Shopster's Dropshippers, eCommerce, and Selling Online Blog

Is Your Online Store PCI Compliant?

It’s not just another trust seal you should have on your online store. PCI or Payment Card Industry has a set of compliance standards that applies to any website that has anything to do with processing payment information, including but not limited to, accepting, storing, or transmitting credit card data. Think: credit card processing, and chances are you will need to comply with the standards.  

To attain PCI compliance, your website will have to go through an audit process. In 2005, the US Federal trade Commission received 685,000 security complaints relating to fraud and identity theft, amounting to over $680 million in stolen assets. Soon after, credit card companies like MasterCard and Visa International set out to form the PCI Data Security Standard or PCI-DSS to establish data security across all processing merchants, banks, and service providers. Failure to comply can cost credit card-handling companies as much as  $100,000 in fines.

More than avoiding fines or getting that security seal, PCI compliance is about enabling good service delivery and reducing risks. Do take note that the standards vary across different fields and is tied in to the number of transactions processed per month. There are 4 merchant levels. Level 4 is up to 20,000, Level 2 is between 20,000 to 1 million transactions, Level 2 is between 1 million and 6 million transactions and Level 1 is between 6 million and more.

The standards that apply to your online store may including having a firewall to protect cardholder data, encryption of transmission, updated antivirus system, secure systems, ID assignments, testing, maintaining a security policy and more.

Having PCI-DSS compliance can give you the peace of mind that your system will not be easily hacked and may potentially cost you a bundle of money in liabilities and financial loss claims. Plus yes, it does have that benefits of helping your users feel more secure about doing business with you.

Email Marketing: Getting People to Opt-In

Email marketing used be one of the best marketing tactics around. But the introduction of new marketing channels plus the barrage of spam mail has diluted its effectiveness. The only way to run effective email marketing campaigns these days is to target it to an audience that would actually be interested in reading your content. And to ensure you have the right audience, they will need to opt-in to your email marketing service.

So how do you get people interested in receiving mail from you? Here are some quick tips to get them to opt-in:

1. Add a “Subscribe to Newsletter” field or any email capture form that triggers the opt-in process in a prominent area in your index page.
2. Create good copy for your opt-in sections. Have a short introductory sentence before the opt-in field briefly explaining the benefit of subscribing.
3. Have the opt-in field in more than one page of your website. While the index page is the most ideal location, you may also want to add it to your confirmation emails, which can be used to encourage repeat visits to your website.
4. Make an irresistible offer with the opt-in. Sometimes your newsletter isn’t enough to drive people to subscribe, you will need better bait. Here, you can reward those who opt-in to your email list with things they will value but will not cost you much to deliver such as ebooks or whitepapers.  
5. Make it as easy as possible to opt-in. Sometimes, the problem does not lie in having your potential subscribers type in their email address and hit send. If your process requires more than they have the time to accomplish, then you may be getting bounce rates on your opt-in page and you might not even know it.
6. Give them a preview of what to expect. You can add a link to your sample newsletter with an introductory paragraph on the usual content you cover.
7. Assure them of their safety and security. Today’s internet users are more wary about where they leave their email addresses given the rampant reselling of these on the internet, surprisingly some even for opt-in sites.

US Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Happy Thanksgiving US-based Shopster users!

The peak season for holiday shopping is here. In US markets, Thanksgiving is usually followed by Black Friday. If this is the first time you’re hearing this, then you may be missing out on some huge selling opportunities.

Black Friday is the traditional kick-off to the holiday shopping season. The term is said to be first coined by the Philadephia police who described the heavy vehicle and pedestrian traffic that occurred on the big shopping day following Thanksgiving.

In 2005, the term “Cyber Monday” was born to describe the Monday immediately following Black Friday. It first made a debut in 2005 in a press release by Shop.org. Drastic peaks in online sales have been observed for this day, amounting to as much as  77% climb over the normal sales rates. In 2009, comScore reported that consumers spent about $887 million on Cyber Monday, the highest spending day of that year. Cyber Monday is no longer just limited to the US, but has also been observed in France, Portugal, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Most retailers release their best deals and sales during both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Shoppers are already expecting it and the peak days for sales seem to be getting longer ever year. For 2010, Google’s Retail Blog predicts that it won’t just be for one or two days but may actually last for as long as five days.

Prepare for it by allotting more budget to your paid campaigns. If you have a brick and mortar store that complements your online presence, make sure that both are aligned in terms of sales and promotions. Be ready to man the phones and take in the orders.

