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
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...
Product Pages
Best Policy for Inventory Stock Status? Be Transparent

September 20, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

Most customers can deal with miniscule shipping mistakes. The majority are forgiving when damaged shipments are quickly addressed or replaced, and most will even return shop if their issues are fixed expeditiously. But what if the order is never fulfilled due to lack of inventory? Las...
Conversion
4 Lessons From the Google Ebookstore

September 19, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Google's electronic bookstore took months to plan and is considered by some to be a viable competitor to respected brands like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The crisp clean site has at least four valuable lessons to share with seasoned ecommerce professionals and new entrepreneurs alik...
Conversion
9 Pointers for Selling Common Products

September 7, 2011 • Michael Stearns

Five or ten years ago you might have been one of the only kids on the ecommerce block selling automotive tools, pool supplies, specialty fabrics, or a myriad of other niche products. But competition has increased and the "big-box" retailers continue to extend their online reach. How ca...
Photography & Video
Google’s New WebP Image Format Could Improve Load Times

September 5, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Web graphics, particularly photos, are beginning to evolve. But more change is needed as the requirements for both speed and beautiful design intensify. A new, royalty-free format hopes to provide ...
Conversion
How Larger Retailers Integrate Physical Stores with Ecommerce Sites

August 23, 2011 • Gagan Mehra

Most large retailers I work with have brick-and-mortar stores in addition to ecommerce sites. Better integration between these two channels is always one of their goals. Though the integrations vary for every retailer, a few key strategies are consistent. I will describe them in this ar...
Checkout Tactics
Wait List Notifications: ‘Old School’ Feature Still Drives Conversions

August 9, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

The "wait list" was first popular in the late 1990s — before comparison shopping and social media sites. — to allow shoppers to sign up for notifications about specific products. The concept is simple. When an item is on backorder, the shopper can enter his or her name and email addres...
Conversion
Integrating Educational Content into Your Ecommerce Site; 10 Pointers

August 3, 2011 • Michael Stearns

The ecommerce landscape continues to get more competitive. It is becoming increasingly difficult to base your success simply on having a site with great products and no other content. You ...
Conversion
How U.S. Merchants Can Target U.K. Consumers

August 2, 2011 • PEC Staff

The United Kingdom offers expansion opportunities for United States-based ecommerce merchants. But to do it correctly requires much thought and planning. There are domain name issues, search-engine-optimization strategies, localization considerations,
Conversion
5 Ways to Segment Your Customer Base

July 28, 2011 • Gagan Mehra

Ecommerce businesses need to understand their customers. But it takes time and money to attend to each customer individually. The best strategy is to segregate the customer base into common attributes — called "segments." You can then target each segment with specific marketing campaign...
Analytics & Data
Google Analytics Adds Social Data

July 25, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Google Analytics has added social-media-related data to its reports. Google +1 button data is available by default. Facebook "Like" and Twitter "Tweet" sharing statistics can be added with some setup and additional tracking code. The new Google Analytics "Social" report tracks what Goo...
Photography & Video
Using Video to Convert Shoppers; 8 Pointers

July 22, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

Video is an effective way to attract more customers and close sales. Big business relies on video to further establish their brand of products. Small business ecommerce sites can benefit from the practice, provided streaming visuals are implemented properly. Zappos uses video to enhanc...
Analytics & Data
Understanding ‘Traffic Sources’ in Google Analytics

July 18, 2011 • Armando Roggio

The Google Analytics "Traffic Sources" section can help ecommerce marketers understand how well campaigns are working and how better to invest in site content, advertising, or other forms of engagement. Google Analytics is a free service that uses cookies — which we explain in "Cookies...
Conversion
How Small Brick-and-Mortar Retailers Succeed Online; 4 Keys

July 13, 2011 • PEC Staff

Editor's Note: We welcome Bret Williams as a new contributor. He is founder and president of Novusweb, an ecommerce development firm. He is also a former online merchant. His contributions for us will focus on the issues faced by small, brick-and-mortar retailers when they migrate onli...
Conversion
Using Amazon to Grow Your Ecommerce Business; 6 Tools

July 11, 2011 • Michael Stearns

Amazon.com is no longer a brazen ecommerce start-up. It has grown into the leading online retailer. And it evolved its platform to provide tools and technologies for other businesses to use. There are so many of these tools, in fact, it's hard to keep them straight. But I'll review six ...
Conversion
Notable Views: Improve Your Conversion Rate with a Manufacturing Approach

July 7, 2011 • David Sasson

Editor's Note: "Notable Views” is a series where we ask experts to address critical ecommerce topics. For this installment, we corresponded with David Sasson, the founder of OverstockArt.com, an online retailer of original art reproductions. The company is based in Wichita, Kansas, bu...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for July 2011

July 1, 2011 • 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 July ...
Conversion
How to Get Consumers Talking about Your Company

July 1, 2011 • Armando Roggio

The Internet is now the leading source of information for brand-related, word-of-mouth conversations, according to a new study of 3,000 American adults. This finding may indicate that online merchants and other ecommerce businesses can use well-planned content to spark product or bran...
Analytics & Data
Looking at Location in Google Analytics

June 27, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Understanding your customers — including their preferences and opinions — is an important part of ecommerce marketing. One helpful indicator of customer behavior is location, because where one lives can ...
Conversion
5 Suggestions for Naming Your Store

June 22, 2011 • Armando Roggio

An online store’s name is one of its most important assets and a potent part of its brand. In some sense the business name can define its identity. Since business naming is so important, you don’t want to simply draw a name out of a hat or let your eight-year-old choose. Rather what fo...

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