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Conversion & Usability
Five Fast Steps to Improve Website Usability
Problem: Your website doesn't work like it should, and every day you're losing sales because of it. As much as you'd like to take the time to comprehensively study the problem, you've decided you...
Pay-per-click Advertising: Try The Home Page For A Landing Page
Over the last couple years a lot of emphasis has been put on creating the perfect pay-per-click landing page. The overall landing page strategy is to create a clear call to action on the page and to...
Analytics: Collect The Right Data
"If you had just..." often starts a phrase of regret. If you had just left on time. If you had just bought that stock.
In web analytics, "If you had just..." nearly always relates to loss of...
Conversion Report Card: Firststreetonline.com
FirstStreet Online is a large, Virginia-based ecommerce company that offers gifts and lifestyle products to "boomers and beyond." The staff of FirstStreet asked Practical eCommerce to grade its site...
Bells And Whistles, Or Accessibility Stop Signs?
With the advent of high-speed Internet, a treasure trove of possibilities presented themselves to the web developer. Java, embedded video, Flash and other coding options afforded online retailers the...
Social Networking: Build Your Own Community
There is not a day that goes by that I don't reflect on how to leverage social media, including social networks, for marketing purposes. I have tried a number of approaches, some of which have been...
Pay-per-click Report Card: Vxb.com
Vxb.com sells ball bearings of various types and sizes. The company is based in California and requested a review of its pay-per-click campaigns on Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Vxb.com's monthly ad spend...
Conversion: Metrics Maximize Decision Making
One of the most appealing aspects of web marketing is that it is so measurable; you can actually quantify what works. Because I spend a considerable portion of my work time studying web analytics...
Usability Report Card: Ceriellofinefoods.com
Joseph Malewicki, the owner of Ceriello Fine Foods, has been an avid reader of Practical eCommerce since its inception. He sells specialty Italian foods at Ceriellofinefoods.com and, when requesting...
Usability Report Card: Accepted.com
Accepted.com is an admissions consulting and application editing service website. It has requested this usability site grade.
Home Page Clarity
To ensure credibility and trust, sites that...
Biggest AdWord Mistakes
Practical eCommerce asked Senior Contributor and website conversion expert Mat Greenfield, founder of Conversion Results, for his take on the biggest AdWord mistakes a website could make. If your...
Usability Report Card: Lucky-devil.com
Introduction
Lucky-devil.com’s tag line succinctly states its purpose: “Presents for Kiwis in the UK and NZ” (Kiwis being the nickname for New Zealanders, not the fruit). The site “soft...
Conversion: Experimentation Is Key
Deep down, we conversion experts carry a secret that we don't want you to know. Even though there are proven conversion principles which apply to any website, as well as many best-practices, which...
Usability Report Card: Babyplanetboutique.com
Canadian-based Babyplanetboutique.com strives to provide parents with unique, useful baby products at affordable prices. The site’s owner Danielle Burgi is a nominee for Savvymom Mompreneur of the...
Usability Report Card: Arenaflowers.com
Arenaflowers.com is a United Kingdom based website that primarily sells fresh flowers. On the verge of its one year anniversary, the ebusiness wanted to get an external perspective on how its website...
Site Search: Increases Conversion Rates, Average Order Value And Loyalty
If your online store has hundreds of products, you may want to consider implementing a more sophisticated site search to help your customers find what they need quickly. For those of you running...
Usability Report Card: Make These Tweaks Before Growth Occurs
Artistream.com was formed to expand the artistic markets and opportunities for Native Americans and has ambitious expansion plans for itself. Currently, Artistream.com is a fairly basic website...
Usability Report Card: Acihoist.com
Alan Gonzalez at ACI Hoist & Crane, Inc. recently inherited the responsibilities for the company's website, Acihoist.com, and its ecommerce push. He is in the early stages of improving the site's...
Is Your Website Ready For The Holiday Shopping Season?
Anyone’s who has talked with me for any given amount of time will tell you I’m adamant about testing sites for security and navigation. Summer is the perfect time to plot out upcoming holiday...
Critique Part Five: Customer Experience & Usability
The Problem: A blob of home-page text greets the consumer.
The Fix: The home page could be improved by relocating its long introduction to either the bottom of the page or, preferably, to the...
'Exclusive Offers' Help Retain Customers
Minding the Store is a classic book written by one of the all-time great merchants, Stanley Marcus of Neiman-Marcus fame. Its lessons were extensive, but taking care of the customer and delivering a...
Comparison Sites Can Help Boost Sales
Shopping comparison sites enable merchants to market to the masses, but stepping into a competitive environment like BizRate, PriceGrabber or Shopping.com can seem pretty daunting to the owner of a...
Aligning Keywords And Landing Pages
As a child you probably played "connect the dots," drawing a line from number to number to create a picture that answered a riddle. Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing presents a similar "connect the dots"...
Show-Me-The-Money Conversion Ratios
When I begin an ecommerce optimization engagement, there are four key ratios that I immediately look for. And as strange as it might sound, the site's overall conversion ratio is not one of them —...
Tools To Boost Conversion
Most ebusiness owners can find ways to increase traffic to their site, but turning a visitor into a buyer remains an ongoing challenge.
To get a visitor at your site to do what you want him/her to...
Incentives That Create More Sales
What makes a customer commit to that profit-boosting holiday purchase? One respondent to a survey conducted by the e-tailing group summed up the heavily promotional mindset of today's online shopper...
Diagnosing Site Performance Delays
When your site begins to experience performance drains, which usually show up as slow-loading web pages, the problem's diagnosis can be more challenging than its solution.
The first thing...
The Surest Way To Lose A Customer
This month we review Delsol.com, the online store for the manufacturer of color-changing apparel and accessories. All items sold by Del Sol change color when exposed to sunlight, and this influences...
Treat Customers as Next-door Neighbors
People often ask me where I learned so much about ecommerce and business in general. I didn't attend business school, nor do my college degrees reflect what I do today. Besides being book smart and...
Are 1-800 Numbers And Live Chat Important?
As online shopping matures, merchants must avoid the tendency to be complacent in their merchandising efforts. Here are five ways merchants can truly innovate in the coming year. In the end, there is...
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