Happy selling!

Assessing the Impact of Google Instant Previews

First there was Google Instant. Try typing in the search box, you’ll see that the results keep changing per letter that you enter. This search enhancement is said to save 2 to 5 seconds per search. There was a lot of buzz as to how this will affect search results. Some think that targeting broader keywords may increase impressions.

Now there’s Google Instant Previews. That little magnifying glass icon beside your search results actually have more than just a decorative function. Try clicking it once and it shows you a preview of the webpage. You can quickly compare results and check if this is the website you want to go to.

At this early stage, it is difficult to assess the actual impact of Google Instant Previews to site visitors. Some may have the tendency to just skip clicking through on to your site if they don’t like what they see in the preview, as such, good design becomes essential not just for conversions but even for attracting visitors. While there is no evidence yet of how it will actually change things for you, when it comes to Google’s new features, it’s best to be safe than sorry.

What we suggest is to take a look at how Google Instant Previews will render your site. The preview take a shot of your site and compresses it to 300 px. If anything seems amiss, then start trying new things. Just like it’s search results, the preview results don’t seem like they’re rendered real-time. It may also take awhile for any changes to show.

Find out how it displays your brand (here the size of your logo would matter), your call to action and more. In that preview size, page real estate is everything. Display big images that speak volumes about your product even without seeing the words. Blurbs in large fonts can also be helpful in communicating to your audience within a limited space. And last, but not the least, try to avoid flash elements for the important parts as these are not being displayed properly yet. The overall look of your website would really play a key role in getting more people to click on your link.

Continue studying your website through the eyes of Google and you might just increase your visitors.

 

Multivariate vs. A/B Testing

If you’ve been running your online store for years without changes, maybe it’s time to explore your options. It doesn’t have to be a drastic revamp or a rewrite of all the copies. Smart website owners take advantage of the intricacies of website testing.

There are two kinds you could explore. One is A/B testing (also called bucket testing), here you are comparing just one variable versus another. For instance, in your call to action, you would like to know if a button works better than a text link. To set up the test, you would need to replicate the exact page replacing only that. The text of both the button and the link should remain the same, it’s a just a matter of how you render these. It’s simple to implement with straightforward results based on real data.  

The other kind would be multivariate testing. Here, you introduce more than one variable to the test. For instance, you could do your test for the call to action, and change the banner size, and maybe even shorten the introductory copy. You then have 3 variables running in a test, and at the of it, you should come up with the most ideal combination between the three.

Small businesses usually stick with A/B testing since this does not require as much visitors as would a multivariate test. Just a reminder, A/B testing does not mean you only test one variable versus the control. What it really means is that you are only testing one component, it could be just the size or just the color.

In any test – whether A/B or multivariate – there are three things you need to look at:

• The control – This is your constant, it could be your existing design or element.
• The variables – This is what you intend to change. For instance, if your control is green (the usual button you use), your variable will be the red version of that button.
• The statistically significant results – this is the minimum number you need to safely conclude results from the test where a meaningful difference can be arrived at.

One of the best tools to use for testing is Google Optimizer. It automatically checks the results if it is statistically significant and may be declared as a successful test. Conducting tests on elements of your website can make a huge difference in conversion, which means better bottomline for you.

How to Choose a Good Domain Name

Your domain name is your address on the internet. It’s how people will find (and hopefully remember) your online store. As such, choosing one is a really important activity that you really need to think through.

Some free online stores will provide you with a subdomain name instead. This is appended before their own domain as in yourstore.secure2cart.com. In most cases, you can customize this to reflect your brand just like you can with a domain. Though it is easier to find an available subdomain within a specific domain, it is still easier to remember a domain over that.

