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

    Catalogs Make A Comeback

    November 1, 2006 •

    Ecommerce is to traditional business methods what a sci-fi cruiser is to a Model T. It’s all about technology, convenience, responsiveness—up-to-date stuff light years away fromthe sepia-toned days ofmail-order catalogs. Or so it would seem. But consider this: the humble catalog is onc...

  • Conversion

    Comparison Shopping Sites

    November 1, 2006 •

    With millions of ready-to-buy consumers turning to shopping comparison sites, experts advise retailers to consider participating in one of the Internet's newest sales channels. Shopping comparison sites like Yahoo! Shopping, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, NexTag, Froogle, Jellyfish and other...

  • Conversion

    What Is Multichannel Selling?

    November 1, 2006 •

    Defining multichannel selling has taken a new twist in recent years, but the end result is the same for merchants — getting products to sell in the hands of potential customers. In the old days (about 10 years ago), multichannel selling consisted of two options — brick-and-mortar stores...

  • Conversion

    Why Your Business Should Be Blogging

    October 23, 2006 •

    Whereas letter writing was the primary method of communicating with friends, family, heads of state, and businesses 150 years ago, today's blogs have become a major means of interpersonal and mass communication. Before there was telephone or TV or Internet, people actually enjoyed lette...

  • Conversion

    Pay-Per-Call: A Smarter Way to Advertise

    October 23, 2006 •

    Pay-per-call has been one of the trends in online marketing recently. In fact, pay-per-performance advertising, overall, is gaining ground as more and more businesses discover the high value proposition it provides. Different search engines are incorporating this type of marketing, incl...

  • Conversion

    Language Translation Creates New Options

    October 1, 2006 •

    For English, press one. Para español, la prensa dos.” The familiarity of this everyday message shows us how companies are increasingly recognizing the need to alter their business practices to reach new demographics through multilingual communications. No speak English According to t...

  • Conversion

    Use “Human Optimization” for Search Engines

    October 1, 2006 •

    I read with interest this month that Google has filed a patent to allow it to add a human-review element to their search results. This represents the next step in a series of interesting developments that I have watched closely for the past few years. But in order to explain, let me bac...

  • Conversion

    Should You Add SEO To Your Marketing Efforts?

    October 1, 2006 •

    Pay-per-click advertising is, no doubt, one of the most effective ways of getting new leads and prospects to come to your website. Within a period of 24 hours, any business—large or small—can appear at the top positions for any keyword that’s applicable to their business. However, it d...

  • Conversion

    Tradeshows The Right Way

    October 1, 2006 •

    For online retailers, tradeshows are an incredible opportunity to source goods, connect with wholesalers and manufacturers, and expand their product lines. There is a right way and a wrong way to attend tradeshows. To get the most out of your experience, you need to prepare. Your first...

  • Conversion

    Tuning Up Your Checkout Process

    October 1, 2006 •

    One of the most important factors to optimizing conversion is fine tuning the shopping cart and checkout process. Sales are won or lost within this crucial component of your site, and it is critical to examine the data that will unlock the mysteries of visitor behavior within this proce...

  • Conversion

    Usability Report Card: Headsets.com

    October 1, 2006 •

    Earlier this year, Headsets.com was calling the checkout button "save to cart." We commented on this horrid usability, and the company let us know it made a change when they redesigned the site. Headsets.com is selling mostly to small to medium businesses, so the site must appeal more t...

  • Conversion

    Email as a Mini-sale

    October 1, 2006 •

    Sales professionals have a notion of “mini-sales.” A mini-sale occurs when a prospect agrees to learn more about you or your product, but has not yet agreed to a purchase. Say, for example, that you sell cleaning supplies to restaurants. You may call a restaurant owner and ask him to p...

  • Conversion

    Forums Offer Interactivity

    October 1, 2006 •

    If you're looking for an easy way to make your business’ website more interactive, consider adding a bulletin board or a forum. They’re different names for the same thing, an application you can add to your site allowing visitors to leave messages and interact with each other. You can e...

  • Conversion

    Gaining Insight Into Live Chat

    October 1, 2006 •

    The irony of “live chat” is that there most likely isn't any “chat” at all. Live chat is usually a text-based communication that happens online between a customer and a merchant. It's akin to the instant messaging youmight do with a friend through Apple's iChat or AOL's InstantMessenger...

  • Conversion

    Ten Ways to Grow Your Online Store Sales, Part 3

    September 18, 2006 •

    We covered the importance of keywords and content in our first installment and we covered customer testimonials, offering multiple payment options, diversifying sales channels and conducting pay-per-click campaigns in our last installment. In this, our final installment, we'll look at a...

