Conversion
Fewer than 5% of visitors to an ecommerce site typically convert to customers. In this Conversion category, we offer insights to increase that percentage. Our expert contributors address ratings and reviews, social proof, site search, product page enhancements, product descriptions, checkout options, live chat, and much more — anything to help close online sales.
Analytics & Data | Checkout Tactics | Customer Retention | Customer Service | Photography & Video | Product Pages-
Conversion
Online Shoppers Wait Two Days to Buy
April 7, 2010 • Armando Roggio
The average online shopper delays making a purchase by almost two days after initially visiting a retail site, according to data from a leading Internet security company. After monitoring the shopping behavior of 163 million consumers completing 2.52 million transactions, McAfee SECURE...
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Conversion
The Shopping Experience: MusiciansFriend.com
April 5, 2010 • Jeff Muendel
"The Shopping Experience" is our monthly description of purchasing a product from a leading ecommerce retailer and then critiquing the process. For this installment, we chose Musician’s Friend, one of the largest retailers of musical instruments and accessories. We chose Musician’s Fr...
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Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for April 2010
March 30, 2010 • Kate Monteith
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 April 2010 installment of "Great Ecommerce Ideas." Drive Short-term Sales "To drive short-term sales volumes, try ...
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Analytics & Data
The Metrics for Video Success
March 9, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Many online stores have begun to include product videos aimed at boosting sales conversions, reducing shopping cart abandonment, and lowering product return rates. But not all product-related videos are the same, and merchants will need some metrics for measuring which videos are, in fa...
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Product Pages
The PEC Review: RateVoice Offers Product Reviews with Social Twist
March 3, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Adding product reviews to your ecommerce site will boost sales, drive additional traffic, and help you optimize your product catalog. In 2007, when PETCO added customer product reviews to its site, this purveyor of pet products enjoyed a 49 percent increase in sales conversions for its...
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Conversion
Ten Google Services to Help Your Ecommerce Business
March 2, 2010 • Michael Stearns
If you are an ecommerce merchant, your business likely cannot survive without search engine exposure through Google. But Google has over one hundred other services and products that have blossomed from its core web search tool. Just keeping up with the names of these products is challen...
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Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for March 2010
March 1, 2010 • Kate Monteith
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...
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Photography & Video
Putting Video On Your Ecommerce Site, A Webinar Preview
February 18, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Product-oriented videos help shoppers understand what they are buying, reduce shopping cart abandonment, and boost conversion rates by as much as 30 percent. Perhaps because of these reasons, ecommerce video is increasingly popular. Forrester Research, for example, estimated that 65 pe...
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Photography & Video
The PeC Review: Shotfarm Streamlines Use of Manufacturers’ Photography
February 8, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Compelling product photography is a must for online merchants. Without a good visual representation of the products a store is selling, customers probably won't buy. Generally speaking, online stores have two basic ways to get product images: (1) take the photos, or (2) use the stock i...
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Conversion
Google Analytics: Use Profile Filters, Advanced Segmentation to Understand Your Visitors
February 4, 2010 • Michael Stearns
The first stage of using Google Analytics effectively is to regularly check your core numbers, such as visits, the bounce rate, referrers, and sources. For small business owners, consistent monitoring can provide a reasonably clear idea of what is happening on your site. But when maximi...
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Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for February 2010
February 1, 2010 • Ankush Agarwal
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 m...
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Conversion
9 Crowdsourcing Ideas to Grow Your Online Business
January 13, 2010 • Darpan Munjal
If you are running an online business or planning on starting a new one, chances are that you do not have unlimited capital. Yet, in order to succeed in this competitive environment, you realize that you can’t compromise on the quality of your offering. More than likely, you continually...
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Conversion
Split Testing Can Increase Conversion Rates
January 7, 2010 • Kate Monteith
Split testing is a conversion-tracking method that separates your message into two or more variations to see which gets the best response. Different visitors see different versions of the message and the results are tracked to determine the best return. We wanted to learn more about c...
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Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for January 2010
December 31, 2009 • Kate Monteith
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 January 2010 installment of "Great Ecommerce Ideas." Identify the Source of Inquiries "Measure your marketing effect...
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Conversion
The PeC Review: Using Gmail For Your Business
December 28, 2009 • Armando Roggio
For many online retailers, customer service is managed via email or chat. When a customer has questions or concerns, that customer often replies to a transactional email or submits a contact form, launching an engagement experience that is completely managed online, without face-to-face...
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Conversion
URL Shorteners: Saving Space and Tracking Clicks
December 17, 2009 • Kevin Patrick Allen
For today’s ecommerce merchant who wants to convey an important point via instant messaging or mobile texting, brevity is helpful. But when the merchant is using Twitter, brevity is a must since a Twitter post is limited to 140 characters. It’s easy to run out of space to enter the most...
