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
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...
Customer Retention
Ecommerce Know-How: Marketing to the Hispanic Community

August 10, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The Hispanic community is one of the fastest growing online consumer segments in the U.S. It represents some 11 percent of the total U.S. online market and it is, therefore, an important segment for ecommerce marketers to consider. According to comScore, an Internet trend tracking firm...
Conversion
Stamps.com Hits $20.2 Million Revenue in Second Quarter of 2009

August 6, 2009 • PEC Staff

Stamps.com, a leader in online postage sales, recorded $20.2 million in total revenue in the second quarter of 2009. Net income for the quarter was $1.2 million, compared to $1.3 million for the second quarter in 2008. "In the current tough macroeconomic environment, we were happy with...
Conversion
Paid Search Advertising: Four Steps for Success

August 5, 2009 • Lisa Wehr

Paid search advertising has proven to be effective for many online businesses. In fact, paid search campaigns account for nearly 45 percent of the global online advertising expenditures, and for good reason. Not only does pay-per-click advertising allow advertisers to spend as much or a...
Conversion
comScore Revenue Hits $31.4 Million in Second Quarter 2009

August 4, 2009 • PEC Staff

Reston, Va.-based comScore, Inc. reported second quarter revenues of $31.4 million, representing a nine percent increase over the same 2008 quarter. Net income for the quarter declined from the same quarter in 2008, however, due largely to non-cash expenses related to prior acquisitions...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for August 2009

July 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 August 2009 installment. Google Alerts Provide an Extra Set of Eyes and Ears "Set up Google Alerts on your company’s...
Analytics & Data
Measuring SEO Success: Challenging, but Necessary

July 21, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown

Measuring the increased traffic and sales from a search-engine-optimization initiative is among the most challenging issues site owners face. Frequently, when I’m starting a new SEO program with a client, the seemingly simple question of “What’s your goal?” is met with a pause. It’s not...
Conversion
Tagging URLs for Better Tracking in Google Analytics

July 16, 2009 • Michael Stearns

If you use Google Analytics, you have likely experienced its value in understanding your shoppers and how they interact with your site. But there are deeper levels of understanding to attain. If you start tuning the data you feed to Google Analytics by "tagging" your URLs, you can gener...
Customer Retention
Ecommerce Know-How: Turn Customers Into Members

July 14, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Focusing a portion of marketing efforts on reselling existing customers or acquiring frequent shoppers could help boost sales for many online merchants. Often online retail marketing focuses on increasing site traffic and converting visitors. This strategy is really the heart of sellin...
Conversion
Four Steps to Effective Display Advertising

July 14, 2009 • Lisa Wehr

We’ve known it all along. So the studies recently released demonstrating the value of display advertising came as no surprise to us. One of these studies performed by the Online Publishers Association and comScore found that display ads can have a significant impact on search and consu...
Conversion
Research Your Competitors with These Three Steps

July 13, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky

Competitive research is necessary for many ecommerce businesses. Larger companies reportedly employ many people to research and analyze what their competitors are up to. Below is a list of three steps to help research your competitors. Step 1: Identify Competitors and Industry-relevant...
Conversion
The Landing Page as a Multipurpose Tool

July 6, 2009 • Jeff Muendel

Landing pages are always worth a review because their use is often misunderstood. A landing page is any web page to which users are sent for a particular presentation, result, and/or measurement. Landing pages, in short, have uses beyond simply presenting information. People sometimes...
Conversion
Field Test: Conversion Strategies Part II

July 2, 2009 • PEC Staff

Practical eCommerce periodically gathers seasoned ecommerce merchants and asks each of them the same questions around a given topic. We publish their responses in "Field Test," and the topic in this installment is conversion strategies. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave N...
Conversion
Ten Great New Ecommerce Ideas for July 2009

July 1, 2009 • Ankush Agarwal

Practical eCommerce asks industry insiders each month to share a great, innovative idea that could help an ecommerce company succeed. Here’s what ten of them had to say for the July 2009 installment. Focus on Upsell Products "To succeed with your ecommerce solution, it is extremely im...
Conversion
Pay-per-click Advertising: Bing Delivering Improved Results, Expert Says

June 30, 2009 • PEC Staff

Microsoft launched Bing, its new search engine, on June 3, 2009. The company is heavily promoting it in hopes of gaining ground on Google, the industry leader. Bing's revenue comes mainly from pay-per-click advertising, which many smaller ecommerce firms utilize. We asked a leading pa...
Checkout Tactics
Ecommerce Know-How: Identify Related Products and Boost Sales

