eCommerce 3.0 – How to Structure Your Basic Ecommerce Store and Make it Work

The face of eCommerce is slowly changing as more and more people look to the internet not only for information but for physical goods as well. The convenience of being able to shop from the comforts of your own home or wherever you are is luring more and more consumers to buying online. Here are a few pointers Ezra Firestone shares about setting up an eCommerce store that works.

According to Ezra, in an interview by James Schramko, Ezra stated that,

“… one of the big things about eCommerce- what I call eCommerce 3.0 – what’s changing about eCommerce right now is the day and age of the store, of the faceless eCommerce store is dying. The eCommerce that just puts up products and list manufacture descriptions is dying. What’s working now is adding value to your market, writing your product descriptions, ordering your products that are selling best and shooting videos about them, creating buyer’s guides like keep bundling products together that people want, figuring out ways that you can serve your community and creating a face and a brand and owning the race course within your eCommerce store.”

A. Basic structure of an eCommerce store:

Home, section product detail (most important) blog/content, checkout, PPC landing pages, more info, social profiles

SEO structure

  • Home page – 3 main KWs + modifiers (descriptor words). Ex. modifiers = colors, type of material
  • Top 75+ modifiers = section keywords. Section has products under it
  • Next 500 keywords that can be productized = products
  • Google product listing ads are great for ecommerce
  • Remaining relevant KWs = blog posts
  • 700 words per sections – modifiers written in (unique sections + descriptions)
  • Weekly blogging = about product, other keywords, EdC, each post has deep link + picture
  • Obvious on page – reviews, social buttons, etc
  • Internal link structure
  • Don’t over optimize
  • Author of the store – find some way to create a relationship with your customers

SEO Title Tags for ecommerce stores

  • “Vintage Costume Jewelry”
  • Description: KW, Phone #, Sentence, Modifiers
  • Get rid of big link boxes in the footer

Every search has a unique set of channels

  • Users prefer to consume media in different formats (video, audio, text, etc.) The goal: occupy as all positions as much as possible
  • Channel to occupy
    • SEO, PPC, Comparison Engine, email, social media
    • Image for each product – make sure if you have ownership of images, watermark them
    • Video for each section pages + home page
    • PPC ads (image ads + text ads, retargeting etc.)
    • Amazon listing for all products
    • Google search results: above the fold = ads, shopping, 1 or 2 organic results
    • Blog/ed content

B. Three Things to Track

  • Goal Flow: Product Page – Shopping Cart – CheckOut Page – Product Sale
  • Events: Product Options – Messages – Button Clicks, Errors (most important)
  • Site Search: monitor how the big stores like Amazon do it

C. Check Your Pages for These Items

  • Header : Search, Contact, Security, More Info, Cart, Chat/Live Help, Opt in, Offer (ex. Zappos header)
  • Favicon, Social links, Video, FAQ, Video Customer Service
  • Testimonials (random display), Bestsellers
  • Footer: Trust Seal, Search, Opt in

    • Homepage : Main rotator or slider with 3 images, tabbed featured products

  • Section Page: Items on sale – show percentage saved, Images open in lightbox for quick viewing, Featured item or deal should be on top of the page
  • Product Pages: Get rid of left navigation, Tabs on the left, Display social buttons above the fold, Cross sell recommended items, Guarantee, Trust, Shipping, Videos, Multiple Images, Recently Viewed, Put features/benefits under Add to Cart
  • Checkout Page 1: Make it look as nice as the Product Page, Shipping Calculator, Proceed button at top and bottom, Image, Product, Guarantees
  • Checkout Page 2: Multiple Payment Options

D. Boost Your Conversions With the Following:

  • Create FAQ on Shipping
  • Follow-up script on cart abandonments by email. Offer a discount
  • Use in-page analytics to optimize Section pages. Put products clicked the most on top of the page
  • Thank you video
  • Post purchase survey
  • Follow up with review request

If you are currently running an eCommerce website you can use the information above to evaluate how your site is doing. If you are planning to put up one for the first time, use them as your guide to jumpstart your business in the right direction.

