Internet Business Blog

Here’s a small 2AM E-Commerce tip:

If you have a coupon code that you would like to freely distribute on the internet, go ahead and release it to coupon and bargain hunter websites - assuming that you’re prepared to handle the potential order volume.

A little birdy told me that an MMA Clothing and Fight Gear website did such a feat and were met with great results thanks to Retail Me Not.

Some of these coupon sites might pass along a little bit of link juice as well but I haven’t confirmed this. It could very well be that they use the “no follow” tag as that would make a ton of sense for a website with so many outgoing links. Regardless of the link value, this is one of those marketing techniques that only takes a few minutes to implement and can bring in extra sales.

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Scan Alert or Spam Alert?

As an active professional in e-commerce the issue of “Hacker Safe” by Scan Alert seems to come up on a weekly basis. In fact, I can’t remember the last time a full week has gone by without my phone or a client’s phone ringing from this company or one of their competitors. Their sales pitch tends to be very aggressive and it isn’t uncommon to hear them make outrageous claims about why you need to use their service. This wouldn’t be so bad if I truly believed in their product, but the fact is that their statistics are very stale and for those of use who don’t have large marketing budgets to work with - the funding could simply be put to better use elsewhere (Link Building, PPC, etc).

On to the reason for this blog entry. Per a customer inquiry, I went to Scan Alert’s website today to grab a new site seal to match his color scheme, and I’d like to quote something that caught my eye right off the front page:

"Did you know? HACKER SAFE merchants report an average of a 14% sales increase."

Scan Alert, I have a question for you. Do you enjoy False Advertising? Because that’s exactly what you’re doing! I do internet marketing for a wide array of websites over a broad range of industries. Some of these websites feature the Hacker Safe seal as well as their competitors - but most don’t. If we seriously saw an average of 14% sales increase - we’d all be stinking rich (or even more so as the case may be). If we saw these kinds of statistics, every single ecommerce site I work with would have your seal front and center, way above the fold.

False advertising is the use of deliberately false statements or deception in advertising, in order to gain a commercial advantage.

The Truth

The honest truth is that I’ve never come across a client or industry professional who doesn’t at least partially regret purchasing this service. Seriously, the last thing that you want is a potential customer to even *think* about hackers compromising their credit card data. That big ‘ol Hacker Safe logo will make them do exactly that.

Now, I’m not saying that a product such as this is all bad. In fact, it does have a couple of semi-good points:

1. It *might* increase sales. How much? Realistically - very, very little. As customers are becoming more an more trusting of internet shopping, services such as Scan Alert are having less and less of an impact. The bottom line is that customers expect and often assume that your store is secure.

2. Though it has a steep price tag, make no mistake - the price is negotiable. I’ve heard some people report that Scan Alert wanted $2,000 for a license, and I’ve heard others say that they wanted $500. Basically, they’ll get what they can take. Use that towards your advantage.

3. They add you to their “hacker safe” directory. Though I haven’t checked, I’d imagine that there is some link juice given to your website and maybe a little bit of additional PR. Like them or not, they do run a very successful internet business.

4. Scan Alert does scan your website for security flaws. But as a counter point your shopping software has probably already updated it’s software to fix such flaws. Also, what good hacker is going to share their secrets to unlocking such flaws and vulnerabilities? Not any that I’ve ever known.

… that being said…

Be Careful!

Please be careful out there. Like much of the internet, the wonderful sales team at Scan Alert are Bullshit Artists. I’ve never sworn before on this blog (and rarely do in person), but it has to be said. They will tell you exactly what you want to hear to close the sale. If you don’t believe me, look at this thread or the plethora of others.

If Scan Alert reads this, feel free to comment. I am un-bias with comments and would love to hear what someone on the inside has to say. In fact, it’d probably be a great opportunity to defend your mission statement and create some PR. Let’s debate this!

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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!

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