Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for March 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 March 2010 installment of “Great Ecommerce Ideas.”

“Add to Cart” vs. “Buy”

“Use phrases like ‘Add to Cart’ on your buttons rather than phrases like ‘Buy.’ Consumers don’t like commitment. It is like saying ‘Will you go on a date with me?’ versus ‘Will you marry me?’ You are more likely to say yes to the date because less commitment is required.”

Stephanie Leffler
CEO
Juggle.com

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Watch PPC Metrics Weekly

“If pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is part of your marketing strategy, establish a set of core performance indicators and pay attention to those metrics on at least a weekly basis.”

Brad Yeager
Certified Business Intermediary
Ecommerce Exit Strategies

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Free SEO Information for Beginners

“A great source of free information for beginners can be found at SearchEngineBook.com. It will provide you with the ‘ABC’s’ of SEO. Sign up for the free beginners SEO course and you will receive an easy to understand email once a day for a week on the basics of search engine marketing.”

Anthony Vitro
Account Manager
Sage Tree LLC

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Lead the Eye to the Action

“Want people to click that ‘buy’ button? Design your web pages to lead the eye to it. Take advantage of the fact that people read from left to right. Use arrows to point, and color your order button to stand out.”

Mason Wiley
SVP Marketing
hydra

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Comparison Tool Helps Reduce Returns

“If your products are technical with many features or detailed specifications, make sure your ecommerce software has a comparison tool that allows shoppers to view detailed feature breakdown for a number of products side by side for easy comparison. This improves usability and can reduce returns.”

Kate Holroyd
Marketing Manager
Tiger Commerce

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Some Free Comparison Sites

“Take advantage of the free comparison shopping sites that are out there, including Google Product Search (a staple of any shopping channel strategy), theFind (it has a great, free ‘up-front’ program to enhance merchant visibility), Sortprice (it has a Facebook store application for online retailers), and Oodle (for merchants who also have a physical store).”

Lin Grosman
Marketing Director
GoDataFeed

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Basic Social Marketing Tips

“Social marketing is important and time consuming. Make a specific plan, commit to being regularly active on the social site, and make your profile dynamic. If you can’t perform social marketing well yourself, hire an expert or delegate it to someone who can.”

Elizabeth Bighorse
CEO
Moodswings Inc.

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Success Metrics for A/B Tests

“When performing A/B tests you should make sure especially of two things: to have statistically significant results and to choose the right success metric for your campaign (which can be revenue, profit, orders, average order value, CTR, or other important metrics).”

Claudiu Murariu
Web Marketing Specialist
Avangate

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Ease the Pain of Tax Season with Online Incentives

“March is the height of tax season, which makes it the perfect time for financial services marketers to target consumers filing their taxes online with great deals and special promotions. During tax season, people are looking for online incentives that help them get over the pain of filing their taxes.”

Mike Sprouse
Chief Marketing Officer
Epic Advertising

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Keep Information Consistent Across All Selling Channels

“To ensure cross-channel consistency, SKUs, prices and product information should be the same online and in-store so they can be treated exactly the same from a fulfillment and service perspective. The result is less work, higher customer satisfaction and a reduced need to develop separate staff or procedures for online sales.”

Carl Prindle
President and Chief Executive Officer
Blueport Commerce

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