Here are some tips for choosing your own domain for your online store:

1. It should be something easy to remember. As such, it would be best if you keep it short and simple. Some of the best brands out there have short, single-word domain name such as Yahoo and Google.
2. It would be best if it is also your brand name. People will recall your brand name more than anything else, so imagine typing in a big brand name like “Nike” and not ending up in the shoe brand’s site. For online store owners, this would translate to a lost sale.
3. If you’re not particular about your brand, can no longer get a good domain or you plan to be more known as an information provider, then you might as well insert keywords into your domain name. Generic domains like “cars.com” are sold as premium domains and are valued at thousands of dollars.
4. Choose a domain name that’s not easy to misspell. Common words should be used in place of invented ones or unique words. If it cannot be avoided (ie it’s your brand name), at least try to buy the common name/spelling of the word as a domain and redirect it to your online store.
5. Choose the proper domain extension. .org is for organizations, .com is for commercial entities or companies, .net is for networks. You may also consider localizing by using a ccTLD instead such as .co.uk, .au, .sg, .jp and more.
6. Do not take short cuts. Do not replace numerals for words (using “2” for “to” or “4” instead of “for”) or use letters to replace words (“u” for “you”) in an attempt to shorten your domain name. The only exception for this is, again, if it is your brand and you are already known for it such as Toys R Us.
7. Do not infringe on the copyright of others. Make sure that you are buying a domain for your own unique brand and you are not going to run into legal issues in the future.
8. Run your domain name by real people – family, friends, business associates. Check if it’s confusing to them or if they can easily remember it (for typing) or understand it when said out loud (for phone conversations). Do remember that domains go fast, so try to do this as quick as possible so you can purchase a domain you like immediately.

Happy domain hunting!

Post-sales Support: Package Tracking

In recent blog posts, we’ve talked about the activities you need to do post-sales. What you do after you complete the sale is just as important as your actual sales process. This shows good customer service and will affect your general online reputation. Today’s buyers are more internet savvy, the search for reviews on both the product and potential merchants before purchasing anything online. So, a bad review about you can greatly affect your sales.

One additional thing you can provide your customers is giving them the ability to track their package during the course of shipping. If you are working with a dropship supplier, this may not be as easy as it sounds but becomes even more critical. In a dropshipping scenario, the buyer is not aware who is doing what. They place the order from your site and deals with you directly. There is no relationship with your dropshipper, yet you are both reliant on your dropshippers ability to deliver on the purchase made.

If you are looking for a dropship supplier, add this to your checklist. Find out if they offer a way to track the package – for your sake and your buyer’s. If possible, integrate this tracking system directly on your online store so each time the customer wants to check on his or her package, they need to go to your store. It creates a stickier relationship and may even subliminally suggest a repeat purchase to your buyers.

Next, find out how the tracking number is sent to your customer. It could be sent via a confirmation email generated by the dropshipper, if this is the case, you should then find a way to get a copy of it. If this something the dropshipper sends to you, then create a process that ensures you communicate it properly to your end-customer. That communication from the dropshipper to you to your customer should be as seamless as possible.

Then, make sure the tracking number sent to your customer is working properly. Test. Test. Test. There is nothing more annoying for a buyer to be given a tracking number only to find out it is not working. It will have them question your credibility as a retailer.

Last, but not the least, make sure everyone on staff (especially your customer service team) is aware of how the tracking system works so that when they receive customer inquiries regarding the status of an order, they will be able to answer this right away.

Happy selling!

 

Localizing Your SEO Targeting

  Geotargeting or localized search engine optimization is one of the best ways to gain visibility in your own market. This is particularly important if you have limited capabilities to delivery your items to other countries. Also a must-do if the products you are selling are really geared towards your local audience.

Here are some tips to follow to rank better in the location-centric search engines such as Google.mx, Google.jp, Google.ph and more:

• Use a CCTLD for your domain name. A country code top level domain or CCTLD is the best way to indicate your location, this can in the www.domain.com.pt or www.domain.au formats. It may be a little more costly, but if you’re really looking to target local markets it is worth the investment.
• Get your business listed in the local yellow pages, online edition. This is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Yellow pages are usually reserved for businesses with physical addresses, so if you do not have a local retail store, then maybe a home office would suffice as the business address. Don’t forget to include your website in your listing, if they allow it.
• Create a Google Places Account. One of the latest offerings from Google, it allows you to get more information about your business online. Check first if your listing is already existing and then claim it. Make sure to update your information and align it with your website.
• Add a Google Map to Your Website.  It would be good to have this in your About Us or Contact Us page. Google crawls Google Maps, but that is not a guarantee that your business will show up in the maps within the search engine results page.
• Add your physical address  with the zip code and your phone number with country code and area code to your footer. Here’s another way to tell both your visitors and the search engines that you are a local business.
• Get links from websites in the same country. Link building still matters to search engine optimization, so if you want Google, Yahoo or Bing to recognize where you’re coming from and what markets you are targeting, then it would be best to link to sites with the same CCTLD extension (.au, .cn, etc)
• Consider hosting locally. It’s difficult to tell if this actually has an impact on your local ranking, but it’s a good tip nonetheless. If for anything else, it will be faster for local visitors to load your website. But to check if your local host also has the servers in the same country, for all you know they may be reselling the service of a bigger hosting company based somewhere else.
• Check on your language use. This is another tip that may not have a significant effect on ranking, but can affect your conversions. Remember that Australian English is different from American English and is also different from British English. If your market is not English-speaking, then consider having a translated version of your website. Get the language right the first time, so your target audience would know that you are speaking to them.

