Daily eCommerce Tips

Short Term ROI vs. Customer Lifetime Value

Of course you track the ROI for your online marketing. But how, exactly, do you track it? Does your tracking extend beyond the first purchase? In other words, are you tracking the lifetime value of a customer acquired through each campaign? In my experience, sometimes the campaigns that provide mediocre short term ROI can provide [...]

Easy Link-Acquisition: Links from your Suppliers

Take a moment and visit your product supplier’s websites. Odds are they have a “Find a Store” page. Are you listed there? If not, kindly “suggest” they fix that before you pay your next invoice.

Do your product pages tell a story?

Every product has a story, but it’s rarely told. Why was the product made? Was it inspired by a tragedy or light bulb moment in the inventor’s life? Think of the last time you told someone about a product you’re passionate about. There’s a good chance you started with the backstory. It’s the same reason [...]

The value of an email subscriber

How much is an email subscriber worth to you? The answser might change your perspective on how hard you try to grow your list. Try this quick calculation: [Total sales from email in the last 12 months] / [Avg number of subscribers over the last 12 months] = [Avg annual value of a subscriber] I [...]

Imagination not required

All too many product pages require their customer’s to have a good imagination. For example, product images convey the product alone with a white background. Not exactly awe-inspiring. Online shopping can be devoid of context when product images aren’t shown in use. Lifestyle and contextual images help create mental ownership by giving specific examples of [...]

The #1 Tip for eCommerce Success on Facebook

Most retailers have yet to crack Facebook. For many online stores, a Facebook page makes an interesting novelty, but meaningful sales are still forthcoming. While there’s no magical formula, retailers that I’ve seen succeed with facebook understand the principle below: Focus on the newsfeed, nothing else matters That is, don’t waste your time with bells [...]

Educational Navigation

For some retailers, making their product categories clear in their navigation can be tricky. Some verticals, like apparel, have inherent confusion with issues like sizing. Carters gives us a nice example of how to educate customers about their clothing line within their nav. Notice how they clarify the sizing below each of their 3 top level [...]

Use long, benefit driven product names.

Use long, benefit driven product names. Including key benefits in the product name ensure customers will see it rather than burying it within the full description. The more keyword rich names will help from an SEO perspective too.

What if your products disappeared?

Imagine that all your products disappeared from your website. Would anything of value remain? Would your customers still come back? If your answer is “no”, than you’ve successfully commoditized yourself. If you’re truly passionate about your business, your site should be overflowing with content and community, both of which should be natural by-products of your real products. Content and [...]

3 Things to NEVER get creative with

Creative design has it’s place in ecommerce. But remember that your customers have been trained by the design conventions of other retailers for years. Don’t get too creative with your navigation, your shopping cart, your checkout. This just creates to much uncertainty.

Breaking the Curse

Have you ever heard the phrase “the curse of knowledge”? The curse of knowledge occurs with our own website and products because we know them to well. We fail to see our sites like first time customers do. Our knowledge, rather than benefiting us, curses us from the insight needed to identify conversion problems and [...]

The most effective (and least popular) marketing tactic

Email. It’s the oldest, and possibly the most effective marketing tool in the etailers toolbox. But if you judge by popular opinion, you’d almost forget email marketing exists. Email’s spotlight is stolen by newer, sexier tactics like social media and mobile marketing. But stop for a minute and consider this. If you had a 10% increase in [...]

Don’t redesign your website until you read this

Website redesigns are expensive, time-consuming, and hugely popular. Why? Because unlike website optimization, they’re tangible and exciting. You clearly see the end result. The sad fact is, when a complete website overhaul is necessary, someone has been asleep at the wheel. Someone hasn’t been extracting actionable information from analytics reports. Someone wasn’t testing pages, headers, [...]

Beware of the Frankensite

It starts with a clean, professional, easy to use website. Then you launch a new product line, so you add a new button/ad/page, etc. Innocent enough right? Next your company receives an award from an industry publication. Why not show it off on the homepage? Then you read an article about a Google Adsense millionaire. [...]

Discounts: The e-tailer’s drug of choice

Discounts and promotions are our version of “financial weapons of mass destruction”. They are taxes placed upon brands for being unremarkable. – Kevin Hillstrom Are you addicted to discounting? If you’re like many retailers, the discount is the drug of choice when you’re in need of a quick sales fix. And guess what, it works! For [...]

Multi-product emails win

Email service provider Mailchimp has released research concluding that the more links an email contains, the higher the click-through rate. Why then do so many retailers send single topic, post-card style email campaigns? There’s nothing wrong with sending an email on a single topic if you’ve properly segmented your audience. But if you haven’t, you’re [...]

When did you last shop your own store?

With all the fires to put out meetings to end attend when the last time you actually shopped your own site? I mean seriously, when did you last pull out your credit card and make a purchase just like a customer would? You might be shocked at what you’re missing.

With testing, failure is success

Have you been here? You come up with a brilliant new idea/feature for your site. You build it out, and decide to perform an a/b test. To your surprise, the new variation performs worse. Is this failure? On the contrary, this is success. If you hadn’t tested, you would have unknowingly harmed your site. To [...]

Mega-Navs Rock

More and more, retailers are implementing “mega navs” on their sites. Mega navs are large, drop down menus that basically replace the need for a top level category page. Customers love them because instead of clicking a top-level page, waiting for it to load, and then re-orient themselves to where the secondary navigation links are, [...]