What Makes Companies Great? Bad?

People go into business with the intention of being successful. No one puts up a company expecting to fold or to go bankrupt. The goal is to succeed and in the long run, eventually become great.

What Makes Companies Great? Here are some important factors shared during the Traffic and Conversion Summit 2013 that contribute to a company’s success:

Great Leaders

Great leaders are: Fair. Calm. Inspirational. Mentors.

Competitive Advantage

Unfair advantages:

  • First mover.
  • Price.
  • U.S.P. (Unique Selling Proposition).
  • Selection.
  • Legal.

Measurement

  • Know your metrics. “What gets measured gets managed.””
  • Break even.
  • Cost to acquire a customer.
  • Product performance.
  • Employee performance (gross sales per employee).
  • Customer success.

Seek Opportunity

Where can we grow?

  • International.
  • Cross markets.
  • Line extensions (what else will your customer buy that you’re not selling?
  • Joint ventures.
  • Licensing.

Leverage

What can we leverage?

  • Other people’s money.
  • Other people’s idea.
  • Other people’s energy.
  • Other people’s trust.
  • Other people’s innovation.

Genuine Ethics

Who are you really?

  • Charitable giving.
  • Employee success.
  • Vendor success (the people you buy from need to make money, too).
  • Partner success.
  • Customer love.

Urgency And Commitment

How driven are you?

  • Commit or leave (nothing will ruin a good employee faster than them watching you tolerate a bad one).
  • Money loves speed.
  • Speed attracts talent.
  • Talent drives innovation.
  • Innovation drives value.

What Makes Companies Bad?

  • Lack of vision.
  • Lack of leadership.
  • Lack of commitment.
  • Lack of scalability.
  • Bad/no numbers.
  • Poor management.
  • Flawed business model.

Are You in No Man’s Land (Or Why Your Business Isn’t 20 Times Bigger Than It Is). Here are 4 Reasons Why You’re Likely Stuck:

Lack of marketing

  • #1 killer of small business growth. Marketing is the lifeblood of every growing business.

Lack of talent

  • Top people usually work for companies that are growing.

Lack of systems

  • This usually comes with good people (crucial to scale).

Lack of capital

  • To fund only growth after 1, 2, and 3 are addressed.

If you are a startup company or you are wondering how to take your company to the next level, use this list to assess where you are right now. Ask yourself if you are happy where you are or you would like to have a bigger slice of the pie and act accordingly.

25 Excellent WordPress Tumblog Themes

Tumblr is a popular micro blogging platform where people can make small posts, share links and images with others, reblog the posts of others, etc. It is a platform that sort of combines the features of a blog with social networking.
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M-Commerce – The Mobile Market, Web Design and Conversion

The unstoppable invasion of mobile computing and how it has woven itself into our daily routines is undeniable. A life without the Internet, free WiFi, and our handheld devices is almost unimaginable and web designers have heard and heeded this lifestyle change, hence, the birth of responsive, fluid, and liquid design trends. Mashable has even named 2013 “The Year of Responsive Design”. However, we are still in the early stages of understanding this mobile demographic to yet see tangible and consistent conversion results from the marriage of Mobile Commerce (M-Commerce) and Web Design for handheld and mobile devices. Responsive design does not necessarily equate to actual conversion, whether in sales, subscriptions, or networking.

According to a report by Litmus.com,

“More email is read Mobile than on a desktop email client or via webmail. Stats say 36% of email is now opened on a mobile device, with 33% for desktop and 31% for webmail.” – Litmus –”Has your audience gone Mobile” (June 2012)

As of September 2012:

We’ve seen some major changes in mobile email opens in the past year and a half. As of September 2012, 38% of all opens were on a mobile device, compared to only 17% eighteen months ago—that’s a 123% increase in mobile opens!