 

Adding Variety to a Product Line

Focusing on a niche market or a single type of product to sell can help you better target your potential buyers and create strategies to improve your sales. Basically, a niche market is a subset of a bigger market with a specific product focus. For online retail, the possibilities are endless. You can focus on high fashion or shoes or bags or golf items or children’s clothing and everything else in between.

This is something you can do for a few years without ever getting tired of talking about the same thing. But do remember that focusing on a niche market will not necessarily mean you have to limit yourself as an online retailer.

That is a big misconception which can lead to a lot of lost potential sales. If you think you’ve reached the peak of selling within your chosen niche, then you should start considering adding variety to your product line.

First, you need to do the necessary market and product research. Find out what else your market is looking for that you may not yet be providing – this could mean structuring your related products or offering more variety. For product research, find out what other variants are available for you to sell online.

Second, like any new product you go to market with, you need to find out who your competitors are. Is there anyone else selling the same product? At what price point?

Third, list down your options and decide on which way to go for the product expansions. It could be as simple as offering more than 1 size. It could also mean having different colors of the same product. Then, there are some products that offer variation in terms of product design. One good example would be shoes, some product lines have the same code but invert colors to give it variety.

If you are planning to expand the variety of your product lines anytime soon, your biggest ally in this fight would be your supplier. They can help you determine what else to offer and what kind of margin you can be making if you do start to expand your product offering.

Adding Variety to a Product Line

Focusing on a niche market or a single type of product to sell can help you better target your potential buyers and create strategies to improve your sales. Basically, a niche market is a subset of a bigger market with a specific product focus. For online retail, the possibilities are endless. You can focus on high fashion or shoes or bags or golf items or children’s clothing and everything else in between.

This is something you can do for a few years without ever getting tired of talking about the same thing. But do remember that focusing on a niche market will not necessarily mean you have to limit yourself as an online retailer.

That is a big misconception which can lead to a lot of lost potential sales. If you think you’ve reached the peak of selling within your chosen niche, then you should start considering adding variety to your product line.

First, you need to do the necessary market and product research. Find out what else your market is looking for that you may not yet be providing – this could mean structuring your related products or offering more variety. For product research, find out what other variants are available for you to sell online.

Second, like any new product you go to market with, you need to find out who your competitors are. Is there anyone else selling the same product? At what price point?

Third, list down your options and decide on which way to go for the product expansions. It could be as simple as offering more than 1 size. It could also mean having different colors of the same product. Then, there are some products that offer variation in terms of product design. One good example would be shoes, some product lines have the same code but invert colors to give it variety.

If you are planning to expand the variety of your product lines anytime soon, your biggest ally in this fight would be your supplier. They can help you determine what else to offer and what kind of margin you can be making if you do start to expand your product offering.

Tips for Creating a Twitter Business Profile

Like most top social networks go, Twitter has also become a tool for business to communicate directly with their clients. As an online retailer, this is a great way to track what people are saying about your products and services.

What we would suggest is to create a Twitter account for your business, complete with a profile that users can identify with your brand. Twitter is unique in that it combines the social space you have with existing and potential customers with a micro-blogging platform. You can use it to add your existing contacts and have them follow you. You can also use it to send out quick updates about your company or to resolve some issues that people may have had when then worked with you.

