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Archive for the ‘E – Commerce’ Category

The shoppers are on your site, they are interested in the product, but the design of your shopping cart is causing you to lose many if not most of your customers. Sound familiar? It should.

Recent research indicates that the average e-commerce site is losing near 75 percent of its shoppers during shopping cart phase of a transaction. While that statistic is probably influenced upward by a few terrible websites, the fact remains that most sites are losing huge numbers of customers by not focusing on their shopping cart. Fortunately, by taking a few relatively minor steps, you can vastly decrease your shopping cart abandonment rate.

Fewer Steps are Better

This mantra is as old as e-commerce itself. By forcing your customers to go through multiple pages you will assuredly see some attrition. You should ask yourself, is all the information I am collecting absolutely necessary? Is there another configuration that would reduce the number of steps my customers will face? Surprisingly, however, this is probably the last step that you should take. Unless your process is particularly laborious, empirical studies indicate that this will likely affect your attrition minimally for the cost and effort required. So, I am not saying not to reduce your checkout steps, but only that you should prioritize the other steps above this one.

Progress Indicators

In both e-commerce and brick and mortars, the single biggest inhibitor to conversions is uncertainty. This is certainly easy to imagine when you consider some brick and mortar examples. BestBuy stores have transitioned to a single line for all of their cashiers rather than having customers pick a cashier to line up in front of. Why? The answer is simple, uncertainty hurts conversion rates. Humans have an instinctual desire to know what is coming ahead. By including a progress indicator at each and every step of the checkout process you will see some remarkable increases in customer retention. Even if you have a 10 step checkout process, letting customers know where they are along the process will ensure a much greater number of completions.

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures

Shoppers respond to sensory stimulation. People like to take things off the shelf and inspect them. Because that option isn’t available for e-commerce sites, you need to compensate for this deficiency as best as possible. One way to ensure better conversions is to include pictures not only in the store but also in the cart. Shoppers, especially those new to e-commerce want to verify and re-verify that they have made the correct choice. Many of these customers are lost if you force them to use their browser’s back buttons to do so. By placing a picture of the item to be purchased within the shopping cart, much of this need is alleviated, meaning lower abandonment for you.

Provide Total Cost Estimates Early

One of the most overlooked concerns of customers is their distrust of e-commerce sites when it comes to shipping. Maybe it’s the years of telemarketers selling garbage products for close to nothing and then making their profit on the shipping. Whatever the reason, it is important to allay fears of hidden costs as soon as possible by providing your users with a total cost estimate earlier rather than later. Is there something to be said for bringing the customer in with a low-ball lead price? Yes. But after the leader it is important to let customers know what they are really paying as early as possible so as to give a few moments to acclimate to the increase.

Determining a profitable website is not easy especially if you are looking to flip it for higher profit within a short time frame. However, with the correct steps and procedures, it is possible even for a beginner to pick up a good site with great potential to start off.

The first step to determine if a website is worth the investment is by the number of income streams it has. Most websites have more than one income channel such as Pay-Per-Click advertisement (Google Adsense etc), Pay-Per-Action programs (AzoogleAds, ClickBank etc) or selling of own products. Basically, this step is to analyze the current profitable channels and see if you can expand or add in other  sources of income. Never rely only on one income source for a website.

The second step is to find out where are the traffic coming from. Most websites should have a healthy amount of constant traffic from the search engines followed by social bookmarking sites or regular visitors. If the majority of the traffic is coming from the search engines, proceed to ask the owner what are the keywords that brought in the traffic. Try out the keywords in the search engines and check out the search engine rankings of the site.

You should also check with the owner what are the top search engines that direct the traffic to the site. With these information, check the on-page optimization effort of the site and you may have more ideas for improvements after you have bought it.

The next step is to highlight the areas of possible improvements of the site. If you can come out with at least two quick fixes to the site that can increase the value created to the visitors, the traffic to the site will increase to the next higher level eventually. For example, if you can include an online tool to calculate the financial networth of a person in a financial blog, that would most likely benefit all your readers in a long run.

The fourth step is to check for back links to the site that you are interested to purchase. It is highly recommended to use Yahoo backlink analyzer to check for backlinks since it displays almost all the pages that linked to the site. You may want to use the Yahoo powered analyzer at USESEO.com.

With the above four steps, you should have no problems choosing a profitable website that can generate a stable income for some time. You are advised to check on the seller’s history as well to know more about the seller’s background before confirming the transaction.

More and more people are shopping on-line today than ever before, especially with the holidays just around the corner. We’re looking for gifts for our kids, gifts for our family, and gifts for our friends. But is shopping on-line safe? Is our information secure? Is it convenient? For as many of those who are on-line shoppers (and I am a big on-line shopper myself), there are just as many, or more, who don’t or won’t shop on-line. They cite various reasons for their reluctance. Believe me, it can be scary to try new things. So, I have considered the reasons for their fear and apathy and have come up with what I believe are great reasons you gotta love on-line shopping.

1. Security Issues

Many people are worried about putting their personal information out into “cyberspace”. Personally, I feel safer on-line. Identity theft actually occurs more in the malls and department stores than on-line according to a recent report on CNN. They report that there are far more opportunities available in a mall.

The truth of the matter is that through the process of encryption, the internet is actually a safe place to shop. Encryption is like coding. The only one who knows what is being coded is the one with the key. Secure socket layers, or SSL, is the protocol that most browsers and web servers use to protect our personal information while it is being transmitted. Keys are created with each transaction and then discarded, with each new transaction producing a new, unique key. There are so many combinations possible with 128-bit, for example, that is has been likened to trying to find one particular grain of sand in the Sahara Desert. You can tell that you are using encryption when you see the padlock symbol on the toolbar. And you should see an “s” appear after the http in the address window.

2. Save Money

These days it is a lot easier to save money on the internet. Shipping and handling can get pretty pricey. However, today many of the stores you can shop at on-line are offering some great shipping deals. In some instances, shipping and handling are waived entirely, if you spend a certain amount of money. Many of the book clubs and stores are offering a low fee for S&H, too, when you purchase a specific dollar amount. The price of gas alone is well worth the cost of S&H. And, although the price of gas has come down some, it can still get pretty costly as you run from mall to mall in search of the newest, hottest, gotta have item.

3. Convenience

This one is a biggie for myself. Rather than fight the throng of mad shoppers, I can shop in the comfort of my own home and buy, compare, research anything I want. You can find just about anything on-line, too, no matter how obscure. I also love the fact that I don’t have to beat the traffic to get my shopping done. I don’t have to run from store to store to store to try and purchase the items and gifts I know will please everyone on my holiday list. One stop gift shops are perfect in that you can shop for everyone on your list in one place and still get that special something for each person on your list.

4. Comparison Shopping

There are a number of sites on-line where you can comparison shop and get the best deal. The holidays are about giving. That doesn’t mean you should break the bank in order to do so. Look at sites like froogle.com, yahooshopping.com, or pricegrabber.com to buy at the best prices on-line or even in your area.

There you are. No more reasons not to avail yourself of the convenience and safety of shopping on-line. I hope I have been able to help you become more comfortable in cyber space. You should enjoy your holidays and shopping on-line gives you that extra time to spend with family and good friends. Happy Holidays and Great Wishes to all of you and yours!!