Diving deeper into specific mobile operating systems, the majority of these opens are being made on iOS (iPhone and iPad – 80.34%) and Android (18. 93%) devices:

The next question is, Does Mobile Traffic Convert into Leads?

Not necessarily so. There are several factors that lead to actual traffic conversion and there is no hard and fast rule on it but website owners can make educated guesses based on actual data and stat results gathered from their own website traffic trends.

Three ways to reach your target mobile traffic:

Run a native mobile app

  • Needs to be downloaded by the user
  • Restricted amount of content and functionality

A mobile website or M-Dot (a dedicated scaled down mobile version of the main website)

  • Advantage – faster loading time and optimization
  • Disadvantage – two bodies of content to manage

Responsive web design

  • Uses responsive, fluid, liquid layouts, media queries, and flexible images to adapt to various devices and resolutions
  • More future friendly
  • One body of content to manage
  • Consistent brand experience
  • Social media friendly

Among all three, responsive web design appears to be the most feasible way of reaching your target market. But is responsive web design enough to address the problem of conversion?

Here are some strategies to consider to maximize your web design and marketing optimization efforts to improve your conversion rates on your website:

Create a mobile optimized landing page

  • Make sure that your landing page is displayed properly on all screen sizes (portrait and landscape)
  • The need for speed – achieve fast loading time (5 seconds or less) by using optimized media content (images, video, and audio) and scripts.
  • User friendly – Prospects don’t have to type anything just click a button. If possible, must be clickable by the thumb.
  • Content must be simple, readable and easily navigable. Call to action buttons must be prominently but strategically located.

Create a mobile optimized order form

  • Redirect users from the landing page to your mobile optimized order form.
  • Form fields should be easy to read and fill out on any mobile device. Longer forms lead to boredom and lower conversion rates.
  • Remove all sidebar content so the form fits perfectly on the viewable window of the mobile device

Create several versions of your landing pages and order forms and test which ones convert the most. Improving User Experience and establishing a User Friendly Interface all contribute to an enjoyable browsing experience for your mobile visitors which will eventually boost your conversion results.

Secret Selling System – Notes from Perry Belcher

Early this year, Perry Belcher spoke in the Traffic and Conversion Summit 2013 and shared his Secret Selling System strategies during the seminar.

According to Perry, “Selling is not evil. Selling is power – a great skill to have”. Here are some of the highlights of what he shared during the event.

Important parts of selling:

Targeting

– getting in front of prospects who are most likely to buy

  • 60% of any successful promotion is in list selection
  • Getting leads – getting interest
  • Getting sales
  • Increasing profits per sale
  • Frequency

Know your buyer

– what you like is not necessarily what your customer likes.

  • Personal attention. Create a customer avatar ( Name. Age. Gender. Marital status. Children. Location. Occupation. Combined household income. Current business income. General info.) After you come up with your avatar, write your message to that person, not your whole audience.
  • Be talking to one person, not a group of people
  • Find out their demographics and where they hang out

Find the right list.

  • Wide and shallow – advertising (such as network TV) is difficult because it’s hard to localize the message to your audience, location, et cetera.
  • Narrow and deep – advertising is by far the way to go. List selection isn’t only about emails or direct mail, but it also applies to advertising.
  • Google ad planner – finding websites your niche visits and their interests. Enter in your competitor’s websites

Make them “glow in the dark”

– (From Dean Jackson – ilovemarketing podcast)

  • Use list-building bait- cheese or whiskers principle. Make those particular people in the market “glow in the dark”. (list building bait – followed by cheese or whiskers). Find out what their “cheese” is and use that instead of “whiskers” (Realtor example of standard ad that is all about the person vs. “Find out how much your home is worth for free”).
  • Offer lead magnet that resonates with potential customers.

Create an irresistible offer

  • Why people buy – gain, fear, pride, value (makes them feel smart), imitation (people want to imitate celebrity). No matter how good the offer is, if you send it to the wrong audience it isn’t going to work.