So here are some tips on how to start your business profile on Twitter:

• Use your brand name as your username or as part of it. Do be aware that the character limit for usernames is 15 characters, so if your business name exceeds this, find a way to shorten it.
• Have a dedicated person or multiple people represent your brand. You need to decide whether to have one account managed by one person or several accounts linked to your brand. Either way, it’s best to have someone monitoring and responding to this full-time. If you have several people working on it, have a naming convention such as ShopsterJohn. Avoid using periods, underscores or dashes as these tend to become confusing.
• Complete your profile information. Include essentials such as your location, links and a short description. Having your physical address (if you have one) on your Twitter profile will help build trust and credibility. Meanwhile, links to your website, Facebook, blog or corporate site will give users more ways to get in touch with you.
• Add a photo. Your avatar is important as it can help build your brand or at least put a face to it. How you use it is dependent on your strategy. As mentioned earlier, if you have one account for your company, then using your logo on your avatar might suffice. If you have several people running it, use a headshot instead as this makes you seem more approachable. Limit is 60 x 60 pixels.
• Customize your background. One of the easiest ways to brand your Twitter profile is by having a custom page with background relating to your company colors, your logo and additional information about your online store. Here, you can add an 800-number, display promo banners and more.

Happy Tweeting!

Optimizing Your Title Tags

While there are now several ways to get traffic to your website, organic ranking in search engines is still the best free way to get visitors to notice your online store. For major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, their algorithms are the secrets to their success. And no matter what any SEO tells you, no one truly knows what these algorithms are.

At best, most search engine optimization practitioners can get your site to rank high because they’ve studied how Google et al crawl the site, what they look for and the guidelines or best practices they’ve set to get your site indexed.

Still one of the top ways to get your site to rank is to optimize the content for your target keyword. Optimizing the code is another great way to get search engines to notice your site. For the latter, the best way is to work on the meta keywords. Namely your meta descriptions and your page titles. The meta descriptions are really meant for your potential visitors. It should be written in an engaging manner to convince your target audience to click on your links in the search engine results pages.

More important for search engine optimization are your title tags. These are the things you see on the browser title as well as the title that appears in the results pages. In your code, you’ll find this in the header portion before the body tags.

This is the text found between the following tags:  <title> PAGE TITLE GOES HERE </title>

To start you off in the right direction, here are some tips you can use for writing your page title:

• Create different page titles for all of your web pages.
• Place the keywords to the left most side of the page title as these will be crawled first by the search engines.
• Keep your keywords to one to three sets maximum; do not stuff your title tag with keywords.
• The character limit for Google is 64 characters, any words or letters in excess of that is usually truncated.
• To separate between keywords, you can use a comma, to separate the keywords from any other part of the title you can use a dash or a pipe: |
• Make sure that your titles are relevant to the page and any keywords used in the title should also be used in the page content.
• Don’t forget to add your brand in the title, perhaps towards the end

Understanding Content Distribution Networks

Speed is an essential part of today’s online world. Two seconds is the maximum acceptable time before your potential buyers leave your site and go somewhere else to shop. In fact, according to a study by Forrester, 75% of those who left slow loading sites said they won’t return. As such, you may not just be increasing your bounce rates but you will also be losing out on future sales.

While there are a number of ways to get your online store to load faster, nothing beats using a CDN or a content distribution network (also content delivery network). A CDN is a series of web servers that contain copies of data spread across the world. A visitor trying to access your online store will be served up content from the server closest to him/her. This greatly impacts the response time of your online store.

The first thing you need to do is to figure out what goes into the CDN. You should find out which parts of your online store are static and have these up in the cloud – it could be images, pdfs, media files and other web objects and downloadable objects . Doing this could reduce response time by as much as 20% as well as increase the number of concurrent users. The lower network load will also improve your online store’s reliability, while the multi-location of the content decreases vulnerability to power outages and other factors that may affect delivery.

There are a lot of providers out there including Akamai Technologies, Yahoo!, Amazon CloudFront, Level3 Communications, EdgeCast Networks, Microsoft Windows Azure CDN and more. The cost may be somewhat prohibitive if your business is not yet that big. So find out exactly what you require and what are offered by the said companies.

In the end, the cost of acquiring a CDN service versus the possible increase in revenues can balance out. A content distribution network is a worth-while investment for online retail stores that plan to scale up in a short period of time.  

If They’re Not Buying, What Are They Doing?

Take a quick look at your online store’s analytics. You would notice, that of all the visitors in your website, only a very small percentage actually buy from you. In most industries, a 2.5% conversion rate is already a good number. So, if your visitors are not buying from your store, what are they doing there?

There are a number of reasons a visitor goes to a website. And of those, not even 30% would say that they’re there to make an outright purchase. In most cases, these visitors are shopping. Just like in a traditional brick-and-mortar store, not everyone who enters would be buying a product.

