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

Conversion
3 Things to Love About Quarterly.co

January 25, 2012 • Armando Roggio

A new ecommerce business delivers curated gifts to its customers on a subscription basis and exemplifies some of the most exciting new trends in ecommerce. Quarterly.co — which Zach Frechette, co-founder of Good Magazine, created — does at least three things very well. So well, in fact...
Conversion
Using ‘Quick Views’ to Increase Conversions

January 23, 2012 • Louis Camassa

Editor's Note: Each month contributor Louis Camassa, a seasoned ecommerce developer, identifies a feature from existing ecommerce sites that is well executed, and applicable to other merchants. Camassa's previous installments are "Admiring Apple's ‘Questions & Answers’ Feature" and ...
Conversion
10 Ideas to Grow Ecommerce Profits in 2012

January 20, 2012 • Gagan Mehra

The 2011 holiday season was record breaking for online commerce. Sales hit a new high of $37 billion, according to comScore, the research firm. With the New Year, it is time to examine the key factors that have made your online store successful, and how to further grow your profits. Bel...
Conversion
How to Analyze Your Ecommerce Competitors

January 17, 2012 • Armando Roggio

In online retailing, an accurate and current competitive analysis accesses rival merchants' strengths and weaknesses relative to a seller's own operations, providing a significant advantage or identifying opportunities. For small and mid-sized online retailers, a basic competitive anal...
Conversion
Daily Deals: A Good Investment for Merchants?

January 16, 2012 • Marcia Kaplan

Daily deal sites generated a lot of news and excitement in 2011 — mostly from the consumer perspective. I thought it would be useful to review some of the key factors in deciding whether participating in daily deals is a good idea for merchants. Some commentators have suggested that "d...
Conversion
U.S. Online Holiday Sales Reach $37 Billion, Set Record

January 6, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Deep discounts and free shipping fueled a record setting November-to-December holiday shopping season for online merchants in 2011 in the U.S., according to a new report. Cyber Monday also saw an extraordinary $1.25 billion in sales. "The 2011 online holiday shopping finished with slig...
Customer Retention
7 Post-Holiday Revenue Generators

December 29, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

For many online retailers, the month of January is a slow one. Between consumers paying off Christmas purchases and those taking time to relax, the remaining online shoppers are seeking good deals on accessories and hoping to take advantage of clearance sales. There are ways, however, ...
Customer Retention
‘Auto Ship’ Programs Generate Repeat Sales; 2 Examples

December 28, 2011 • Louis Camassa

Many successful ecommerce businesses focus their marketing efforts on search engine optimization, shopping feeds, email, affiliates, and pay-per-click advertising. However, websites that sell consumable products — such as supplements, batteries, food, snacks, vitamins, beverages, and c...
Conversion
5 Effective Online Marketing Tactics for 2012

December 26, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Marketing techniques that worked in the past may be far less successful in this emerging era of mobile devices, personalization, and social media. What follows are five suggestions for potentially potent marketing tactics for the coming year. These are not wholly new techniques, but r...
Customer Retention
3 Remarketing Email Campaigns to Grow Repeat Customers

December 15, 2011 • Charles Nicholls

Getting a first purchase from a customer is always satisfying. New data shows, however, just how hard it is to build repeat customers, those that buy over and over again. I’ve just completed one of the most extensive studies ever conducted into the purchasing behavior of website visito...
Conversion
Behavioral Differences Between Men and Women Influence Shopping

December 9, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

Retail is the dominion of women; they shop to purchase both essential and discretionary goods, to relax, and to socialize. So it's not surprising that women account for over 80 percent of consumer spending, or about $5 trillion dollars annually, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Men,...
Conversion
Can Spelling Mistakes Impact Ecommerce Conversion?

December 7, 2011 • Charles Nicholls

There’s little research on the impact of spelling and grammar mistakes on conversion. But Charles Duncombe, CEO of JustSayPlease, a U.K.-based ecommerce and travel company, is a stickler for getting it right. He knows firsthand the impact of spelling mistakes on an ecommerce site. He sa...
Conversion
Using Google Website Optimizer for A/B Testing

December 6, 2011 • Michael Stearns

Give yourself a pat on the back if you have developed an ecommerce business with a steady flow of orders. Perhaps you have had success with search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, and social media. When you are ready to accelerate your business, however, A/B and multivari...
Conversion
Analyzing Cyber Monday Sales

December 2, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

Black Friday and Cyber Monday were greatly anticipated by merchants and consumers and the results did not disappoint. Online sales on Cyber Monday reached $1.25 billion according to Internet tracking firm comScore, making it the biggest online spending day in history. Revenues increase...
Customer Retention
‘Retargeting’ Can Boost Conversions; A Primer