June 29, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Good on-site marketing, such as related-product promotions, encourages emotion-driven "joy buying," potentially boosting per-customer revenue and profit. Online shopping can be both a practical and an emotional activity. Often buyers begin an online shopping experience because they see...
Conversion
Field Test: Conversion Strategies

June 26, 2009 • PEC Staff

Practical eCommerce periodically gathers seasoned ecommerce merchants and asks each of them the same questions around a given topic. We publish their responses in "Field Test," and the topic in this installment is conversion strategies. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave N...
Conversion
5 Ways to Improve Website Copy and Grow Sales

June 24, 2009 • Jan Riley

Ecommerce merchants have many pages to write copy for. Home and landing pages, category pages, product descriptions, articles, and shopping messages are just a few. This article will describe five ways to improve your web copy, and the concepts here can be applied to all pages on your e...
Conversion
Microsoft’s Bing to Win Market Share?

June 19, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky

Microsoft recently rolled out a new search engine called Bing. This launch appears to be another attempt by Microsoft to win over search market share from its main search rivals, Google and Yahoo! Microsoft is reportedly planning to spend over $100 million on promoting the engine. Bin...
Conversion
Survey Results: Big Brands to Dominate, Video Ubiquitous

June 16, 2009 • PEC Staff

As more retail heavyweights focus on ecommerce, and online leaders expand their offerings, smaller stores will be forced into more specialized niches, according to a recent Practical eCommerce survey. When asked what was likely to happen to ecommerce in the next five years, 68.7 percent...
Conversion
Four Sure-Fire Ways to Capture More Consumers

June 11, 2009 • Lisa Wehr

It is critical to capture, retain and prevent your current and future consumers from slipping through the cracks—especially now. Competition is fierce, and it’s crucial that your business is being seen and heard above your competitors. The use of social media, email marketing and bann...
Customer Retention
PeC Traffic Report: Four Good Web Tools to Identify Traffic-Building Trends

June 11, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Participating in trends that matter to your customers can attract significant website traffic, but knowing what trends to follow (or even how to interact with those trends) is a difficult task. In January of this year, Practical eCommerce published a column about developing customer-ce...
Conversion
Webinar: 7 Key Strategies For Improving Online Merchandising

June 10, 2009 • PEC Staff

First broadcast on June 9, 2009, "Key Strategies For Improving Online Merchandising" featured Jay Shaffer, Vice President of Marketing for Infopia, as he shared methods for proven online merchandising success. Specifically, Shaffer explained seven key strategies for improving online me...
Conversion
Ping.fm Makes Social Media Strategy Easy

June 9, 2009 • Sarah Worsham

Once you’ve figured out exactly what you want to do as far as social media, it can seem like a chore to implement a plan. You may have several different social media networks you want to update at once and you’re not always near a computer. Ping.fm provides a service where you can updat...
Conversion
Pay-per-click Report Card: BuyAndWalk.com Has Opportunity for Growth

June 8, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky

BuyAndWalk.com sells footwear for men, women and children. The owner contacted Practical eCommerce with a request to review his pay-per-click advertising campaigns. He spends about $1,000 per month on pay-per-click advertising, with 99 percent of those monies invested into Google AdWord...
Conversion
Increase Conversion Rates by Identifying Funnels and Goals

June 3, 2009 • Michael Stearns

Let's assume you have an ecommerce website and you have been successful in getting traffic to it. A next logical step is to focus on your conversion rate and determine what you can do to improve it. To do this, glean clues about user behavior by analyzing the conversion and abandonment ...
Conversion
Building Your Brand. Part 2: How to Write a Brand Positioning Statement

June 2, 2009 • Dan Wilson

Every time customers experience your brand, you want them to remember what you do, why it is important to them, and why it is unique to you. By developing a clear expression of what is important to your customers and unique to you
Conversion
Ten Great New Ecommerce Ideas for June 2009

May 29, 2009 • Ankush Agarwal

Each month, Practical eCommerce asks industry insiders to share a great, innovative idea that could help an ecommerce company. Here’s what ten of them had to say for the June 2009 installment. Set Yourself Apart with Visual Security "Making your commitment to security known by your cu...

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