Category

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

Analytics & Data
Use Google Analytics, Data Studio to Plan Inventory

June 1, 2018 • Morgan Jones

Inventory planning is essential for merchants. Overestimating inventory needs can be costly. But underestimating can be costly, too — hurting revenue and profit. Just-in-time inventory preserves cash, reduces storage needs,
Product Pages
6 Alternatives to Customer Reviews (to Sell Products)

May 22, 2018 • Pamela Hazelton

Customer reviews can boost conversions. Reviews are also a crucial part of an ecommerce site’s social proof. Otherwise, shoppers have only sales copy to guide them. But product reviews are not ...
Analytics & Data
Drowning in Data? Consider a Business Intelligence Tool

May 21, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz

Ecommerce businesses use multiple tools and services. Most have their own dashboards, which measure different aspects of the business. So how does a merchant pull all the data together to see the big picture? Many companies use business intelligence tools, which combine data from multiple sources and display it in a meaningful way.
Analytics & Data
New Google Analytics Settings Reflect GDPR Requirements

May 15, 2018 • Morgan Jones

The E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation becomes effective on May 25. Google and other data gathering services are protecting themselves by allowing users to control the data retained from customers and ...
Analytics & Data
Internet Attorney on GDPR Compliance for Ecommerce

May 15, 2018 • Pamela Hazelton

The General Data Protection Regulation from the European Union takes effect on May 25. The law is sweeping, with massive fines for noncompliance. It affects most every company worldwide, large ...
Customer Retention
Overlooked Ways to Encourage Repeat Business

May 13, 2018 • Marcia Yudkin

Given how much more profitable returning customers are than first-time buyers, it’s amazing how many companies put so little effort into encouraging repeat sales. Consider imparting something visible and obvious to your customer as a memory prompt. This doesn’t have to be elaborate or expensive.
Analytics & Data
Getting Started with A/B Tests (to Drive Sales)

May 8, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz

A/B tests can improve conversions on an ecommerce site. There are many testing platforms — search Google for “A/B tests.” To run a test, identify a key conversion element, such as ...
Product Pages
Social Proof Is the Most Important Factor in Selling

May 7, 2018 • Pamela Hazelton

If I had to choose a single factor that is crucial to an online store’s success, it would be social proof. The term is often misunderstood. It doesn’t have much ...
Product Pages
9 Ways to Appeal to Millennial Shoppers

April 24, 2018 • Pamela Hazelton

Millennials may not have much disposable income but they tend to spend more freely than the generations before them. So it makes sense to update your online store to cater to this group. How does a store that doesn’t necessarily target millennials tap into their ever-increasing purchasing power? Here are nine ways to facelift a store to convert millennial shoppers.
Product Pages
5 Product Page Differentiators for 2018

April 20, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Performance and superior communications set ecommerce product pages apart from the crowd in 2018. Thanks to established user-interface conventions, online sellers know the components of a good product detail page. They ...
Checkout Tactics
5 Ways to Increase Sales at Checkout for a WooCommerce Store

April 19, 2018 • Curtis McHale

Increasing sales from shoppers that are in the process of buying is easier than recruiting new customers. In-process shoppers have jumped the trust barrier. In this post, I’ll address five ways ...
Analytics & Data
Does Facebook’s Data Debacle Impact Advertisers?

April 11, 2018 • Michael Stancil

Facebook is an enormously powerful advertising tool. There is no better mix of users, placements, and targeting. Sure, you have keywords with Google, and even audiences, but not with the ...
Customer Service
16 Must-have Features for Live Chat Implementation

April 8, 2018 • Pamela Hazelton

Once considered an add-on that made communication easier for the consumer and business, live chat is now a staple for most online stores. That’s because waiting on the phone and ...
Analytics & Data
Spy on Competitors to Improve Products and Promotions

April 6, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz

Spying on your ecommerce competition can help with product pricing and marketing strategy. The first step is to identify all competitors no matter how large or small. Once you’ve compiled ...
Analytics & Data
Getting Started with Google Tag Manager, for Ecommerce

April 4, 2018 • Morgan Jones

Many websites lose reporting from one of their marketing or analytics platforms. The culprit is usually the removal of tags during updates to the sites. Tags are critical for ecommerce merchants. But they add clutter to websites. That's the purpose of Google Tag Manager — to manage tags and contain them in a single JavaScript snippet on all pages.
Analytics & Data
Facebook’s Data Scandal Affects Ecommerce Companies

April 3, 2018 • Robert Brady

Facebook is facing a public relations nightmare surrounding its collecting and sharing of user data. Here is the short version. A Cambridge professor used a Facebook survey app to obtain profile ...
Conversion
How to Supercharge Product Reviews on WooCommerce

April 3, 2018 • Curtis McHale

It is no secret that product reviews can help merchants increase sales. Reviews are proof that others found a product valuable, or not. WooCommerce provides the structured data to display rating stars in search results. But product reviews, properly utilized, can do much more. They can greatly increase conversions. In this post, I'll address four WooCommerce extensions that supercharge product reviews.
Analytics & Data
3 Ways Customer Data Drives Ecommerce Conversions

