With the average attention span of online shoppers decreasing — reportedly, we now have no more than 8 seconds to inform web visitors of important details — the tried-and-true methods of navigation are changing. For years, the most common way to present shipping details, guarantees, size charts, and other pertinent product and order information has been incorporating links … [Read more...]
PeC: How to Boost Sales on Gift-giving Pages
During the holidays, specialty stores often see boosts in traffic as people hunt for both common and unique gifts. Most other stores put a great deal of focus on the Christmas shopping season, but nearly any ecommerce site can benefit year-round. Read My Post at PracticalEcommerce > … [Read more...]
PeC: Optimizing Price for Products with Attributes, Options
Many products sold online come in different colors, sizes, and flavors. When it comes to displaying such items to shoppers, it is important to make clear the options as well as variations in price. There are two primary ways to display differences in price for items with configurable options. One is to display the upcharge amount — i.e., additional cost — and the other is to … [Read more...]
PeC: Visitors’ Devices Affect Conversions
Narrowing down the problem spots in an online store is not a simple task. While analytics shows us which pages and content performs better than others, we often miss the differences between desktop and mobile shoppers. Read my post at PracticalEcommerce … [Read more...]
PeC: Customize the Search Page to Increase Ecommerce Sales
One of the most ignored features of the online store is the search page. It typically provides too many irrelevant results, or worse, none at all. Even the biggest online retailers miss the boat when it comes to providing highly relevant results based on a shopper’s search terms. Yet this single page can drive a significant amount of conversions for even the smallest of online … [Read more...]
PeC: 10 Last-minute Ways to Increase Holiday Conversions
It’s crunch time. If you procrastinated the proper planning for this now-current holiday shopping season, not all is lost. While there’s no time to completely revamp the online store itself, there are some quick-and-dirty ways to boost conversions, providing you have incoming traffic. Read my post at PracticalEcommerce … [Read more...]
PeC: Drive Ecommerce Conversions with First-person Statements
If you want more people to create accounts, subscribe to your mailing list, and actually complete the checkout process, you have to stop telling them what they should do, and let them tell you what they want to do. Especially when the desired outcome is exactly the same. Read my post at PracticalEcommerce (published by PracticalEcommerce on 10/06/2014) … [Read more...]
PeC: 5 Ways to Promote Multi-Item Orders
Thanksgiving has nearly disappeared at many retail outlets, as companies push customers into holiday shopping even before Halloween candy has had a chance to be cleared from the shelves. Shoppers are quickly reminded that Christmas is less than 10 weeks away, and they’ll be combing online resources and stores to find the best deals. Key decision-making offers include free or … [Read more...]
PeC: Increase Conversions with Alternate Payment Methods
Ten years ago, PayPal was the ideal solution for small businesses that couldn’t justify the high costs of a merchant account. In its infancy, the growth of PayPal user accounts came from smaller merchants. PayPal later became the norm for eBay and large etailers because it allowed people without credit cards to shop online. Today, more and more online consumers are flocking … [Read more...]
PeC: 11 Ways to Increase Conversions on Mobile Devices
Last November, while stuck in a waiting room, I shopped for Christmas presents via my smartphone. Few of the stores I visited had a mobile site, making the navigation and checkout process time consuming and frustrating. I gave up on several, seeking out their competition. I am not alone... Read full article at Practical eCommerce Pamela Hazelton is a senior … [Read more...]
PeC: Using the Return Policy to Convert Shoppers into Customers
It’s common practice to focus on trends, design and shopability to (hopefully) increase and maintain sales. For the most part, these topics play a major role in a site’s sell-through rate. Let’s not, however, overlook the less obvious reasons shoppers may be abandoning your online store. Your return policy can make or break a sale all on its own. Consumers want to feel … [Read more...]
Follow Friday 5: eCommerce Insights
Each week I pick 5 key folk to follow on the web (and Twitter) based on a selected topic. eCommerce, especially for small business, is an ever-changing industry. It's more than just the maintenance of an online store. Marketing, via advertising and social media, is key, as is staying compliant. I follow scores of accounts to keep abreast of the latest news, and here's just a … [Read more...]