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
Are 1-800 Numbers And Live Chat Important?

February 14, 2007 • PEC Staff

As online shopping matures, merchants must avoid the tendency to be complacent in their merchandising efforts. Here are five ways merchants can truly innovate in the coming year. In the end, there is one point all five recommendations have in common and that is "listening to the custome...
Conversion
Conversion: Define Your Audience

February 12, 2007 • Mat Greenfield

Regular readers won't be surprised to find that this month's column describes one of the key elements of effective conversion. In fact, this element is so critical, I consider it to be the cement that binds all the other areas of effective conversion together. Before I reveal what it is...
Conversion
Usability Report Card: Quelobjet.com

January 30, 2007 • PEC Staff

For this month's edition of the Usability Report Card we have chosen Quel Objet, a site specializing in French products for the home. Quel Objet means "What a thing!" according to the site's "about us" page, and the site's design shares the same funky vibe as its name. Quel Objet doesn...
Conversion
Why the Fishing Lure Won’t Reel in Much Online Profit

January 16, 2007 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

"I invented and patented a fishing lure (the "Bottom Banger") about five years ago. I have tried to sell it online, but every time I try I fail. I have a video showing the lure in action and I do sell them in the local bait shops for $1.99. Can you steer me in a direction that will make this take off?" -- Greg Amsler
Conversion
Quick Query: Restaurants & Email Marketing

January 10, 2007 • PEC Staff

Abby Weaver is the marketing director for Fajita Grill (Fajitagrill.com), a small restaurant with locations in Oswego and Fulton, New York, that successfully uses email marketing and its website to boost sales. PeC: When did Fajita Grill launch its website? Weaver: Even before we op...
Conversion
Outsourcing Pay-per-click

January 8, 2007 • PEC Staff

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a long-term, time-consuming endeavor. Business owners that are serious about search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns, and who want those efforts to lead to strong sales, must realize the implementation of PPC is not something to take lightly. To achie...
Conversion
The Three Best Website Traffic Sources

December 4, 2006 • PEC Staff

Not a day goes by that any serious website owner doesn't wonder how to get more traffic to his site. This intense desire to generate more clicks makes virtually any online entrepreneur easy prey to many of the traffic schemes and scams that pervade the Internet like conmen on a carniva...
Conversion
What is Viral Marketing?

December 4, 2006 • PEC Staff

I flipped on VH1 recently and sat enthralled as a rap artist with colorful language skills hosted "Web Junk 20" where they played 20 videos plucked from the web and played them on cable TV. Last night I saw that Bravo Channel now airs a show called "Outrageous and Contagious Viral Vide...
Conversion
Quick Query – Michael J. Katz

December 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

<strong>Do ecommerce businesses do a good job of marketing to existing customers? </strong> One of my favorite questions to ask somebody is, "What do you do now to systematically stand in front of the people you already know?" I always get a sort of embarrassed si...
Conversion
Usability Report Card: eBladestore.com

December 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

The team at eBladestore.com asked us to review its site for usability issues. eBladestore sells knives of all types and sizes through a basic, three-column storefront. There are several good things about this site, including a quality site-search function. While the site has a basic, cl...
Customer Retention
Selling After Dec. 25

December 1, 2006 • Pamela Hazelton

For the majority of online stores, the holiday shopping season is what makes an entire year’s worth of work pay off. With the bulk of shopping taking place the first two weeks of December, it’s typically considered the highest grossing month of the year. That may be so, but the normal s...
Conversion
Site Search Can Pay Dividends

December 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Improved site search and "recommender" functions not only improve a user's experience at a website, but they can also help improve a site's sales, according to site-search professionals. Converting visitors into buyers frequently hinges on a site's ability to quickly and correctly get ...
Conversion
10 Tips To Improve Usability

December 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

In a brick-and-mortar enterprise, the problem would be so obvious, no one could ignore it. A tangle of abandoned shopping carts full of unpurchased goods means trouble. "All right," any serious business owner would ask, "What's going on here? What am I doing wrong?" Three questions ar...
Conversion
Great Ideas Roundtable

December 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

"What customers want is information. What makes them happy during their shopping experience is finding what they want, checking out hassle-free and feeling secure with their online payments when providing their personal information. What makes them unhappy is when they can not complete ...
Conversion
Need a Stocking Stuffer?