March 27, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz

Data is important to ecommerce businesses. But many are not sure how to use it — to collect, analyze, and make meaningful changes to their business. The key ecommerce data is easy to obtain, however. It comes from customers. In this post, I'll review how to apply basic customer metrics to improve your ecommerce sales.
Checkout Tactics
Leverage Micro Conversions to Close Sales

March 22, 2018 • Pamela Hazelton

Most visitors to an online store aren’t ready to buy. That’s where micro conversions come into play. They help build the excitement and trust that shoppers need to make a purchase. Micro conversions are smaller actions that indicate a visitor’s interest in what you sell or have to say.
Photography & Video
Photo Captions (Greatly) Help Ecommerce Conversions

March 15, 2018 • Marcia Yudkin

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” Many of us conclude that pictures make words unnecessary. We believe images are so explicit and clear that they communicate fully on their own. Too often that’s not true, however. Whether of people or products, photos can be more ambiguous than most people assume.
Conversion
Target Audiences Can Change (Ask Play-Doh)

March 11, 2018 • Pamela Hazelton

The first step to sell online is to know your target audience. But identifying that audience is not always clear. While you should have an idea of who would want your products, it’s not uncommon to find that your understanding of certain groups of people, along with their shopping habits and expectations, is off. Sometimes way off. And that’s okay.
Analytics & Data
Use Google Analytics to Audit PPC Traffic

March 7, 2018 • Morgan Jones

Pay-per-click advertising is a key revenue driver for many ecommerce businesses. But click costs can be expensive. Ensuring that all clicks are reported accurately in Google Analytics will help make informed decisions. In this post, I'll describe a process for auditing the reporting of PPC traffic in Google Analytics. I'll offer guidance on identifying issues with PPC reporting, with insights for how to troubleshoot and fix reporting errors.
Analytics & Data
How to Track Overall Marketing Performance for All Channels

March 6, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz

Marketers typically measure the performance of campaigns and channels. For email, the key metrics could be opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and sales. For pay-per-click ads, it could be cost per click and cost per conversion. But how do you measure your marketing performance overall? And how do you compare channels, such as email marketing to PPC ads to social media?
Product Pages
Does Your Mobile Site Pass the Thumb Zone Test?

March 1, 2018 • Pamela Hazelton

Online sellers have spent a great deal of time implementing features that support cross-device shopping. This includes researching and tweaking their websites to accommodate various screen sizes, browsers, and connectivity. But there’s another key mobile design feature: the thumb zone.
Checkout Tactics
Abandoned Cart Recovery Is Cheaper Than Marketing to New Clients

February 21, 2018 • Curtis McHale

In "Optimizing Checkout Flow in WooCommerce," I offered tips on reducing abandoned carts by streamlining the checkout process. To be clear, however, you could spend years optimizing your checkout process and not eliminate abandoned carts. There are options to bring shoppers back to your store once they’ve moved on to other things. One of the best ways is to send emails to shoppers about the products they’ve left in their carts.
Analytics & Data
Which Promotions Perform Best for Your Ecommerce Business?

February 11, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz

Ecommerce merchants typically run promotions throughout the year. Some are seasonal, such as "Free Shipping on Valentine’s Day Flowers" and "20% Off for Cyber Monday." Others focus on product categories, such as “Free Socks with Purchase of Any Jeans." But how does a merchant know if a promotion was successful? That's the purpose of this article.
Customer Retention
Manage Site Search Like It’s 1996

February 7, 2018 • Pamela Hazelton

Configuring site search to mimic how visitors think and speak can go a long way to helping them find what they are looking for. That was the goal of Ask Jeeves. It launched in 1996 and shook up Internet search. Its objective was simple — to let people ask real questions, instead of entering specific keywords.
Analytics & Data
Google Data Studio: Track Sales, ROI from All Sources

February 6, 2018 • Morgan Jones

The proliferation of marketplaces and advertising channels represents a data challenge for ecommerce merchants. Increasingly, merchants are selling on Amazon, eBay, and Walmart, for example, in addition to their own websites. Many are now advertising beyond Google AdWords and Bing ads to other channels, such as Facebook and AdRoll. The challenge is obtaining traffic and conversion data from each of those sources.
Checkout Tactics
Optimizing Checkout Flow in WooCommerce

January 31, 2018 • Curtis McHale

Abandoned shopping carts are a hurdle for online merchants. Optimizing your checkout process will lower abandonment rates, and increase sales. In this post, I'll review methods to streamline and simplify a checkout. I'll cite examples from the WooCommerce platform. But the broader points apply to all merchants, on all platforms.
Customer Retention
Comparing A/B and Multivariate Testing

January 24, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz

A/B tests are controlled experiments of two attributes, to measure which one was most popular with users. You can apply A/B testing to just about anything that you can measure. Multivariate testing allows you to measure multiple variables simultaneously.

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