The 6 Habits of Highly Effective E-commerce Site Owners

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Thanh

There are six traits all successful e-commerce site owner have. Over the years, I’ve met many of them at conferences and through friends. After countless conversations, dinners and phone calls, I could see that all of them were very similar in their way of thinking, how they managed their business and their approach to growing their online store.

I’ve identified all the commonalities and I boiled them down into six (not seven!) habits. Let’s start with the first one.

1. They are passionate about the customer experience.

The most successful e-commerce websites deliver the best customer experience and their owners are really passionate about this. Unlike brick-and-mortar business owners, e-commerce store owners cannot directly interact with their customers. They can’t directly guide and assist you along the way as you’re shopping. At least, not physically.

That’s where e-commerce site owners differ from traditional business owners. They have to focus on delivering the best customer service experience possible through their website and other online channels. In other words, the quality and passion has to shine through in every part of the shopping experience. This means having:

a beautiful and user-friendly website
an easy and secure checkout system
a return policy with no hassle
useful follow-up emails that people want to read
responsive customer service emails and calls
and much more…

When you can’t showcase your passion face-to-face, showcase it in every aspect of your online business so your customers do notice. Every successful e-commerce store owner does this and they want to share that passion not only through their online store, but also through their stories that they tell. Which brings me to the next habit.

2. They are storytellers.

People love reading and listening to stories. When you are passionate about your business and delivering the best customer experience, you will naturally share stories about it that people can relate to.

There are many ways e-commerce site owners can share their stories. While they can’t do it directly face-to-face, video is one the best mediums for delivering stories and for people to relate to your brand. Think of ways how can you use videos on your e-commerce website. In a traditional retail store, you have people who can answer all your questions and give you more insight into a particular product. Well, you can deliver almost the same experience by using videos. Here are some ideas:

As the founder, share how and why you started your business and how you want to help others
Talk about your product, how it will benefit the customer and put this on the product page
Have a video version that will address all commonly asked questions (think of it as a “FAQ video”)
Product educational videos that teach customers how to get more value out of your products and show them ways to use your product.

As an example, for software it’s very common to have screencasts that show exactly how you can use a particular function of the program. If you’re selling physical goods then that doesn’t work but the same idea still applies. Let’s say you sell blenders. You can produce videos that show customers how to make certain smoothies using your blender. Or, in a funny and extreme case, you can showoff how powerful they are by blending electronics like Blendtec did with its videos on “Will it blend?”.

Not only will videos help your business, it will also build your brand that people can relate to. The most successful e-commerce stores have a brand and people buy from brands they like. How do you get people to like your brand? By you sharing your stories.

It doesn’t have to be just over videos. You can start a blog, write fantastic newsletters, release a book, talk at conferences or even have a podcast. The main purpose of storytelling around your online business is that you want to build an emotional connection with your prospects and customers. That’s how you get people to buy from you without any price barriers and loyal customers that will buy from you many times over.

Look at Zappos. Aside from their great customer service and products, they have built their online business using storytelling. They released a book that shows how the company works. They give free tours around the office. They are transparent in all their communication. They have shared their stories countless times and many people have fallen in love with their brand.

Building a brand takes time and effort. Start today and share your stories. Communicate how you want to help them. Express your values to your prospects and customers. Let them fall in love with your brand and they will buy from you. Again, and again, and again.

3. They are obsessed with metrics.

You might have heard of the old adage “if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” This especially applies to e-commerce stores.

Every effective webmaster knows this. In order to grow your online business, you have to know your metrics. These are key indicators of how healthy your business is and they give you the foundation to grow.

While there are many metrics you can track, here are some you want to be aware of:

Cost per acquisition
Average daily / monthly sales
Average order value
Conversation rate
Refund rate
Shopping cart abandonment rate
Average number of visit before purchase
Customer lifetime value
Repeat purchase rate
Revenue per visit

How do you know what success looks like when you don’t know your numbers? If you made $12,943 in revenue this month, is that a success or a failure? What about if your revenue per visit went up $0.01? Is that a success or failure?