December 1, 2006 • Mat Greenfield

If you're anything like me, your focus dwindles over the holidays. So instead of providing you with tips that you don't have the energy to use, I thought that I'd briefly review some of the books that have shaped how I think about the web. Feel free to copy down this list and use it whe...
Conversion
Yahoo! Search Marketing Releases New Platform

December 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Yahoo! Search Marketing may have been a pioneer in the pay-per-click industry, but anyone who has ever used its advertiser's interface would probably agree that it has been light-years behind Google AdWords for quite some time. The interface is cumbersome, slow and just plain difficult ...
Conversion
Local and Geo-target Searches: How Well Do They Work?

December 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Refining your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising strategies to include geotargeted searches can help a business owner focus promotion efforts and get more bang for the buck. However, not all search engines are created equally when it comes to managing a localized campaign. Geo-targeting i...
Checkout Tactics
Lowering Cart Abandonment

December 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

With shopping cart abandonment at a high level, ecommerce owners continue to look for ways to motivate shoppers to complete the checkout process. Research from Shop.org indicates shoppers abandon their cart during checkout more than 75 percent of the time. Imagine 75 percent of the gro...
Conversion
5 Benefits of Using Feeds

November 20, 2006 • PEC Staff

What's a Feed? Feeds are a way of sharing content. When you make material from your website available for publishing on other sites, you provide them with a feed. Basically, it's a code that lets them post your articles and blogs. There are different kinds of code - XML, RSS, Atom, etc...
Conversion
Making Liquidation Work For You

November 13, 2006 • PEC Staff

Liquidation is a very scary word for most of us. But the reason we get nervous is just because we really don't understand what liquidation is. One man who is extremely familiar with the process is Bob Nelson, president of Power Retailing, a retail consulting firm. Nelson explains liquid...
Conversion
Accessibility – The Wheelchair Ramp to Your Website

November 13, 2006 • PEC Staff

The original creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, dreamed of an information space that was open to everyone on the planet. But like many dreams, imagination took over and the vision became layered with roadblocks that effectively brought down the shutters for many users. Acc...
Conversion
Diversify Traffic + Cultivate Subscribers = Win Big in Ebiz

November 6, 2006 • PEC Staff

The Amazon River starts as a drop of rain falling into a tiny trickle of a stream way up in the mountains of South America. At its end, the Amazon pumps up to 300,000 cubic meters of water into the Atlantic Ocean every second during the rainy season. To build from a trickle to a torrent...
Conversion
A Win-Win Situation: Why Affiliate Marketing Works

November 6, 2006 • PEC Staff

Affiliate marketing can be a profitable venture for you, as a merchant or affiliate. It presents you with a great opportunity to increase revenue, and build valuable business relationships. Affiliate Benefits and Resources As an affiliate partner, you're capitalizing on traffic you al...
Conversion
A Closer Look at Microsoft adCenter

November 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Microsoft adCenter was officially launched in May 2006 after a nine-month beta period in the U.S. Surprisingly, however, many business owners and advertisers are not aware of its existence, and, among those who are, some are hesitant to try it out. While Google and Yahoo! have had pay...
Conversion
Usability Report Card: Hummerpartsclub.com

November 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

In this Usability Report Card, we’re taking a look at Hummer Parts Club, an ecommerce store selling accessories for the full range of Hummers. I realize Hummers aren’t as innocuous as headsets or vinyl toys, but let’s put the politics aside and concentrate on improving an ecommerce stor...
Conversion
Six Tips For The Holidays

November 1, 2006 • Mat Greenfield

With the holiday shopping season upon us, the size of the ecommerce pie increases significantly. Here are some tips to make sure you get your fair slice: Create seasonal special offers Applying the concept of “showing visitors what they are looking for” is always important, but perhap...
Conversion
Sales Tax Initiative Still Initiating

November 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox

Ever since the Supreme Court of the United States put the burden back on the states to come up with a way to collect sales tax on millions of Internet sales, the Streamlined Sales Tax Project (SSTP) has been chipping away at the monumental task of getting 50 states and more than 7,000 t...
Conversion
Product Sourcing: Online Consignment Business

November 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Consignment is a simple concept: taking other people’s products and selling them for a percentage of the sale. According to Skip McGrath, of Skipmcgrath.com, a successful eBay PowerSeller, “[Consignment selling] is the fastest-growing phenomenon on eBay.” The key to successful online co...
Conversion
Multichannel Tools

November 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Research indicates that multichannel shoppers are more valuable than customers who shop via a single sales channel, but findings by San Francisco-based firm Modalis Research Technologies show that multichannel buyers expect the company to know everything about their transaction history ...
Conversion
Marketplaces: A Great Entry Point

November 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

If a merchant is wanting to begin selling online or take a small step toward diversifying into new sales channels, one of the public marketplaces, namely eBay and Amazon, is typically a safe environment for rookies. Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor, says that, as a general rule, his f...

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