November 22, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Using behavioral retargeting to aim online display and pay-per-click advertisements at shoppers already familiar with a brand or some particular products could significantly boost sales conversions, with some estimates suggesting that retargeted consumers are 70 percent more likely to m...
Checkout Tactics
10 Quick, Easy and (Almost) Free Ways to Close Sales During the Holiday Shopping Season

November 16, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

The highly anticipated holiday shopping season is already upon us. Active online stores are seeing more traffic, and price comparison sites have been feeding more data than in previous months. The big boost in traffic starts around November 19, and then skyrockets right after Thanksgivi...
Conversion
How to Test Multiple Variables on an Ecommerce Site

November 9, 2011 • PEC Staff

Ecommerce merchants strive to increase the number of visitors to their sites that actually purchase products. Increasing those conversions frequently requires experimenting with new approaches. Merchants can test which of these experiments increase sales, and which do not. The testing c...
Conversion
Website Showcase: Designing With the Fold

October 31, 2011 • Drew Coffin

In “Designing ‘Above the Fold’ Necessary?,” I offered my thoughts as to how the 600-pixel top "fold" should be viewed today. I also highlighted the importance of site hierarchy — regardless of whether you are designing with the fold. In this article, I will showcase ecommerce sites that...
Customer Retention
Engage Online Customers with SoLoMo

October 27, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Borrowing a strategy and a catch phrase from mobile applications, marketers can use social, local, and mobile (SoLoMo) promotions together to better engage customers. The term "SoLoMo" used to refer to a mobile smartphone application that combined social networking with some form of lo...
Conversion
Admiring Apple’s ‘Questions & Answers’ Feature

October 25, 2011 • Louis Camassa

Editor's Note: Each month contributor Louis Camassa — a seasoned ecommerce developer, and the author of our "Tips for Newcomers, Mostly" blog — will identify a feature from an existing ecommerce site that is well executed, and applicable to other merchants. For the first installment, be...
Product Pages
5 Simple Ways to Promote Multi-Item Orders

October 21, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

Thanksgiving has nearly disappeared at many retail outlets, as companies push customers into holiday shopping even before Halloween candy has had a chance to be cleared from the shelves. Shoppers are quickly reminded that Christmas is less than 10 weeks away, and they’ll be combing on...
Product Pages
SEO: Convert More Before Driving More

October 20, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

Many organic search marketers focus on increasing rankings and traffic to a site. What happens to that traffic once it hits the site, they assume, is someone else's problem. This is a wrong approach. Search marketing's ultimate goal isn't usually to drive more traffic; it's to convert m...
Conversion
Selling Luxury Goods Online

October 14, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

The wisdom of selling expensive, high-end goods online has been debated since ecommerce became a reality. Many brands fear that products will lose their prestige if sold online. Purveyors of French luxury brands such as Chanel have been especially disdainful of ecommerce. In his book, T...
Conversion
5 Holiday Marketing Ideas to Boost Sales

October 13, 2011 • Armando Roggio

The holiday shopping season runs from the end of October to the end of the year, and it can represent as much as 20-to-40 percent of a retailer’s total annual ...
Conversion
Holiday Sales to Grow 2.8 Percent?

October 10, 2011 • Armando Roggio

The National Retail Federation has estimated that overall 2011 holiday sales — brick-and-mortar and online — will grow 2.8 percent reaching some $465.6 billion compared to $453 billion in 2010. The NRF uses a complex economic model that includes data from across the U.S. and world econ...
Conversion
Understanding the Shift to Online Shopping

October 6, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

Defying the general economic gloom, ecommerce sales have registered seven consecutive quarters of year-over-year revenue gains since Q4 2009, with some in double digits. The last three quarters (Q4 2010 through Q2 2011) showed gains of 11, 12, and 14 percent respectively, the best perfo...
Customer Retention
5 Tips for Better Landing Pages

September 28, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Landing pages are important online marketing tools and keys to conversion. So almost anything that a marketer can do to improve a landing page's performance will also improve the bottom line. A landing page may be defined as a page on your website where visitors are sent to prompt a co...
Conversion
Solving the Free Shipping Dilemma

September 27, 2011 • Gagan Mehra

For many merchants, free shipping is an effective online promotion. During the last holiday season, large retailers like Walmart, Target and J.C. Penney offered free shipping for all items. Nordstrom also recently changed its policy to offer free shipping for all purchases. All of this ...
Analytics & Data > Merchant Voice
10 Web Analytics Solutions for Ecommerce Merchants

September 26, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Web analytics tools seek to monitor and report on the interaction between Internet users and specific websites or marketing initiatives for the purpose of improving those interactions. This definition is a ...
Customer Retention
Understanding Basic A/B Testing

September 21, 2011 • Armando Roggio

A/B testing is a method for measuring the relative effectiveness of certain page content or marketing promotions. When properly applied, A/B testing may help marketers significantly improve conversion rates and establish a culture of improvement. In 2009, blogger Dustin Curtis conducte...

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