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
Conversion: 15 Reasons Why Consumers Will Leave Your eCommerce Site

November 3, 2009 • Darpan Munjal

Editor's Note: We welcome Darpan Munjal as our newest contributor. Munjal is president of Chicago-based LeapMatrix, which consults small and large ecommerce firms on conversion and usability matters. He also writes CommerceWiki, a blog aimed at helping ecommerce merchants improve their ...
Conversion
Forums: Still Useful to eCommerce Merchants

November 2, 2009 • Jeff Muendel

The term "web forums" conjures-up visions of an outdated Internet. I remember the first time that I got “on line” it was done by dialing directly (by way of a 14.4 kbps modem) into an electronic bulletin board which was, essentially, a stand-alone forum. But we’ve never really stopped ...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for November 2009

November 2, 2009 • Ankush Agarwal

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 November 2009 installment. Localize Site Content "Your ecommerce site should be as localized as your physical stores...
Conversion
Holiday Sales: Four Ways to Capture the Budget-driven Consumer

October 28, 2009 • Lisa Wehr

The marketplace has been changed by the recession. Consumers have become increasingly frugal and they're probing for the best deals they can find. Ecommerce merchants need to adjust accordingly. Retail sales took a hit in 2008, even though online traffic rose 10 percent. That's presum...
Conversion
Pay-per-click Advertising: Seven Pointers for Smaller Campaigns

October 27, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky

Managing small-budget pay-per-click campaigns (under $3,000 per month) is typically more difficult than managing campaigns with higher spend levels. Lack of “workable” data in smaller accounts often pushes campaign managers to make decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate information...
Conversion
Google Analytics “Inaccurate,” Expert Says

October 19, 2009 • PEC Staff

Many ecommerce merchants use Google Analytics to track visitor activity on their websites. But there are other analytics firms, too, that offer services to merchants. One of them is ClickTale, an Israel-based firm with over 35,000 clients, according to its co-founder. That co-founder i...
Analytics & Data
The PeC Review: ClearSaleing Ties Profit to Marketing Tactics

October 9, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce marketers want to generate the greatest possible revenue from every promotional dollar invested. But tracking or measuring exactly how each ad, each promotion, or each press release affects shoppers can be allusive. ClearSaleing provides a platform that helps companies accura...
Conversion
Survey Results: Consideration of Ethnicity Is Not Racist

October 8, 2009 • Kevin Patrick Allen

An overwhelming number of respondents to a September 2009 Practical eCommerce survey indicated that online merchants should consider a potential customer’s ethnicity when developing a marketing campaign. The survey went a step further, asking merchants to give compelling reasons to mark...
Conversion
Be Your Own Social Media Director

October 7, 2009 • Kevin Patrick Allen

Ecommerce merchants have witnessed an evolution among consumers: Consumers are no longer passive. They share information about products and services via email, blogging, and now Facebook and Twitter, among other social networking sites. Companies--particularly ad agencies--are increa...
Conversion
Holiday Sales: Three Tips to Turn Browsers into Buyers

October 6, 2009 • Lisa Wehr

The holiday shopping season is upon us. Based on a 2008 study of more than 1.5 million people who used the Internet for holiday shopping, we found that the first week of October marks the start of the shopping season. That means it’s time to make your keyword list for both organic searc...
Customer Retention
The PeC Review: SeeWhy.com Helps Capture Exiting Shoppers

October 6, 2009 • Armando Roggio

A six year-old, real-time analytics firm seeks to help online merchants boost conversions by enabling stores to follow up with potential customers after those shoppers leave the site or abandon the shopping cart. According to SeeWhy, sending shoppers a customer-service-oriented email a...
Conversion
Six Pointers for Generating Traffic from YouTube

October 5, 2009 • Jeff Muendel

YouTube ranks only behind Google in the number of searches on its site. This is according to comScore, the Internet measurement and analysis firm. That means there are more searches on YouTube than on Yahoo! search, or Bing, or Ask.com. However, the searches are not general searches lik...
Analytics & Data
Ecommerce Know-How: Avoid The Last Click Effect

October 2, 2009 • Armando Roggio

As ecommerce marketers strive to get the best return for every dollar they invest, there is a danger that they will fall prey to the last click effect, attributing all of a campaign's success to just the last interaction a customer has before arriving on site or making a purchase. The ...
Conversion
Six Success Factors for Small Ecommerce Businesses

September 30, 2009 • Michael Stearns

Many small ecommerce businesses are one-to-five person shops whose income is derived solely from their websites. As the ecommerce world evolves and becomes more sophisticated, however, success for these smaller merchants has become more challenging. Through the past year, certainly a ...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for October 2009

