that is. The way you stock your shelves, the way you place key products on the end caps to draw customers down an aisle, the small items you attempt to up-sell at checkout. They all are very effective at gaining the interest of a potential buyer.

How do other businesses make sales?

In a more effective situation you have more sales people manning the sales floor. Think of an electronics store or just take a walk through the mall. There are always a ton of well informed sales representatives either commissioned or not making sure that you know every advantage of the products and services they are selling. In B2B these sales people usually set meetings with key people in an organization to peddle their wares but I think most e-commerce websites are targeting consumers with their products and services so we’ll focus on that.

Take that information home

Now go to your website in your mind and tell me where are your salespeople? That’s right, unless you have one of those extremely ineffective and annoying talking websites you really don’t have a sales person. That’s probably part of the reason your potential customers are visiting your online catalog in the first place. They want to shop discreetly, comfortably, and quietly (no sales person breathing down their throat) and have chosen the web to do so. You don’t want that freedom in your customers though do you? If you are trying to earn their business you need an effective way to drive them to your key products or earn the most money per visit. You also want to avoid a high bounce rate on your hosted shopping cart. So how do you accomplish this?

Deploying sales tactics on your e-commerce website

If you want to earn the most possible from your visitors and increase the amount of sales on your shopping cart you need to think like a sales person. Never been in a sales position? Sure you have. How did you convince yourself to start your online store? How did you convince others to invest with you, your product vendors to sign on, or any aspect of your business? Sales is a normal part of everyday business no matter what job you have or business you run, especially eCommerce businesses. Here are a few tips on employing powerful sales strategies on your e-commerce site:

Optimize your pages

• Make sure that your home page or front end catalog is very clean and simple. Think usability. If it is difficult for your website visitor to find what you want them to find in less than 5 seconds you’ve already lost a majority of your potential sales.
• Keeping your product pages informative is key but don’t overbear the consumer with information. Most online shoppers are looking for a product but will easily go into comparison mode if you give them that ability. You don’t want to burden them with too much information or they’ll feel compelled to search around the web for more information.

• Checkout should be fast, lightning fast! Have you ever been in a store and saw a line too long to make it worth the effort to buy that useless item that caught your eye on a casual shopping expedition? I have and most people will. Same thing applies to your shopping cart’s checkout page. Keep it smooth, simple, and fast. Eliminate unnecessary steps from the process and if your hosted shopping cart solution does not allow for simple editing of the checkout page’s templates start looking for a new provider immediately.

Don’t tell about your product, Sell it

• E-Commerce is about selling online not product advise, unless that’s what your selling of course. If you are reselling products talk to your vendors about what information they typically use to sell online. Check out comparable e-commerce sites and see what strategies they are using if you know they are successful then barrow some ideas and put them to work on your shopping cart.

• Don’t outsource the content on your product pages or use generic statements. Avoid outlandish claims and keep it looking professional. If you can write your own product descriptions do so. If you can import your own photos or real life product photos and video demonstrations you are going above and beyond and it will make a difference. When consumers bounce from one online store to another they are looking for something that makes them go yeah that’s what I want. Think what it would take for you to pull the trigger.

Learn to use E-Commerce analytic tools

• If you don’t know how to use Google Analytics or another website analytic program talk to an eCommerce consultant or a third party service that will help you set goals for individual catalog pages, products, checkout rates, etc. You need to know what potential customers are doing or not doing.
• Experiment with your website but do so carefully and in small ways. Don’t attempt to change the entire look and feel of your eCommerce website overnight and expect good results. Keep in mind that SEO can be affected by altering your website and other drastic changes could greatly impact your business. Use multivariate tools to compare small sections of change at a time. Play around with your product positioning and see what strategies are working for you and which ones are costing you money

If you learn to think like a sales person you will guarantee your eCommerce storefront to be more profitable for your company. If it is your company then you’d better start fast. If this is something of a challenge for your mentality then don’t hesitate to reach out to friends and family in the sales profession or hire a sales consultant to look over your website, product pages, and checkout page. Take their advice and deploy carefully with analytic tools to learn what will be most effective. If this is overwhelming prepare for lackluster results. Happy Selling!