Sequence is critical

– mistake is selling too early.

  • Don’t be out of sequence, because if you are, people will mostly reject your offer.

Points of belief.

  • If your current sales message is not working, ask yourself how many things are you asking prospect to believe. If more than 4, it’s probably a failure. Ideally, you only want to make them believe 1 thing.

More Perry Belcher next week!

ThemeFuse: A Closer Look

About

“We Create Premium WordPress Themes. The Original Kind!” This tagline encapsulates everything ThemeFuse is about. ThemeFuse is a commercial WordPress Themes Shop co-founded by four guys from Bucharest, Romania: Bogdan Condurache (Art Director and Motion Graphics Designer) and Dimi Baitanciuc (co-founder) both of whom take care of the creative side, together with Alexandru Luncashu and Sergiu Bagrin (After Care Support) who, on the other hand are in charge of development and programming. ThemeFuse focuses on providing original high quality niche WordPress theme designs coupled with top aftercare support designed to meet the exact needs of customers in specific industries.

History

Dimi Baitanciuc and Bogdan Condurache started out selling HTML/CSS templates on ThemeForest in November 2009. They soon realized the huge potential in WordPress and started implementing their designs into the CMS. They were joined by Alex and Sergiu later on. After another 4-5 months on ThemeForest they decided to put up their own and the ThemeFuse WordPress theme club was birthed in 2010. The theme club includes 28+ themes (averaging a new theme every month) available to download which range from portfolio themes through to magazine themes for sports and fashion sites.

Product

The ThemeFuse WordPress theme club currently includes over 28 themes that cover a wide range of themes that include portfolio themes, magazine themes, blog themes, business themes, etc. that cover niche industries such as sports, fashion, travel, events, food, art, corporate, and so much more. The club membership is a subscription based product ($17 per month) where you get access to all themes (current and future) including PSD files. This is automatically renewed each month based on the date you signed up. The membership price includes a one-time only $199 sign up fee. If you decide to cancel your subscription, you will not be able to download the themes anymore. Themefuse enforces a no refund policy applicable to club members as well. Should you decide to reactivate your club membership and sign up again you need to pay the one time signup fee again. Themes are also sold individually to non-members.

Member Benefits

Aside from gaining access to the entire Themefuse theme collection, members get VIP Priority treatment in their Support Forum, members get access to a beautiful Member’s Area, members can also give input and suggestions on future themes. Aside from these, members also have the opportunity to earn via their improved affiliate program.

Income Opportunities

ThemeFuse’s affiliate program allows you to earn in several ways. Once you become an affiliate, all you need to do is put your affiliate link on a banner on your website or use ThemeFuse’s WP referral plugin. Once a person clicks on the link and makes a purchase on their website you earn 30% of the sale, every time. Their affiliate software sets a 60-day cookie that keeps tab of users who visit their website from one of your links. This means you still get a 30% cut on every purchase the user makes, even if the customer comes back at a later time. In addition, if the user joins our club you’ll also get 10% of every recurring payment he makes every month. Themefuse pays its affiliate partners once a month via PayPal. Affiliates can expect to receive their affiliate shares between 1st and 10th of the following month.

Recent Developments

ThemeFuse recently partnered with WebHostingBuzz to provide a new service targeted at WP beginners. The goal of the partnership is to deliver a hands-off service, where every client can get their WordPress site installed by a team of professionals on a quality hosting account, along with a well-designed WordPress theme. This service means that customers can pick a theme from ThemeFuse’s gallery and have it installed by their team, on an optimized hosting platform, and under a new domain (of your choosing).

The main strength of this new service is the no-supervision-required approach presented by both companies (ThemeFuse and WebHostingBuzz). All the client needs to do is pick a theme from the official theme gallery at ThemeFuse.com, choose the hosting pack (domain name included) at checkout and that’s it. All within a single checkout process.