There are different levels of shipping. There are those who visit retail sites to browse. They want to see what the latest products are. They may be curious about your store. Or they were simply bored at work and decided to take a few minutes of to search the internet for anything interesting. Of all your shoppers, this will be the most difficult to convert as they are still far from the decision-making point.

Then, there are those who go to different retail sites to learn something about a product. For them, what’s important are the specs and the descriptions of the products. Pictures are also a must-see. If you have bonuses in terms of content such as a blog discussing the product or a video explaining what it’s for, then you’re already ahead of the game when it comes to converting this potential buyer.

Closer to the end of the buying funnel are those who are comparison shopping. These are the people who are already set on buying an item but are not yet sure what to buy. They may be shopping for a loved one and are looking for items that match personality and style. For them, a section on featured products or gift ideas would be most useful. They can be comparison shopping for brands. Some people already know they want to purchase shoes but are not yet set on which particular brand to go with. For this set, you should focus on fixing your categories to as comprehensive as possible. The last type of comparison shopper are those that are looking for the best price for the product they’ve already decided on. Here’s where price parity can play a good role in the sale. If you are selling the same products as other merchants are, make sure that the price you are offering is still competitive.

There you have it folks. A number of different visitor types all with different objectives. It is difficult to tell what a particular visitor’s intent is when he or she enters your site. The best you can do is to structure your site to cater to all possible consumer needs and to provide those add-ons that can help convince them even more that you are the right store to buy from.

Happy selling!

Post-Check Out Activities You Should Be Doing

The sale doesn’t just end when they hit the buy now button. Your post-sales customer support is just as important as getting them through to the end of the purchase conversion funnel. Do remember that being an online sale, your transaction is exposed to bigger risk such as cancellation and chargebacks.

As such, you need to use your post-check out activities to ensure that the sale continues on and your profits go into your bank account. To secure the sale, one of the first things that you need to ensure is that you email an order confirmation. This reminds your buyers what they bought, how much it was that they bought it for and when they can expect the item to arrive. The confirmation email will answer any of the buyers questions regarding item condition down to the name that appears on their credit card billing statement. More importantly, give your customers a way to easily reach you by providing contact information in your confirmation email.

As much as possible, customize your confirmation email. Pull the name from the data inputted by the customer during the ordering phase and use this in the salutation. You should also brand your sender address with your company name as well as have your logo on the confirmation email itself.

Next, if you control the shipping of the product, then you must also provide a way to track the order progress and the shipping movements. This is important to customers, especially for those who are buying high-ticket items online. Include your tracking number and the URL where they can check on the progress. Provide an ETA so they know when to expect the product even without the tracker.

Finally, open up the lines of communication by encouraging them to call your or email you if they have any questions or concerns. And when they do establish contact, answer promptly and always keep your tone professional.

Last but not the least, do not assume that everything will go as planned. Your reaction to failure is just as good as your reaction to success. So, if there are any problems with the order, proactively contact your customers and let them know immediately. Offer your sincere apology and be solutions-based in your approach.

Your post-sales customer service isn’t just a way to secure the sale, it is really also a way to build a better brand for your online store.  

Happy selling!

Holiday Tip: Send Customers an eCard

  If you want your customers to be loyal to your online store, then it pays to keep in touch. Remind them about your service in this crucial online shopping season without being too pushy by sending them an eHoliday greeting card.

An eCard is a great way to thank your customers for their past business (if you haven’t already done so) and for them to feel appreciated. Keep the message light and fun. If possible, personalize it using the customers’ actual name.

One other tip, not everyone celebrates Christmas so keep it general with text like “Happy Holidays!” or “Season’s Greetings” instead. Using Christmas colors can also convey your message without being too preferential with religion. Experiment with golds and reds or silvers and blues.

Last but not the least, to avoid being tagged as spam follow the CANSPAM compliance act. Choose a reliable email marketing tool and send it only to your list of verified (read: opt-in) contacts.

 

The Importance of Cross-browser Compatibility

Do you know how much sales you’ve missed out on due to browser incompatibility of your online store? If not, then you may be making a huge mistake by not testing for cross browser compatibility. So, to start off an very important concept to keep in mind is that not all browsers are alike.

Based on how you design and code your site, it will display differently in each browser. Sometimes, even functionality is affected. As such, it is a must to check your site for browser compatibility when you launch it, redesign it or do any major changes as it may affect performance.

