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

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.
Conversion
Study: Personalized Recommendations Produce 4 Times More Conversions

January 22, 2018 • Pamela Hazelton

Personalization is the key to selling online. Without personalization, you’re relying on consumers to figure out what they want. By presenting relevant products, you eliminate all of that hard work, which most aren’t going to do anyway. A study conducted by Salesforce in March to June 2017 revealed that shoppers prompted with relevant product recommendations accounted for 26 percent of revenue on ecommerce sites. This, despite results that show only 7 percent of visitors actually click such links.
Conversion
What’s the True Value of a Conversion?

January 17, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz

How you calculate the value of a conversion can have big implications for your marketing budget and your company's bottom line. Many marketers optimize their search campaigns, for example, by looking at the cost per conversion of a given keyword. For display or video campaigns, analyzing performance by the cost of conversion per ad or ad type is common. But what happens if the person that clicked on a Facebook ad then clicked on a search ad a few days later? How much value would your attribute to each source?
Conversion
Use Your ‘About’ Page to Build Trust with First-time Visitors

January 16, 2018 • Marcia Yudkin

Scammers don’t go to the trouble of creating a company history with its values and original photos. Consumers know this — they are reassured by original content on your “About” page. To build trust, an “About” page should include unique details, such as who started the company and why she bothered, as well as what drives her to keep at it. Communicate the story in a real and distinct manner — not as a faceless bureaucracy.
Conversion
Tips for Selling and Buying on B2B Exchanges

January 9, 2018 • Gagan Mehra

In "20 Leading Global B2B Exchanges," my previous post, I shared B2B marketplace options for buying and selling products. In this post, I'll offer pointers on using those exchanges. Selling on a B2B exchange is an easy and inexpensive way for suppliers to get started with ecommerce. A supplier does not typically need its own website to list products on exchanges.
Conversion
Mobile to Dominate Ecommerce Conversions

January 8, 2018 • Pamela Hazelton

For years, we’ve been hearing about the importance of responsive design and mobile-friendly features. Many small business etailers remained unconvinced of the power of mobile users as buyers. This made some sense, as data often showed that the majority of smartphone users were using devices primarily for research, and then finalizing purchases on tablets or desktop computers. This all changed during the past holiday season. On Cyber Monday 2017, mobile saw its first $2 billion day.
Analytics & Data
Google Analytics: 3 Reports to Customize for Ecommerce

January 3, 2018 • Morgan Jones

The standard reporting in Google Analytics works well for many ecommerce sites. But there are opportunities to enhance the default dimensions and metrics in Google Analytics, to empower online merchants even more. In this article, I'll review three ways to customize Google Analytics reports, to help merchants track key metrics and make critical decisions.
Conversion
6 Ways to Use Shoppers’ New Year Resolutions to Increase Sales

December 24, 2017 • Pamela Hazelton

With a new year come millions of people striving to keep their resolutions. Less than 20 percent will succeed, though — according to U.S. News & World Report, 80 percent ...
Conversion
Encourage After-Christmas Customer Reviews

December 14, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Customer reviews may boost ecommerce conversion rates and make product pages more findable on search engines. Combine this fact — that reviews improve search engine optimization and conversions — with the ...
Analytics & Data
Google Analytics: Using Enhanced Ecommerce to Grow Revenue

December 10, 2017 • Morgan Jones

Reporting on overall revenue and revenue by channel is among the most essential data for a niche ecommerce company to grow its business. Google Analytics has a powerful revenue-reporting suite ...
Product Pages
7 Ways to Capture Last-minute Holiday Sales

December 6, 2017 • Pamela Hazelton

Monday, Dec. 11, will mark the busiest shopping day of the year for many online retailers. “Green Monday” typically takes place the second Monday of December. The term was coined by ...
Product Pages
4 Ways to Jazz-up Product Descriptions (without Hype)

December 5, 2017 • Marcia Yudkin

According to Karon Thackston, author of Amazon Advantage: Product Listing Strategies to Boost Your Sales, successful ecommerce merchants avoid hype. Moreover, Amazon’s official terms of service for sellers forbid the ...
Photography & Video
13 New Video Tools in Social Media

November 27, 2017 • Sig Ueland

Social media platforms continue releasing tools to generate and distribute videos, to help users reach new followers and build their communities. Here is a list of new and updated video ...
Photography & Video
Missing Image Attributes Can Hurt Holiday Sales

November 22, 2017 • Pamela Hazelton

The holiday shopping season is in full force. Etailers are hoping for big returns on their marketing efforts. But etailers often lose conversions due to missing title and alt attributes ...
Product Pages
Include CRO in Your SEO

November 17, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization professionals often consider their job done after the click is won from the search result page and the visitor has landed on his site. That’s when user ...
Customer Retention
How to Turn Seasonal Shoppers into Lifetime Customers

November 16, 2017 • Pamela Hazelton

With the holiday shopping season upon us, getting more traffic and converting more shoppers into buyers is key to reaching sales goals. Don’t miss out, though, on the potential icing ...
Product Pages
12 Augmented Reality Apps from Merchants

November 6, 2017 • Sig Ueland

Augmented reality is a live view of a real-world environment enhanced by a computer-generated image. Pokémon Go is an example. Augmented reality has recently experienced a flurry of new apps, due ...
Conversion > Merchant Voice
6 ways I make more money from my websites

October 31, 2017 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

Since launching the first of my two décor websites in April 2015, and the second in January 2017, I’ve learnt a few tactics that have helped my businesses make more ...
Analytics & Data
Using Google Analytics to Detect Website Errors

October 31, 2017 • Morgan Jones

Websites sometimes break without their owners being aware. This can include errors when shoppers are browsing or checking out, which can cause serious abandonment. Identifying and correcting the errors that ...

« Previous 1 2 3 … 13 14 15 … 45 46 47 Next »