For the client, the package includes: the domain (optional), the hosting, the website (WordPress theme), AND all the necessary installs will be taken care of by ThemeFuse. ThemeFuse also provides a dedicated support forum to handle the chosen theme’s issues as well as troubleshooting any problems that may come up.

Future Plans

According to Dimi Baitanciuc,

Talking about the longer term, we plan to release a brand new website as part of our ThemeFuse family, which will not be related to WordPress themes, but to web and graphic design in general. We have been collaborating with high-class designers from around the world the past few months and I think we’ve come up with awesome results.

Visit ThemeFuse today.

Conversion Hacks: Increasing Opt-In Rates

How many of you have tried several email campaigns but have wondered why they aren’t so effective? How many of you are actually clueless as to how to maximize the power of email marketing and how you can use it to your advantage? Let’s take at the look at the ways you can increase your email list using these tips and tricks on increasing your Opt-In rates. Check out these terms – Opt-In, Confirmed Opt-In, Double Opt-In, and Opt-Out:

Opt-in:

Sometimes referred to as “single opt-in,” basically means that people are only added to an email list if they actually fill out a registration form. They are given the “option” to receive email with their permission. Otherwise, the unsolicited email is referred to as spam.

Confirmed Opt-in:

This is similar to the opt-in method, but after someone signs up for your email list, you’d send them a “thank you” confirmation email that contains a link to unsubscribe from your list (just in case they were signed up by someone else without their permission).

Double Opt-in:

Someone signs up for your email list. You send a confirmation email with a link that they must click before they’re added to your list. If they don’t click the link, they don’t get added to the list. When users confirm that they want on your list, you should store their IP address, and confirmation date and time in your records. Some say this is the best way to handle your email list.

Opt-out:

This is an old-fashioned way of building your email list where you’d typically have some form for people to fill out but with a hidden or not so obvious pre-checked box at the bottom, with something like, “Yes, please sign me up for your email newsletter!”

Tips and Tricks:

The headline, call to action (CTA) and opt-in box must have good headline. Write 100 headlines and pick the best one.

If you’re using a photo of a person in your landing page, have person looking at opt-in area

Simple plain flat book cover or graphic + opt-in box converts well

Other things that can make a big impact:

  • Have live chat on your site. You can outsource for approximately $300. 1 in 3 chatters buy. Set up a special follow up series for chatters because they are engaged prospects
  • Your best affiliate is your customer service. They know the your customers the best. Turn customer service people into sales people. Give customer service reps affiliate link. Create an email signature for customer service emails with what you’re promoting.
  • Use an Upsell formula
  • Make a “bucket offer”. Offer them more of what they bought at a greatly discounted price. (ex. Buying an apple for $1, then being offer 10 apples for $3)
  • Don’t worry about profit. Try to break even.
  • Send buyers additional offers via Direct mailing buyers additional offers. If someone buys from you but doesn’t buy upsell, direct mail a sales letter for the upsell
  • Telephone follow-up – Calling webinar attendees after webinar can increase your sales if you call your webinar attendees and ask them why they didn’t buy.
  • Ditching the progress bar on checkout process can cut cart abandonments in half

Keep testing your landing pages and keep tab of people’s responses to your marketing strategies to find out which method works best for your company. As you continue to understand your target market’s behavior the better you will be able increase your Opt-in rates and eventually your sales.

Conversion Hacks : Increasing the Open Rate

Last week, we touched on open rate as one of several tools that can be used to measure the effectivity of an electronic advertising campaign. This week we’ll take a look at how we can take a good email campaign, increase your open rate stats and eventually convert them into actual subscribers for the long haul.

According to the July 2012 Email Marketing Metrics Report issued by Mailer Mailer,

An open rate represents the number of people who opened an email. It is calculated by dividing the number of email messages opened by the number of messages delivered. The result is expressed as a percentage.