  • Conversion

    Ten Ways to Grow Your Online Store Sales, Part 2

    September 11, 2006 •

    We covered the importance of keywords and content in last week's installment. Today, let's take a look at four more important ways to grow your online sales: customer testimonials, offering multiple payment options, diversifying sales channels and conducting pay-per-click campaigns. Cu...

  • Customer Service

    Who Runs Your Business?

    September 1, 2006 •

    I love to cook. It’s something my husband knows well, and new friends learn quickly. Those visiting my home think I’m going out of my way, but to cook a savory meal, regardless of the time it takes, is how I relax. I’ve been known to make specialty pies I don’t even eat only to call the...

  • Conversion

    A One-Second Review

    September 1, 2006 •

    I was recently reading a study published earlier this year by Carleton University in Ottawa. They suggest that web visitors make an instant assessment of the overall “quality” of a website in less than a second. This contradicts conventional wisdom that suggests you have 6-8 seconds to ...

  • Conversion

    Customer Conversion: Testing Brings Science To Marketing

    September 1, 2006 •

    There are two things every ecommerce business should strive to achieve. The first is increasing conversion, turning a higher percentage of browsers into buyers. The second is optimizing marketing spend, driving higher rates of return from existing advertising dollars being spent. The m...

  • Conversion

    Email Marketing: Open-Rates and Click-Throughs

    September 1, 2006 •

    The "FROM:" line in an email is the most important factor to getting it opened. “Email marketers should use a consistent ‘From:’ address, and it must be recognizable to their customers,” says Gail Goodman, chief executive officer of Constant Contact, a self-service email-marketing firm...

  • Conversion

    Usability Report Card: FugitiveToys.com

    September 1, 2006 •

    Josh Pigford was confident enough to put his site, Fugitivetoys.com up for the inaugural “Usability Report Card.” While a lot of attention is paid to search engine optimization and online advertising, usability is sometimes given the cold shoulder by small ecommerce businesses. However,...

  • Conversion

    Ten Ways to Grow Your Online Store Sales, Part 1

    August 28, 2006 •

    These days, setting up an online storefront is easier, less expensive and more valuable than ever as more and more people get comfortable shopping online. Setting up an online storefront is a great way to start a business or grow sales by extending the reach of your current business. Wh...

  • Conversion

    Growing Your Sales Using eBay Sales Data

    August 20, 2006 •

    Understanding product markets can help you determine what you should sell online and how you should sell it. The right product at the wrong time or sold the wrong way can be an eBay seller’s downfall. There are many resources for gauging what methods will work best for you. You can use ...

  • Conversion

    PPC Expense: What Is A Customer Worth?

    August 1, 2006 •

    When determining how much to spend on a pay-per-click campaign, an etailer should first calculate what a customer is worth to his business. Getting a customer to purchase a single product isn’t the goal of most ecommerce site owners. However, most owners fail to calculate the potential...

  • Analytics & Data

    Email: Confidentiality Required

    August 1, 2006 •

    I get thousands of emails each day. A good majority are spam, and I use Cloudmark (the best system I’ve found) for filtering them. Being in business, however, I still have to take the time to scan them all, making sure I’m not missing an initial request for work from someone who may hav...

  • Conversion

    Email Marketing Fosters Long-Term Relationships

    August 1, 2006 •

    The use of email is changing the way businesses communicate with their customers. Rather than using email solely to offer products for sale, many businesses now use it to communicate helpful information to shoppers who request it. This helpful information creates a relationship with a s...

  • Conversion

    Use In-store Kiosks to Promote Website

    August 1, 2006 •

    When was the last time you were shopping for an item you just had to have, only to discover when you got to the store you couldn’t buy it in the color or size you wanted? If you are like most retail shoppers, you have experienced an out-of-stock situation recently. This is one of the m...

  • Conversion

    Pay-Per-Call: New Player on the Scene?

    August 1, 2006 •

    Online advertising is heating up and growing quickly in popularity. However, many companies are missing out if they don’t have a website or if their services are not fit to be sold over the web. Fortunately, a new version of paid advertising has emerged recently — pay-per-call. Pay-per...

  • Conversion

    Rethinking Conversion Rates

    August 1, 2006 •

    When I'm not writing for Practical eCommerce, I spend my professional life running a “boutique” web-consulting firm. As a result, I get involved in numerous sales meetings. I’ve noticed something of a trend recently with companies evaluating our services asking for third-party “research...

  • Conversion

    With Limited Ad Dollars, What’s The Answer

    August 1, 2006 •

    Each small ecommerce business tries to squeeze every drop of value out of his limited advertising dollars. Online advertising options have grown very congested in the last few years, saturating the marketplace and making it more difficult for a business to get noticed — unless it is dol...