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

Product Pages
Eight Copywriting Rules for Increasing Conversion

July 22, 2010 • Pamela Hazelton

When merchants talk about ecommerce conversion, it usually centers on design, button placement and ease of checkout. The process, though, actually starts the second someone lands on any web page. This is why textual content is so important. Here are eight rules for using text on your e...
Conversion
Gearing Up for the 2010 Holiday Season

July 21, 2010 • PEC Staff

If you haven’t started thinking about the 2010 holiday season, now is the time. The economy is still shaky, customers remain fickle, and if you’re not prepared you could miss out on the most important shopping season of the year. Thanks to technological advances, we now have more info...
Conversion
TheFind.com CEO: ‘We Index Every Product from Every Store’

July 21, 2010 • PEC Staff

Specialized shopping search engines are becoming increasingly important for consumers. Among the largest of these shopping engines is TheFind, which receives more than 25 million visits per month. The products of most ecommerce merchants are likely already featured on that site, as the ...
Conversion
Debunking Myths from the Top 10 Converting Websites

July 20, 2010 • Charles Nicholls

Editor's Note: We welcome Charles Nicholls as our newest contributor. He's a conversion and analytics expert, and the founder and chief strategy officer of SeeWhy, a conversion and cart-abandonment-recovery firm. He's also the author of “Lessons Learned from the Top Ten Converting Websi...
Conversion
Three Free Language Translation Programs

July 14, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

While there is no substitute for human linguistic knowledge, there are cheaper ways to translate large amounts of text than by hiring a professional translator. A good way for merchants to circumvent hiring a professional translator is to use a machine translator, sentence by sentence, ...
Conversion
The Shopping Experience: OfficeDepot.com Offers Free Shipping, After a Twist

July 12, 2010 • Jeff Muendel

Office Depot is well known as a brick-and-mortar store, but I had never purchased products from its ecommerce site, OfficeDepot.com. Since I was looking for a new desk, I decided to give the site a try. OfficeDepot.com is much like a typical office; it is utilitarian without much in the...
Conversion
The Case for Launching Sub-Niche Websites

July 8, 2010 • Michael Stearns

One strategy to grow your ecommerce revenue is to spin-off a subset of your product line onto its own website. With this "sub-niche" website, you can focus your branding, ads, and presentation to the customer who is looking for what you have to offer. This is not a strategy for the eco...
Conversion
Three Simple, But Overlooked, Conversion Tips

July 7, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Marketing with 404 error pages and showing shipping data before a shopper puts an item in the cart were among the many powerful and often overlooked sales conversions tips that ecommerce coach and entrepreneur, Shirley Tan, shared during a recent webinar. Tan, who is the founder of Ame...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for July 2010

June 30, 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 July 2010 installment of "Great Ecommerce Ideas." Don’t Rush Your Product Listings “When first setting up your ecomm...
Photography & Video
Do Product Videos Help with Search Engine Optimization?

June 29, 2010 • Bill Hartzer

Having videos of your products will help your ecommerce sales. Visitors to your site will watch the videos, and it will presumably help their buying decisions. But what about the search engines? How will posting a product video on your website help with search engine optimization? One...
Photography & Video
The PEC Review: Animoto for Quick, Basic Product Videos

June 18, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Product videos give shoppers a better idea of what they're buying, slash return rates, and boost conversions. So it is little wonder that many online retailers are adding videos to their product detail pages. But not all product videos are created equally and, frankly, not every produc...
Checkout Tactics
Usability Report Card: How-To-Plans.com

June 15, 2010 • Pamela Hazelton

I’m always excited to hear business owners wanting a blunt, no-holds-barred analysis. It means they’re serious about being competitive. The team at How-To-Plans asked Practical eCommerce to grade the usability of its website. How-To-Plans sells do-it-yourself plans for all sorts of hom...
Analytics & Data
The PEC Review: WooRank Website Analysis Tool

June 14, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Search engine optimization (SEO) is changing. As search engines like Google, Bing, and Ask seek to provide better, more relevant, personalized, and, perhaps, even real-time results to search queries, so-called traditional SEO tactics may not work as expected. What's more, since search ...
Conversion
Four Ways to Increase Conversion Rates

June 11, 2010 • Armando Roggio

To make more sales, an online retailer can increase traffic, convert site visitors into customers at a higher rate, or, ideally, do both. On Tuesday, Practical Ecommerce hosted a webinar aimed at helping merchants boost conversion rates. The webinar's panelists described four distinct...
Conversion
The Shopping Experience: OldNavy.com Easy to Use, But Not Perfect