You’ve all been there and most of us have done it. Have you put something on your website that you absolutely hate just to see if you can get an extra sale or two per month out of it? You know what I mean, you’re afraid that even the most naive customers might walk away but hey let’s try it anyway? Well today I wanted to post what I see as the top 5 reasons e-commerce sites majorly screw up and piss customers off during the search or checkout process.

1. Don’t pop a want to chat bubble in my face.

If you want to use this type of tool there is a right way and a very wrong way to do it. Adding live chat functionality to your website can mean a very high percentage boost in conversion rate in your shopping cart especially if you are selling a technical product or one that promotes a lot of questions from potential buyers. However, going about it the wrong way can spell disaster and grow your bounce rate in turn driving up your cost per acquisition (CPA). If you are going to add this functionality to your website take into consideration the following points:

• Keep it on all pages but in a place tucked to the side on a left or right column. Nobody wants a window popping in their face asking to chat and way too many people (even HP) are bombarding customers with these. If a customer has a question they are going to find a way to ask. Make it convenient, don’t force it.
• Man it for goodness sake. If you don’t have a staff that can actually answer questions during normal business hours you are simply aggravating your potential customers or portraying an image that you are a VERY small company.
• Even worse, chat bots. Come on, do you think your customers are that stupid that a chat bot will actually suffice for real questions. If your product is that simple then you don’t need a chat option anyway.

2. I don’t need to see a miniature person talking to me at the bottom of your website.

• Oh my god! I hate it when you hit the home page of a website and after the load pops up a man, woman, robot, or whatever telling you about their website. Hello, I’m already here and since I chose the web as my media I probably don’t want to listen to babble. HTML is hyper TEXT not hyper small person giving me a sales pitch at full obnoxious volume. Does anybody remember the paperclip in Windows? Nuff said.

3. AdSense on your eCommerce site… really?

• This is a sour topic for me. I hate shopping cart websites that have ads smeared all over the page. Not only does it make for a very complicated read it eliminates any and all optimization you can offer a page. How are people supposed to find and purchase your product if they are bombarded by competitive product links?
• There is an argument that you can augment the bounce rate with AdSense but the reality is that you should be trying to eliminate your bounce rate with e-commerce optimization. If your product makes so little margin that you want to subsidize it with ad-words then maybe you shouldn’t be selling the product to begin with.

4. Fake reviews are for fake products

• Consumer reports is dead. Most people are more intelligent then you seem to think. Popping up 5-10 review sites and rating your product 5 of 5 and competitive products 2-3 of 5 is bogus and while there may be some short term strategy there are an equal amount of other products employing the same strategy. Rather than blowing time building out a lavish review website perhaps spend some more time optimizing your e-commerce site, finding legit review companies to test your product and review it, spend some money and have video demonstrations filmed, or just improve your product. These sites are quickly being recognized as spam and you should be steering towards the next strategy if you haven’t already.

5. Simple E-Commerce please! Optimize my checkout page

• Why do I need to create an account, verify my email, and choose to subscribe to your spam just to buy a product? Oh, I don’t I just go buy it somewhere else. The faster you can get somebody through your shopping cart and checkout page the higher the conversion rate you will recognize. If you have multiple pages in your checkout, feel it’s clunky looking, or cannot edit for performance you need to find another eCommerce provider.
• Give me a solid confirmation and don’t ask me things you don’t absolutely need to know. Why do I need to choose if it’s a Visa or MasterCard. If you cannot write a snippet of code to auto determine simply from the numbers I enter you need to talk to a developer or find a better hosted shopping cart platform.

Well that’s my rant today. I really think it’s sad to see somebody spend blood, sweat, tears, and most importantly money to get their website up, product advertised, and e-commerce storefront ready to go only to have customers visit and walk away to find another reseller or vendor. Do yourself a favor and buy some of your own products. See how it feels to go through the process. If you are new to this business find an eCommerce consultant who can walk you through some things and guide you to better profits. Happy Selling!

