Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for February 2010

Practical eCommerce asks industry insiders each month to share a great, innovative idea that could help an ecommerce company. Here’s what ten of them had to say for the February 2010 installment of “Great Ecommerce Ideas.”

Help Men Find Valentine’s Gifts

“With Valentine’s Day on the minds of many men who want to surprise a loved one, try appealing to male shoppers with great values and get right to the point. Help overwhelmed men find great gifts on your site by keeping your ads and promotions simple, yet elegant.”

Mike Sprouse
Chief Marketing Officer
Epic Advertising

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A Human Face Can Increase Conversions

“People prefer doing business with people, and want to know that if they have a problem, there’s someone there to help. So consider adding a message from the CEO, a photo of your staff or offices, and mission statement. It’s proven to increase conversions.”

Mason Wiley
SVP Marketing
hydra

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Keep Coupon Codes Up-to-Date

“Coupon code searches are an important part of online product research and purchasing decisions. Update your coupon codes within your comparison shopping data feeds to match the promotions found at your website.”

Matt Thompson
Director
Indigo Sky

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Build Credibility With Press Clippings

“In your ‘About Us’ page include any press clippings that give you coverage, especially if they are national titles. These are very powerful. Also any awards you have won for your business or products help build credibility for your business.”

Kate Holroyd
Marketing Manager
Tiger Commerce

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Use the Mom Test

“Use the ‘My mom can do that’ test to improve usability on your ecommerce site. Ask your mom to do some target action without explaining how to do it and see how she does. I am sure you’ll find a lot of places to improve.”

Alexander Mulin
Sales Department Manager
Qualiteam

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Stay in Contact With Customers and Visitors

“Send a monthly newsletter to build and maintain a business relationship with your customers and visitors, and keep them coming back. Also, offer your customers an easy way of contacting your company, whether it is by email, telephone, live chat or a combination of those.”

David Farache
COO
Fortune3

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Battle Your Offline Competition

“If your competition is mainly offline, offer free ground shipping and ship your products as quickly as possible.”

Brina Bujkovsky
CEO/President
The Younique Boutique

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Beat Those Bots

“Behavioral analysis technology can be deployed to help prevent misuse of ecommerce applications. It can detect and prevent bot-based, artificial user attacks that cannot be detected using standard signature-based network security solutions.”

Ron Meyran
Director
Radware

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Conversion-Optimize Your Shopping Cart

“A conversion-optimized shopping cart has the minimum number of fields and pages possible to complete the sale. Trust badges and certifications are in plain sight and support info is easy to find. Multi-language and multi-currency functionality also offer great benefits for expanding into international markets and growing your online revenue.”

Bobbi Leach
General Manager
RevenueWire

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Get Tough on Security Matters

“Develop a corporate security policy for every operational unit, and perform annual security training of all employees. Review stored data and purge records that are not in compliance with data retention policies.”

Ondrej Krehel
Information Security Officer
Identity Theft 911

Got a great ecommerce idea? Email Kate Monteith at kate@practicalecommerce.com.