First things first, find out which browsers your customers are using when viewing your website. According to web statistics from W3 schools, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer are the top two browsers when it comes to usage, holding 44% and 29.7% of the market share respectively in October 2010. Google Chrome places third with 19.2%. Safari is a far fourth with 3.9% of the total usage and Opera is trailing behind with just 2.2%. While these statistics talk about the general internet browser usage all over the world, it is important to have a deeper analysis using your own web statistic. If you have analytics software installed in your online store, then you should have access to this kind of data. Do check it out as this often breaks down the browsers by version, which makes a huge difference in display capacities among different versions as well.

Next, start setting up test protocols for your online store for browser compatibility. Size is an important factor to consider. Specifically since it will affect the placement of your call-to-action. As discussed in previous blog entries, it is important to place major call to action buttons on the first fold of your online store. Test for size, try http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/. You can easily determine what percentage of your visitors is missing out on important parts of your online store in the first view and may need to scroll down to reach it.

Other factors such as embedded videos, css layout, javascripts, ajax inserts and more also need to be checked. For this, we suggest creating a checklist of things that you use on your site that may need to be checked. For instance, lightboxes and accordion javascripts do not always work for all browsers so make sure that you check it across the different ones.

Continue to test, test, test so your design efforts don’t go to waste.

 

Copywriting as a Traffic-generation Tool

In search engine optimization, content is king. This adage has been around for years and still holds true today. Online searchers place a high value of content, particularly any information relevant to them. As such, if you have writing skills you should put it to good use and generate traffic to your website using content.

There are several ways to do this. Here are some examples of how you can use content to bring in quality traffic to your online store:

• Create optimized content for your site. It all starts with on-page optimization. Create copy for your online store and spice it up with keywords. Use this in your index page, in your category pages and even in your product pages. The more content you have, the better chances of ranking for your target keywords.
• Use press releases wisely. Got something to announce? Create a press release about it. Whether it’s the launch of your online store, an additional product line or a new promo, get the word out via a PR. Reserve this for newsworthy content that you want to share with the world. PRs often rank high in search engines and are picked up by various media.
• Try article marketing. Educate your potential buyers on how to use a particular product or create a fun article on the history of any item you sell. Articles are a light and easy way to get people to visit your site by generating interest in thing you have to offer. No hard sell please. One of the most successful articles that I’ve used to draw attention to a site that sells pens is one teaching people how to remove ink stains. It spread like wildfire online and was picked up by several other websites and re-posted several times. I never even mentioned the company name in the article itself but casually dropped a link in the Resource or About the Author box.
• Participate it forums and in social networks. Take your writing to the social level by conversing with your potential audience in these channels. You’ll find a lot of people asking questions about products or where to get them, so start answering  these and direct them to your own site.
• Blog about it. Sometimes, even if you don’t directly ask people to go to your site, they will. Writing some useful information in your own blog can attract the right audience. Use blogs to inform people about your company, the people in it, what you do, what products you sell, how to use those products and a lot of other things that give your online store that human touch.

 

The Importance of Bidding and Optimizing for Your Own Brand

If you’re not doing it yet, you should. Bid on your own brand name in your pay-per-click campaigns. Optimize your websites with your brand name for organic search engine results. If you don’t, your competitors will and they might actually outrank you. In previous blog posts, we’ve given you good advice on how to spy on your competitors.

Don’t be surprised if they’re doing the same from their end. Even worse, they might actually be doing something to proactively beat you in your own game. Just imagine how it would look to searchers if they type in your company name (assuming they’re already familiar with it) and see your competitor ranking higher than you. If you were in that position, wouldn’t you click on the competitor’s website? Here, the best solution is to start bidding on your brand name in your PPC campaign as it would resolve the problem faster. Then, start working on your keyword targeting.

Another plus for bidding and optimizing for your brand is search volume. If you’ve spent the time building up your company’s image and have already made a name for yourself, chances are people are already searching for your company with your brand name. Complement this by showing up in the right place, at the right time for your customer. Thus, you should always be #1 for your own brand name to capture that particular search audience.

Don’t forget to targeting misspellings and your brand + broad keyword combinations. Here’s another opportunity for you to get those visitors you may be missing out on to the right website.  

Placement is also crucial to delivering the right message. This is especially true if you have affiliates bidding and running campaigns for your brand names. Be the first in the search results and control the messaging that people will see upfront.

Last, but definitely not the least, you can use brand bidding and optimization inn your marketing strategies. For instance in PPC, you can use these bids to display your latest promos such as free shipping, discounts and other deals.