If you’re selling your product primarily online you know that cost per acquisition or CPA plays a major role in your profit margins. Basically, in one way or another you’re paying for every customer you have. The challenge is that for every one customer that actually commits and purchases your product there are probably many more that you pay to get to your site and evaluate but there’s not enough umph to get them to click purchase. This has a nasty effect on your CPA and can creep into your businesses earnings if not analyzed and performance checked often.

So how do you minimize the CPA and improve your eCommerce shopping cart”s efficiency?

First you need to understand what your conversion rate is. Are you running any type of analytic software on your store front site? If so then you should be able to customize that to report on your conversion rates. If you are paying for any type of PPC marketing whether adwords, banner ads, or some other type of marketing you need to track how many of those customers follow on through the process and act on a purchase.

Next thing you need to take into consideration is if your site is optimized to get customers in the momentum you desire. That should momentum to quickly select the product you want them to purchase and rush through the checkout page. E-Commerce is about money not beautiful sites with lavish designs. Way too many eCommerce web designers spend too much time building fancy sites that look nice but are not optimized for high conversion rates. When you visit your site what do you do? What are your customers doing? If they are spending time browsing or bouncing then you don’t have what you need. There are tools that can check hot spots on your site and you should be using them. Not only that but using a multivariate test to compare different versions of your pages. Focus on the checkout page with highest priority. The most attrition is in the form of shopping cart abandonment. Do you know what your abandonment rate is? Are you doing anything to improve this number? Does your shopping cart include tools to measure these analytic information? If not then it’s seriously time to start looking abroad.

Some other things to otimize your hosted eCommerce solution are making sure that your site is SEO friendly. Sure there are carts that claim to be SEO shopping carts or SEO optimized e-commerce platforms but things to look for are the ability to add good keyword content in Google’s preferred ways to all of your catalog pages. Making sure the templates are easily editable to ensure great results on the SERPs. Make sure that you can customize your checkout page for efficiency and that it supports cross selling and upselling of products.

I’ll have more time to write about this in the future but I want to make sure that all e-tailers are thinking about conversion optimization and SEO friendly e-commerce platforms. You can’t just throw your product on a webpage, stick a price to it, and sell. You’ll throw your money away too quickly to even learn what you need to be doing. Take your time, do the research on solutions, talk to an e-commerce consultant and choose the right developer to make sure your site, checkout page, and entire shopping cart is optimized for the one thing it’s built for, Selling!

Well if you’re reading this chances are you either have an e-commerce site that is live and doing business or you are at least contemplating launching your very own online store front. One of the first steps you’ll need to take is making a decision on how you’ll chose your e-commerce platform. This is not going to be fun and I’ll guarantee you that you are going to be confused, misled, and frustrated at some point during your research.

If you read my last post about hosted eCommerce solutions you’ll have a few good ideas about what to look for but one place you’re going to inevitably end up landing is a shopping cart review site. There are tons of them just like there are a million hosting review sites. Why? You’d be pretty dense to not figure this one out. Most, if not all of those review sites are not actually reviewing the eCommerce platforms rather taking payment for advertisement. See just like you’ll want to rank high and sell products online to people who landed on your page via Google search or through pay per click advertising they’ve realized that there is a huge market that is growing wildly for online commerce solutions to sell their products. Most of the top ranking sites or pay per click sites you’ll stumble upon are not legit. They do not load a catalog, manage a template, or sell a product online. Instead they collect money from shopping cart solution providers and rank according to how much advertising fee was paid. Or they may be operating as an affiliate collecting a fee for each person they send on to the merchant. Who ranks at the top? You guess who.

So how do you get a legitimate review of different hosted shopping carts available on the market today? Unfortunately you’re going to have to talk to customers, read tons of blog articles, and do the research yourself. Of course there are the monsters like Volusion, 1Shoppingcart, and Shopify but there are also the free solutions trying to make money in alternative approaches all vying for your business like Magento and others. As with anything making the decision should not be based on what you read in advertising or who has the coolest features but rather how successful your online store is going to be on that platform, how well you’re going to be able to manage it, and what your total cost of ownership will be.