June 4, 2010 • Jeff Muendel

Editor's Note: "The Shopping Experience" is an occasional feature whereby we purchase an actual product from an ecommerce merchant, and then critique the process. For this installment, contributor describes his purchase of a jacket. Summertime requires summer clothing, and I was in ne...
Conversion
Videos Help Consumers, Says Invodo CEO

June 3, 2010 • PEC Staff

Nearly every ecommerce merchant who uses product videos reports that it increases sales. But there are disagreements as to what to include in a product video, how to produce it and where to show it. Invodo is a company that specializes in assisting merchants with product videos, and i...
Conversion
Trusted Brands Drive More Traffic, But Smaller Merchants Can Compete

June 2, 2010 • Armando Roggio

In the U.S., the largest 25 online retailers enjoyed improved sales in the first quarter of 2010 while all other retailers struggled. To perform better, some smaller online merchants should seek to drive more traffic with brand-based marketing, a topic that was discussed during a rece...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for June 2010

June 1, 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 June 2010 installment of "Great Ecommerce Ideas." Use a Thank You Page “An order confirmation is good, but a ‘thank ...
Conversion
10 Questions on Product Recommendations

May 27, 2010 • PEC Staff

Many merchants use automated product recommendations to increase sales and conversions. These recommendations are usually dynamically generated on an ecommerce site, and they are typically based on the purchase habits of a particular customer, or a group of customers. Strands Recommend...
Conversion
4 Tips For Language Translation, Optimization

May 20, 2010 • PEC Staff

There’s a limited number of potential customers online for each language. And by some accounts, up to 85 percent of consumers won’t buy from a site if they can’t read about the product in their native language. One solution is to go multilingual with your online reach and expand into ot...
Customer Retention
Using Offsite Trust Marketing to Build Site Traffic

May 19, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Consumers buy from online retailers they trust, and unfortunately, nearly half of American consumers probably don't trust your business. Data from the Edelman Trust Barometer shows that in 2009 only 36 percent of Americans surveyed said that they thought U.S.-based companies were trust...
Conversion
4 Video-Sourcing Methods: Pros and Cons of Each

May 17, 2010 • Justin Foster

Ecommerce merchants that are serious about creating winning video strategies need to consider the strengths and weaknesses of each production and sourcing method. The benefits of each could depend on the retailer’s goals for its video program. For many retailers, the goal is an increase...
Checkout Tactics
Conversion: Technology, Customers, and ‘Embraceability’

May 13, 2010 • Pamela Hazelton

Conversion rates of an online store rely on many things, and that includes the technology used for graphics, video and interactive content. Cascading Stylesheets (CSS), JavaScript, and Flash have made the web a better, more interactive place. Next up is HTML5, which is the next major r...
Conversion
When to Start an Affiliate Marketing Program

May 12, 2010 • PEC Staff

If you want to increase sales and broaden your reach without spending a lot of money, starting an affiliate marketing program may have occurred to you. Affiliate marketing can give you instant access to third party marketers who will help promote your products through advertising, emai...
Conversion
The Shopping Experience: Poorly Described Item Disappoints

May 6, 2010 • Jeff Muendel

Editor's Note: "The Shopping Experience" is an occasional feature whereby we purchase an actual product from an ecommerce merchant, and then critique the process. For this installment, contributor describes his attempt to purchase a book. I was searching for a book recommended to me b...
Conversion
Six Causes for Disappearing Ecommerce Sales

May 5, 2010 • Michael Stearns

A sudden stoppage in online sales can be scary. Hopefully you haven't experienced this scenario. But if you have, you know that empty feeling when your orders cease to arrive in your inbox. What to do? As in any time of crisis, take a deep breath, stay calm, and then get down to busines...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for May 2010

May 3, 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 May 2010 installment of "Great Ecommerce Ideas." Study Your Competitors’ SEO “Study and learn why your direct compet...
Conversion
Ask an Expert: Optimizing Google Product Search

April 22, 2010 • 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 Google Product Search from Kara English, co-founder of Candlesandsuch.com, a Colorado-based retailer of life-event gifts and accesso...
Conversion
Spam, Spam Bots, and Double Opt-in E-mail Lists

April 21, 2010 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

It's hard to grow an e-mail list these days. People, wary of getting tons of unwanted e-mail, just don't subscribe as freely as they did in days of yore. And then there are evil spam-bots.
Conversion
Three Ways to Optimize Video Performance

April 12, 2010 • Justin Foster

With all the buzz surrounding ecommerce video, you might think web merchants were maximizing their video revenue opportunities. But they are not. Make no mistake, while more merchants than ever are experimenting with online video merchandising, retailers large and small would like to...

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