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
10 Large-company Features That Help Smaller Merchants

April 27, 2011 • Gagan Mehra

Editor's Note: We welcome Gagan Mehra as our newest contributor. He's a seasoned ecommerce consultant to large retailers, having worked for a "Big 4" accounting and consulting firm for over ten years. For us, he brings his large-company insights to smaller merchants. Large ecommerce ...
Conversion
Do-It-Yourself Awareness-Building for Your Products

April 22, 2011 • PEC Staff

For a merchant just starting out, building an awareness with potential customers that your products even exist can be a daunting task. But there are many tools — and some strategies — that can help give a smaller merchant a louder voice to compete with already established brands. Trade...
Conversion
25 Advertising Networks for Online Businesses

April 20, 2011 • PEC Staff

Google’s AdSense and AdWords are two of the most widely used advertising platforms for online business. And although Google facilitates a massive amount of traffic online, there are dozens of other ad networks that ecommerce businesses can take advantage of. Here are twenty-five popul...
Checkout Tactics > Merchant Voice
Pros and Cons of Checkout by Amazon’s Inline Checkout

April 19, 2011 • Jamie Salvatori

Checkout by Amazon allows your customers to use their Amazon login credentials to make purchases on your site. There are several different ways to integrate this into your store. The best “experience”, in my opinion, is their inline offering. In this method, your customers never leave...
Conversion
11 Shopping-Search Engines to Sell Your Products

April 14, 2011 • PEC Staff

Listing your products with shopping-oriented search engines can be a great way to attract new customers. Many shopping search engines are free, but some require a fee and come with varying levels of control and interaction with your products and with customers that buy through the shopp...
Conversion
22 Analytics Tools for Online Businesses

April 13, 2011 • PEC Staff

Measuring the behavior of a site’s visitors is crucial to understanding what works and what doesn’t. With these 22 analytics tools, you can analyze your site’s traffic – see which products are popular, which blog posts are most clicked, where your visitors are coming from and how long t...
Customer Retention
6 Things Consumers Hate About Ecommerce Sites

April 11, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce websites should inspire trust, engage customers, and make it easy to shop — ultimately leading to more sales. Unfortunately, too many online stores fall short in one or more areas. In this article, I am going to describe six things consumers — including me — hate to find on e...
Product Pages
10 Compelling Product Descriptions

April 1, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Product descriptions help to sell products. That's an obvious but sometimes overlooked reality. Too often, online merchants are happy to simply copy a manufacturer's product description and call it good. But since that merchant is probably not the only one just copying and pasting, t...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for April 2011

March 31, 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 April 2011 installment of "Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas." Personalize Customer Service “Have automated email correspond...
Conversion
What’s an Ecommerce Brand? An Expert Explains

March 30, 2011 • PEC Staff

Cindy Ratzlaff is an expert on branding. She worked in the marketing industry for over twenty years, having developed the marketing and publicity campaigns for more than 150 New York Times bestselling books. She spearheaded the successful campaign for The South Beach Diet international ...
Product Pages
Emphasize Key Details for Effective Product Descriptions; 5 Pointers

March 24, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

When describing products and services, remember that consumers want to know why they need those items. Use bullet points and lists to present need-to-know information in an easy-to-read format. Furniture stores, for example, would use bullet points to display measurements, color and mat...
Customer Service
The Zappos Effect: 5 Great Customer Service Ideas for Smaller Businesses

March 21, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Zappos, the online retailer, has used incredible customer service to create an extremely loyal customer base. Small ecommerce businesses that want to grow would be wise to take a lesson from Zappos. As an example of Zappos' almost insane customer care, the company has even been known t...
Product Pages
How to Write Product Descriptions that Sell, Boost SEO Efforts

March 18, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Compelling, informative, and unique product descriptions can help your ecommerce business increase sales. Moreover, original product descriptions can help avoid Google's so-called "Farmer algorithm" penalty, which can affect retailers that copy product descriptions from competitors, or ...
Conversion
Non-English Languages Less Competitive, Says Globalization Expert

March 10, 2011 • PEC Staff

There are many countries with fast-growing economies and fast-growing Internet audiences that are not native English speakers. Ecommerce merchants can reach those countries and consumers through translation and localization. We talked about it recently with Christian Arno, the founder o...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for March 2011

