Posted on: December 26, 2011 by Jordan Hardy
Here are five tips I’d suggest to help increase sales on your eCommerce Website. I’ve got a lot more eCommerce tips to post in the future. Enjoy!
- Leverage Facebook to help your eCommerce performance. Set up a Facebook storefront, linking to your own eCommerce store products on your domain. Good examples of Facebook storefronts include Best Buy and Lady Gaga. Let users comment and use Facebook Share, Like, and Reviews APIs. Use the Insights Dashboard in Facebook to track eCommerce integrations for specific pages, Platform apps, and/or Websites.
- Improve your masthead (the horizontal graphical section at the top of your eCommerce Website). Include your primary and toll free phone numbers, a search box, free or reduced shipping offers, and utility links.
- Incorporate live chat. Live chat can provide additional opportunities to sell products and your brand.
- Use a clear navigation system which doesn’t overwhelm users. Built well, a terrific Website navigation helps both users and search engines, serving as the Website’s foundation.
- Use plenty of relevant photos and one or more unique videos on product pages. As they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words”!
Posted on: December 25, 2011 by Jordan Hardy
You may be building an eCommerce Website with standout software such as Magento, Zen Cart, VirtueMart, osCommerce, or BigCommerce. Or, you may be considering a terrific CMS such as Joomla, Drupal, Expression Engine, or Interspire. It could be that you seek to build a blog with one of the best options, including WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, Movable Type, Squarespace, or Tumblr. Beyond these, there are hundreds of platform options. For sure, not one solution works for all companies.
While researching the best option for your business, I suggest choosing the most scalable platform. That way, as your business grows, you can add navigation layers, modules, features, content types, and technology. I find it also important that a Website solution provide files hosted on your own server. If this is possible, you don’t have to worry about their downtime or what happens if they go out of business. You’ll own your pages, and can migrate content if needed in an emergency. Another preference that comes to mind is having extremely flexible and editable templates. It can cost quite a bit of money to design new templates, so the ability to edit existing templates is a big plus in some cases.
Posted on: December 18, 2011 by Jordan Hardy
Looking around today to see what some companies are running on their home page for the holidays, Buy.com quickly brought to mind 7 eCommerce home page tips I’d like to share. I’ve shopped in the past at Buy.com and had a nice buying experience.
With any Website I analyze, I have different suggestions. For these 7 tips, see the screenshot below.
- It doesn’t make sense to mention recommendations based on my history (middle of screenshot) as I haven’t surfed through their Website yet to build a history. Suggestions would be to rephrase, clarify why there is a red star, and/or integrate a relevant section only once a user has built a history.
- With many products, ads, blocks, and competing self identifying sections, it is too much information to digest. My suggestion is to simplify, presenting dynamic interesting information as needed. That way, visitors can utilize the page more easily. Looking closely at metrics for the Website, it is likely it could be architected to focus more on user needs and interests.
- There are offers on this page that could be the most noticeable, but they are in a similar red and black color palette. In my browser the home page takes four and a half screens at normal browser settings. The home page could still look successful at 3-4 screens, with some blocks that stand out for obvious reason.
- People are interested in price. Some blocks at the top and bottom of the page show products or categories, but no price to hook users. I’d suggest featuring special time sensitive deals, especially if they can be updated often.
- The extensive amount of linked text at the bottom is most likely there to also help SEO. I’d suggest integrating it into sitemap and shopping category pages.
- I don’t see an obvious option to sign up for a deals email newsletter. This could keep my interest if I was to leave the site without buying.
- With so many products shown at a high level on this home page, I don’t see sample article and video titles to convince me to read more. For example, there are blocks for BuyTV as well as Buying Guides and Top Picks. Compelling sample titles could be extremely interesting, enticing visitors to click and explore.