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Conversion
Quick Query: Dr. BJ Fogg on Fogg Behavior Model
December 15, 2009 • Kevin Patrick Allen
Ecommerce merchants want consumers to take action. That’s what marketing is all about: reaching potential customers and convincing them to take action, more specifically, to make a purchase. Dr. BJ ...
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Conversion
Ecommerce Know-How: Product Videos Easy to Produce, Inexpensive
December 10, 2009 • Kevin Patrick Allen
Ecommerce videos drive sales. Lars Hundley, president of Clean Air Gardening, is confident of that. “We typically get up to a 20 percent increase in conversion rate on products that have a video, and also a lower return rate at the same time. It's hard to put an exact dollar amount...
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Conversion
Ecommerce Know-How: Think Negative to Realize Positive Holiday Sales Growth
December 2, 2009 • Kevin Patrick Allen
Two recent studies on holiday ecommerce spending provide important insights for small, online merchants wanting to achieve positive growth over the same period in 2008. The studies from comScore, an online tracking firm, and Forrester Research, indicate the economic climate is improvin...
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Conversion
Pay-per-click Report Card: BraDiva.com Managing Small Ad Budget
December 1, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky
BraDiva.com is a small ecommerce company run by two entrepreneurs who enjoy sports. The company's product line consists of brand-name sports bras in various styles and sizes. The site went live in early 2007. Bra Diva’s main advertising vehicle is Google AdWords. The average monthly ...
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Checkout Tactics
The PeC Review: WinBuyer Puts Competitors’ Prices on Your Pages
November 30, 2009 • Armando Roggio
By some estimates, 94 percent of online shoppers will invest at least some time comparing prices before they make a buying decision. That comparison process often takes shoppers to as many as four different online retailers and a price comparison engine or two, but now one vendor is off...
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Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for December 2009
November 30, 2009 • Kate Monteith
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 December 2009 installment. Shop First, Ask For Registration Later “Allow shoppers to check out before asking them to...
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Conversion
Conversion: 10 Advanced Techniques to Turn Shoppers Into Buyers
November 24, 2009 • Darpan Munjal
If you are like most online retailers, roughly 97 out of every 100 visitors leave your site without buying anything. You can spend a lot of money on marketing, but those dollars will be wasted if you can’t convert visitors to buyers. There are countless articles that address ways to imp...
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Conversion
Video Helps Ecommerce Merchants, Expert Says
November 18, 2009 • PEC Staff
Video provides a compelling way for retailers to sell products. But is it for every ecommerce merchant and is it being fully utilized? One man who has a strong opinion on the matter is Justin Foster. He is the founder of The Video Commerce Consortium. It's a group of ecommerce profe...
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Conversion
Microsoft Upgrades AdCenter; Eyes Further Growth of Bing
November 12, 2009 • Kevin Patrick Allen
Microsoft has upgraded adCenter with new features aimed at improving your Bing advertising campaign. The features include an ad preview tool and a search query performance report. To get a better understanding of the value of the upgrade, we contacted SEM/SEO specialist Greg Latpevs...
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Conversion
Google Analytics on a Tight Schedule
November 12, 2009 • Michael Stearns
Google Analytics is a powerful website statistics program and a good resource for ecommerce merchants. But it can be difficult for a small business owner to keep up with his or her stats and make sense of the wealth of information available. Here's how to maximize your use of Google An...
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Conversion
Top Ten Low Cost Ways to Improve Site Usability
November 11, 2009 • Darpan Munjal
I get called by online retailers very frequently who have done significant work in SEO, are driving quite a bit of traffic to their website, but seem to have hit a wall in increasing the revenue. They are baffled that despite all the good work in SEO and online marketing, they are unabl...
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Conversion
Payments-R-Us and Page Mage Introduced; MailChimp Announces New Features
November 5, 2009 • Kevin Patrick Allen
MailChimp, the self-service email marketing firm, has announced new features to its platform. Page Mage, a third-party eBay listing service, has just launched, as has Payments-R-Us.com, an informational site to help merchants choose between thousands of credit card merchant account pro...
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Conversion
Using Ning to Boost Word-of-Mouth Marketing
November 3, 2009 • Sarah Worsham
Social networks allow consumers to obtain information about a company or product straight from other consumers. These conversations are powerful drivers in marketing since consumers are more likely to listen to what another consumer (especially a friend or colleague) says than what a c...
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Conversion
Conversion: 15 Reasons Why Consumers Will Leave Your eCommerce Site
November 3, 2009 • Darpan Munjal
Editor's Note: We welcome Darpan Munjal as our newest contributor. Munjal is president of Chicago-based LeapMatrix, which consults small and large ecommerce firms on conversion and usability matters. He also writes CommerceWiki, a blog aimed at helping ecommerce merchants improve their ...