February 25, 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 March 2011 installment of "Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas." Get Some Free Press “One of the best things an entrepreneur c...
Checkout Tactics
10 Ecommerce Checkout Strategies

February 24, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

When we hear the word “conversion” we often think landing pages, category and product page layouts and overall navigation. Let’s not forget the final point of conversion: the checkout process. The checkout page(s) are your last chance to seal the deal and complete a sale. The process i...
Conversion
Managing Google Product Feeds in Google Merchant Center

February 17, 2011 • Michael Stearns

Google Product Search — formerly known as Froogle and Google Base, and sometimes known as Google Shopping — has grown in importance as a key source of orders and revenue for ecommerce businesses. Don't let the "beta" label on the Google Product Search main page fool you; this is a prim...
Conversion
Ask an Expert: How to Increase Conversion Rates?

February 10, 2011 • PEC Staff

”Ask an Expert” is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about converting online shoppers into paying customers. The question comes from Patricia Brown, owner of LordsArt, an Ozone Park, N.Y.-ba...
Checkout Tactics
Ask An Expert: What Data to Mine from Abandoned Carts?

February 7, 2011 • PEC Staff

“Ask an Expert” is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about collecting lost customer data from abandoned ...
Conversion
How To Set Up Shop on Niche Online Marketplaces

February 2, 2011 • PEC Staff

Ecommerce merchants know that sometimes just selling on your own shop’s website isn’t enough to keep the company growing. Selling your wares in a brick-and-mortar boutique or setting up a booth at designer shows, expos and other events can be a good way to increase profits and brand awa...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for February 2011

January 28, 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 February 2011 installment of "Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas." Use Customer Feedback to Further SEO “Not everyone has aut...
Product Pages
Volume Discounts: Choose the Right Words to Boost Sales

January 27, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

Websites like Groupon, which allow people to “crowd purchase” products and services from local retailers, are becoming popular, mostly due to current economies. It makes sense for online stores selling items normally used in bulk to offer volume discounts, but what about specialty or hi...
Conversion
6 Pointers for Creating Blog Content

January 26, 2011 • PEC Staff

Once you have your blog set up, start the process by brainstorming compelling topics that are related to your industry, business, products or services. First, identify your audience. Look at the demographics of your store — what are the personal details of your customer base?
Customer Retention
Consider the Subscription Model for New Revenue

January 25, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Selling to a customer once is great. Selling to a customer every year, month, or week is even better. This mantra of sorts — along with apparent growth in consumer demand and several new subscription-specific billing solutions — is creating opportunity for ecommerce entrepreneurs large...
Conversion
Two Lessons that Groupon Can Teach Ecommerce Merchants

January 13, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Selling products online is a challenge. Ecommerce merchants rarely benefit from spontaneous buys, cannot easily generate emotional buying responses, and face tremendous price competition, since thousands of competitors are only a click away. Nonetheless, many companies — from tiny purv...
Conversion
Ask an Expert: Better to Use Facebook Ads, or Google?

January 7, 2011 • PEC Staff

“Ask an Expert” is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about advertising with Google versus Facebook. The question comes from Matthew Johnson, owner and artist behind Seventh.Ink, a Palm Harb...
Conversion
Ten Great Ideas for January 2011

December 31, 2010 • 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 January ...
Customer Retention
The PEC Review: Ethnio Helps Understand Customers

December 27, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Successful online retailers are often customer-focused service companies rather than just purveyors of products. Put another way, many successful retailers are successful not just because of the products they offer or the effectiveness of their marketing, but rather because they do a g...
Checkout Tactics
6 Pointers for Selling Last-Minute Gift Certificates

December 17, 2010 • Pamela Hazelton

For years, gift certificates have been a difficult sell for the majority of small online stores. Despite consumer-advocacy laws that now require retailers to impose no fees and that limit expirations on gift certificates and gift cards, consumers are often reminded (especially during th...
Photography & Video
The PEC Review: Aviary’s Embeddable HTML5 Photo Editor

December 13, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Online merchants should never forget that their core business is selling products. But it can be an effective marketing tactic to offer other services to potential customers. Examples of offering more than just products abound. They include things like the how-to articles, blogs, enter...

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