( % Open Rate = # of messages opened / # of messages delivered )

An open can be inferred if images are enabled or a link within the email is clicked. Images may be automatically enabled when an email is opened, especially if the recipient has chosen to display them for all emails from that sender.

However, more often than not, the recipient is prompted to enable images for each email. Since recipients may open the email but fail to enable images, this metric is somewhat inaccurate.

Nevertheless, open rate remains a useful gauge of email campaign performance.

A Standard or Normal Open Rate varies from industry to industry or by list size. According to the same report mentioned above, the industries that were among that scored the highest open rates in 2011 include:

Banking (16.8%), Non-Profit (16.1%), and Consulting and Small business (15.9%)

(source: mailermailer.com)

In another more extensive report, the 2013 Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study conducted by Silverpop, statistics show that consumer product emails scored the highest for open rates with a median of 25.4 percent unique open rate. You can find out more about this report on Silverpop.com.

What about the other industries? What can be done to increase their email open rates? If you are looking to improve your open rate, here are a few tips to follow:

It’s All About the Subject Line

FACT: Nothing happens until the email gets opened.

That’s why it is important to create compelling, effective, and actionable subject lines that make users want to open their emails. Good rules of thumb include asking a question, keeping subject lines under six words and using lowercase in all but the first word and proper nouns.

Test your subject lines. Here are some examples of proven subject lines:

  • Odd Numbers : Why He Paid Google 524,838.71.
  • Question Marks: ex. Google Made Me Slap Proof?
  • Percentages: ex. 99% of People Dieting Need to do This.
  • New Video, PDF, Pics, Video Blog Post
  • Free Report: ex. 7 Deadly S.E.O. Mistakes (free report)
  • Personal Pronouns: (you, your, et cetera)
  • Scarcity: ex. Third and Final Notice
  • Pique Curiosity / Confuse / Shock: ex. Kinda Weird But Very Profitable
  • Negative Subject Lines: ex. I Hate Technology
  • Borrowed Credibility: ex. Steve Jobs was Wrong!
  • Fill-in-the blank Subject Lines: ex. 7 Secrets of _____

Subject Line Sources to glean from

  • Reddit.com
  • Google suggest
  • Popurls.com

Knowing that your open rate exceeds the industry average doesn’t necessarily mean you are meeting your company’s most important business goals. The open rate metric is a useful tool but must be used in conjunction with other metrics in order to give you a realistic picture of your company’s performance. Used correctly, the data can help you calibrate your marketing efforts in order to strengthen areas that need to strengthened. Testing is constant in order to cement customer/prospect relationship, and eventually maximize conversions and revenue.

Save the Date! May 27, 2013 – A WorldWide WordPress Party

WordPress fans rejoice! WordPress is throwing a party this May 27, 2013 in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the first WordPress release AND you are all invited. This 24-hr worldwide celebration is powered by Meetup Everywhere and currently lists participants from over 200+ WordPress communities all around the globe.

Interested groups can register with Meetup, pick a place to meet (any place is the perfect place as long as there’s food, drinks, and cake!), invite other interested parties (tech guys, newbies, oldies, and WordPress fanatics) to join the event, and simply hangout with the rest of the world wide WordPress web. If your group reaches 50 or more, you might even get to receive cool WordPress freebies like stickers, buttons, and collectible swag packages. Commemorative 10th anniversary t-shirts are also available for purchase in the swag store. Grab yours today.

Photos, tweets, shoutouts, videos, and posts from all the parties will also be collected and posted on a website specifically for this event. For those waxing nostalgic, maybe you can share old WordPress memorabilia or interesting trivia and experiences you’ve had using WordPress, or even start a blogging marathon till the big day. Will your group be the biggest? the most creative? the most fun? There’s still time to get it together before the party gets started on May 27.

Don’t forget the hashtag! #wp10

Note from WordPress: If you already run a group on meetup.com, making your party an event in your group is great, but you still need to post it and have people RSVP at the special party page, because regular groups and Meetup Everywhere groups aren’t connected yet.