September 29, 2009 • Ankush Agarwal

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 October 2009 installment. The Power of Product Reviews "Use the power of product reviews and motivate your team to d...
Conversion
Shop.org 2009 Summit Round Up

September 28, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Exhibitors, attendees, and speakers at last week's Shop.org Annual Summit were encouraged and excited about the future of ecommerce, both in terms of growth and technology. In fact, walking around the convention center at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas seemed to make everyone fee...
Conversion
Yahoo! May Sell Small Business Unit, Focus on Core Business

September 25, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The Yahoo! small business services unit, which includes the hosted ecommerce platform used by thousands of online merchants, may soon be sold, clearing the way for Yahoo! to focus on its core businesses, according to published reports. News that Yahoo! had garnered some interest for th...
Checkout Tactics
Seven Ways to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment

September 23, 2009 • Jan Riley

Shopping cart abandonment affects most every ecommerce merchant. A whitepaper by McAfee, an ecommerce security company, called Digital Window Shopping: The Long Journey to Buy, cites a survey conducted by comScore, in which comScore attempted to determine why shoppers abandon their cart...
Conversion
Integrating Yahoo! Search and Microsoft Bing with Google Analytics

September 21, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky

Many ecommerce merchants use Google Analytics to track their pay-per-click advertising campaigns. Key pay-per-click statistics that can be tracked include revenue per keyword, number of conversions per keyword, average order size per keyword, bounce rates per keyword, and much more. B...
Customer Retention
Ecommerce Know How: Public Relations 101

September 15, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Public relations is the art of managing your business' public reputation through media engagement, and it is an important and often overlooked part of successful ecommerce marketing communications. In public relations (PR) the aim is to build relationships with media outlets and blogge...
Conversion
Ecommerce Know-How: Branding Helps Connect With Consumers

September 10, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Building an emotional and social connection with shoppers can create lasting relationships that produce both pleasing shopping experiences and increased profit. This is most commonly referred to as "branding" and it can be one of the most important keys to ecommerce success. In July 20...
Conversion
Social Media: Frequently Asked Questions from Small Business Owners

September 8, 2009 • Lisa Wehr

I recently toured our state (Michigan) with members of my staff. We met with small business owners to offer them actionable marketing and sales advice that they could take back to the office that day. Much of that advice revolved around social media marketing. While no two businesses ...
Conversion
Use LinkedIn To Promote Your Online Store

September 2, 2009 • Sarah Worsham

Many people think of LinkedIn as a business community, but it can also be helpful for promoting your online store. It can help build your network, conduct research, demonstrate your expertise, and market your products. LinkedIn For Your Online Resume One of the best uses of LinkedIn i...
Conversion
New Google AdSense Network Partners Could Make Top Sites More Expensive

September 1, 2009 • PEC Staff

Google AdSense network partners can now bid on display advertising positions at top AdSense publisher sites, potentially making top-performing sites more expensive. Most ecommerce marketers are familiar with Google AdWords, the pay-per-click advertising platform that lets merchants pos...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for September 2009

August 27, 2009 • Ankush Agarwal

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 September 2009 installment. Help Customers Interact With Your Site "Invest in features that will help customers inte...
Customer Retention
The PeC Review: Runa Converts Reluctant Website Visitors

August 21, 2009 • Armando Roggio

By some estimates, fewer than 20 percent of online retailers have conversion rates above 5 percent. Most Internet merchants experience sales conversions of only 2-to-3 percent. To compensate for such low conversion rates, many companies make significant advertising investments to boost ...
Conversion
Conversion Review: Boulder Running Company

August 17, 2009 • Alan Cox

The Boulder Running Company is a Colorado-based specialty retailer with three stores across the Front Range. It has been operating an e-tail store since 2006. Director of ecommerce Jason Halberstadt explains that the company's biggest challenge is getting consumers to move beyond the sh...
Conversion
How-to Articles Can Boost Sales

August 13, 2009 • Jan Riley

Publishing how-to articles on your ecommerce website can be an effective way to boost sales. How-to articles can attract traffic, improve your search position, engage visitors, increase time visitors spend on-site, and help to establish your brand and expertise. Turn Visitors Into Cu...
Conversion
Ten Pay-per-click Questions An Owner Should Ask

August 13, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky

If you own or manage an ecommerce business, you may not directly execute your pay-per-click advertising campaigns yourself. Instead, you may delegate the execution of them to an employee or an outside firm. But owners and managers need to know that broad outlines and the successes and f...
Analytics & Data
PeC Review: Clicky Web Analytics

August 12, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Web analytics newcomer Clicky offers real-time site data, Twitter activity, and custom data tracking for a nominal monthly fee, making it an attractive choice for some ecommerce businesses. Web analytics have become the definitive means of measuring marketing campaigns and search engin...

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