If anybody does know of a legit eCommerce review site that has actually thoroughly went through the options I’d be dying to hear about them but I’m not sure they’d remain around long as it’s a lot of work for no return. Until next time happy selling.

There’s a reason why companies like Walmart, Fred Myers, Target, and others have dominated the retail space. Of course, they’ve done exceptional at eliminating costs on the backend and built stores the size of small towns but there is something else they do very well. Successful brick and mortar retail merchants have perfected the art of commerce. When you walk into a store you are guided down a path that maximizes revenue and commitment to purchase. There is plenty of in your face marketing to gently inform you what products you should be buying, what’s on sale, and what’s hot. Finalize your trip at the front of the store and you’ll see something dramatically different in a major retailer in comparison with a small mom and pop operation. Tons of lanes to check out in that are customized to each individual. There are the standard lanes for those uncomfortable with the optional computerized checkout lanes. Fast, fast, fast, and don’t forget to pick up your magazine, candy, and last minute essentials as you pay.

These stores are built this way for a reason. It’s successful but it didn’t happen overnight. There are tools in the industry, consultants, and analytics to measure results. As we enter the age of eCommerce the smart will realize they need those same tools on their websites and online shopping carts. This is why it’s so important to pick an E-Commerce solution that fits your business model. We’ll take a look at a few essential check off items in this part, 1 of 3 in our discussion on choosing the most effective hosted shopping cart solution.

Simple eCommerce setup

A lot of solutions are either too slimmed down or too robust. There doesn’t seem to be anything that’s in the middle as far as hosted e-commerce solution setups go. Make sure the provider you choose pays close attention offering wizards or helpful step by step instructions for setting up your online store front.

Managing your Catalog

All online eCommerce shopping carts will provide some sort of catalog feature to enable you to manage your products. Make sure it’s very intuitive for you to import and export items you decide to sell online and that there are easy ways to add SKUs, product images, product descriptions, and prices. Higher end e-commerce platforms will allow you to build groups and select policies, run analytics, and price changes on multiple items in your storefront at once.

E-Commerce Templates

Do you have your own eCommerce website? Are you going to have a developer design a website for you? Or do you want to use a template to create your storefront and go from there. This is a very important decision and aspect of your online business. Some solutions like Volusion and Shopify are more catered to the mom and pop online reseller and have a lot of ready to go templates while others like Ultracart have more advanced custom templates that you can provide to your developer to customize and optimize your hosted shopping cart for optimized checkout experiences.

Advertising and Marketing your Storefront

Of course you need to make sure you get your name out there and you hosted e-commerce solutions should be carrying some of this load for you. Make sure the shopping cart is SEO friendly and optimized for Google search results. Nicer options are the ability to generate email lists, provide coupons, tie into solutions like Froogle, Google’s shopping feed, accept affiliate marketers and allow them to be compensated on their online sales leads, and more. Make sure it’s something you research with each shopping cart.

Performance Measuring and eCommerce Analytics

In order to be successful you need to make sure you are tracking every aspect of your e-commerce business. That means product success, price strategies, pages or articles that are frequented, and other things related to your website need to be studied. You need to know also how your visitors interact with you eCommerce storefront. Are you loosing sales at checkout? Is one advertisement working better than the other? If you can’t answer those questions you may want to take advise from an e-commerce consultant who is an expert in the industry.

Payment Gateways and Shipping Products

Collecting money would sure be nice huh? Take a look at what merchant gateways the hosted e-commerce solutions supports. Top vendors would be PayPal, authorize.net, and 2Checkout but there are many others that have advantages depending on the volume of sales you do and type of transactions that occur. You’ll also need to make sure that shipping is an automated or near automated process. Are you using FedEx, UPS, or USPS? Do you know your shipping dimensions and can you import them into your shopping cart catalog? How do you plan to manage returns inside your eCommerce platform? Keep looking deeper inside as the choices you make today are not easy to change tomorrow.

On the next post we’ll talk a bit more about choosing e-commerce solution providers and hosted shopping cart solutions digging into advanced options like: Evaluating review sites and weeding out internet spam marketing about e-commerce. Until then take care.