Internet Business Blog

Introduction

Ecommerce can be fun, lucrative, and exciting. Sifting through the the BS however, isn’t. The purpose of this blog entry is to give you 42 general tips that will help you to convert more visitors to customers on any ecommerce website - regardless of industry.

The 42 Tips!

42. Answer customer inquiries within 24 hours, or your customer has probably gone to the competition.

41. Let the customer see any potential shipping charges without registering first! Preferably on the basket or a easy-to-find ’shipping charges’ page. Not only will this help reduce abandonment rates, the customer will appreciate you being up front as well.

40. Don’t just accept payment through PayPal or 2CO. Many people have had bad experiences with these solutions and prefer to use alternative, simpler payment methods A.K.A. a standard merchant account.

39. Make your site incredibly easy to buy from by simplifying the checkout process as much as possible.

38. Take a picture of your office or warehouse and add it to your contact us page with your company details.

37. Implement a site search function, and make it work better than expected. Customers should be able to search by SKU, category, title, description, etc. If they can think it, they’d better be able to find it.

36. be sure to include links to your privacy, shipping, returns & exchange policies right out where the customer can easily find them. Tell them the truth. This will save a lot of hassle in the long term.

35. Keep the customer informed about the status of their order before they ask. They will appreciate this gesture.

34. Use the same visual theme for every action required of the customer.

33. Make product options clear and comprehensive. Answer every possible question on the product detail page. Not only will this help close a sale, it will also help to minimize email.

32. If you only ship to USA, say that right off and several times. Again, this will help cut down on international email. That being said, international business can be quite lucrative if you have the option. The US is only but a drop in the bucket.

31. Goes without saying that spelling must be perfect. On slow days, have employees proof read old pages.

30. If you’re new to ecommerce NEVER mention that fact. This is an open invitation to scammers to target you – and they will.

29. If you can afford it, get a toll free (800) number. This is known to increase conversions by as much as 30% in some markets.

28. Get the most web un-savvy person you know to test your site. Ask them to find a specific product and see if they can complete the checkout process. Put them on a scavenger hunt so to speak.

27. Customize product descriptions. Stock product descriptions are bad for many reasons.

26. Test every new feature you add. Then test it again.

25. Make use of quality graphics. Learn to use basic photo editing software such as Adobe Photoshop.

24. Remove unnecessary clutter from time to time. Not only will this help speed up your website, it will also help to keep the customer on focus.

23. Install a really good stats (analytics) system to track everything your visitors do. You’d be surprised what you can learn by carefully analyzing your web statistics.

22. Have a “best sellers” or “most popular” listing. The boost from this has been noticeable in my experience.

21. If your ecommerce site is the top in your niche, and If you sell something that is sold on many other websites, change the product name ever so slightly– Tarenta to Tarento, Classica to Classico, for example. This helps deter people price shopping for the ‘product name’ elsewhere and in the shopping engines.

20. When using thumbnails to link to larger images you’d better give your customers larger, more detailed images.

19. Pick the right product(s) to sell. Something people actually want to buy. Preferably something lots of people want to buy, and an impressive profit margin to boot.

18. Actually have contact info - many sites hide their identity and location. This is a huge mistake as it does not establish credibility.

17. Ship fast when possible. Preferably the same day and you are sure to get mails for appreciation.

16. Use a proper SSL certificate such as Verisign or Comodo.

15. If using paid advertising, don’t send them to your home page; send them to the relevant product page (or custom landing page) that is tied to the keyword you advertised!

14. Have a newsletter sign up and send out newsletters.

13. If the product ships via a carrier, send an email to the customer with the tracking number with a link to the carrier to check status.

12. Use an XML Sitemap generator to create a sitemap to get a “big picture” of your site. Submit it to Google et al. and they’ll help you find dead pages, etc.

11. On category pages don’t just list product names, but include some unique content about the category for indexing.

10. Use a product rating feed or create your own system (if you have a sizable user base). A place for user-generated comments can be great, but it can also be a hassle (monitoring, lots of fake entry).

9. if you sell the same object in different colors, offer them pictures of each color. Telling a customer that you “also do this in blue” isn’t all that helpful because there are about fifty billion shades of blue. s, etc).

8. Stay away from dynamic URLs when possible.

7. If you cannot exceed the expectations created by your site-rewrite your copy. Under-promise and over-deliver.

6. Hang in there with the difficult customers-they become the most loyal.

5. Know when a customer needs to be “let go” to your competition.

4. Make sure your buy button is bigger and uglier than you are comfortable with as a designer.

3. Make sure the title tag on each product page is unique and reflects what is on the page. Also, the product name MUST BE first in the title tag. Not your company name.

2. Don’t forget US Servicemen/women abroad. Include APO/FPO state codes.

… and the #1 tip is …

1. Listen to customers, invite their comments and criticism and act on what you learn.

Your Thoughts?

Do you have any other tips to add? Feel free to list them below and I will surely add them to the list. Likewise, if you have any questions I will be happy to answer them!

Popularity: 33% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I need your help. Writer’s block is a terrible thing. Though I have no shortage of client work and personal projects to be moving forward with, I’d still like to sit down and write a couple of blog entries this week.

Throw some ideas at me. Anything you’d like me to write about. Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

Search Engine Optimization
Internet Marketing
Blogging
Pay Per Click
Ecommerce
Email Marketing
Internet Business Strategy
Web Analytics
Social Media

… there are a few ideas to get the ball rolling. Be as vague or specific as you’d like to be. If I think that it’s a viable topic, I’ll turn it into a blog entry and wrap your link of choice into the post for some extra link love.

Popularity: 23% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

As an internet entrepreneur, I’m often approached by friends, family, and those I’ve yet to meet with internet business proposals filled with dreams of striking it rich online, putting an end to their 9 to 5 misery. As misguided as many of these dreams appear to be – it’s no wonder why their blind optimism is often met with a certain level of skepticism on my part.

It never ceases to amaze me with how many people think that it’s “easy” to make a living online. As with nearly any career worth having, it is difficult and takes a certain business mentality that I believe most people simply don’t have. Do not let other blogs or websites fool you into thinking that you can be the next man or woman who generates thousands of dollars per day, working from a beach on a remote tropical island twenty five hours per week. Though this is possible, it certainly isn’t likely – and getting there definitely isn’t a cakewalk.

Why So Cynical?

I really don’t mean to come down so hard, and my hope is that nobody reads this and takes offense. Like the disclaimer below mentions, this article isn’t focused towards any one person in particular. The real purpose of this entry is to show the ‘other side’… the business side of what we do.

Let’s take a quick look at a couple of different variations of internet business, and what it takes to be successful at them:

1. Ecommerce
In my opinion, e-commerce is where the serious money is to be made. Year after year, we see exponential growth in this market as more and more consumers warm up to the idea of making their next purchase online from the comfort of their own homes. Though it is serious dough, ecommerce is not a synch – and a reputable ecommerce business can not be run with an hour per day. In an ecommerce situation, you have to worry about issues such as: suppliers (wholesale or drop ship?), shipping, customer service, software platforms, credit card fraud, competition, SEO, marketing, web designers, accounting, and a whole slew of other variables.

As with any other business, an ecommerce website is a business and must be treated as such to be successful. It is a full time job – and then some!

2. Affiliate Marketing
I like affiliate marketing, but admittedly am not very good at it. I have a few of these websites that do pay OK, but nothing spectacular. This is partially due to my lack of focus on the subject, since I greatly prefer the path listed above. What I do know is this: Affiliate Marketing is a numbers game (somewhat like ecommerce).

Decent Landing Page + Quality Targeted Traffic = Sales

If you’d like to try your hand at affiliate marketing, I suggest starting with joining an affiliate program for a product or service that you enjoy. This will make it much easier for you to write custom sales and landing pages for your product, and you will have a much easier time marketing said program as well.

3. Informational
Informational websites seem to be the most popular for new internet business ventures, yet have the highest failure rate by a wide margin (in my experience). An informational website could be anything from recipes to video game cheats, forums to blogs. They are often loaded up with annoying advertisements which bring in little to no revenue. What I feel most people tend to overlook is how rare a popular informational site really is – and that it’s generally better to buy an already established site rather than starting a new one from scratch.

Does it still sound easy? Probably not! But that isn’t to say that you can’t be the next success story. It is to say that there is much more involved in internet business than many people realize.

My Honest Advice

If you’re jumping into this as a career, my honest advice is to simply sell a product or service that people will find useful. If you must start an informational site – keep it as a hobby at first, and hopefully in the long term it will become profitable. There is no “fast track” to success on the internet, and if there is – no one is going to tell you what it is!

Disclaimer: It’s important to note that this entry isn’t written towards any one individual in particular. Rather, it’s something that’s been brewing inside of me for nearly two years!

Popularity: 48% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!