When you don’t know your metrics, you simply can’t grow your business in a competent way and enjoy its success.

When you know your numbers, you can also make better decisions. The great thing about online business today is that it’s very easy to gather all the numbers you need before you make a final decision.

A common example is deciding whether you should up-sell customers before or after their purchase. You can guess which approach is better, but you’ll never know for certain if you’re making the right decision.

You’re making a leap of faith that could be costly and you will miss out on potentially doubling or even tripling your profit.

It’s totally unnecessary. It’s better to test this assumption on a small scale and let the numbers drive your decision.

4. They are experimenters.

Every successful e-commerce website owner is always testing different parts of their website to improve conversions and to generate more sales.

Once you get into the habit of testing ideas and assumptions, this will become a lifelong process in your business. There are many things you can test, but here are some suggestions that can affect your bottom line right away:

Category and Product page templates – try different templates and see which converts the best.
Checkout page template – same idea as mentioned above.
Up-selling before or after purchase – could triple your profit if you find out the right sequence and products.
Prices of your most popular products – test a wide range of prices to see which brings the most profit.
Testimonials – where to put them and which to include.
Social sharing buttons – some products benefit from this, others don’t.

There are a lot of experiments you can run with an e-commerce store, but the list above is a good starting point. If you are new to split testing, I suggest you look into tools such as Google Analytics Experiments, Visual Website Optimizer or Optimizely. They are very easy to use and one of the best tools available today.

Get in the habit of experimenting and your bank account will love you for it.

5. They proactively seek feedback from their customers.

The best way to find out what’s successful about your online business and what’s not working is by talking to your customers. Talk to the ones who spent their hard earned money on one of your products. They are the people who will give you the best feedback because they want you to succeed. After all, they trusted you with their money.

Calling them is more effective than sending them an email. It’s more personal and you can build a connection with your customers. Don’t know what to ask them? Simply think of questions of how you can improve your business. But if you need some suggestions, here you go:

What is one thing we can do better?
Are you happy with your purchase? Is there anything we can do to make you even happier?
How did you find out about us?
How was your experience shopping on our website? Is there anything that stood out positively or negatively?
What made you ultimately decide to buy from us?
What is the one thing we should never stop doing?

Get social with your customers. They are the best people to talk to and to spend time with. The more you do it, the more you will improve your online business in the shortest amount of time.

6. They are obsessed about making customer’s lives better.

Your customers are the lifeblood of your business and you want to treat them the best you can. From analyzing many e-commerce websites, I’ve noticed that the top ones are always giving; they add value to peoples’ lives whenever they can and profit from that.

Think win-win. How can you improve your customers’ lives? Think of ways to make them happier. How you can make them a better people?

Here are some actions you can take to inspire your customers and add value to their lives:

Write a killer newsletter for free that they will want to read every time.
Show them different products and accessories that complement their recent purchase (up-selling) and show them how it improves their lives.
Send follow up emails on how they can use your products more effectively and how they can get the most out of it. You get bonus points if you use videos.
Give them a call and suggest different products that they might enjoy based on their past purchases (cross-selling).
As a sign of appreciation, only give existing customers a discount for a future purchase.

Start adding value to existing customers and I have no doubt that you and your online store will succeed.

Time for Action

There you have it. The seven habits of highly effective e-commerce site owners. Now it’s your turn to incorporate these into your life that will help you grow your online business.

Let us know in the comments below how you are going to do it!

Images credit: JD Hancock, Ansik and Makelessnoise.

10 Simple Ecommerce Website Updates to Implement Now

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Alvinl

There are hundreds of ecommerce website updates you could make. Anyone who’s managed an ecommerce company has a list of things to change on the site.

The biggest issue as a manager is determining the priority list. It’s hard to know what can be done easily and what really should be done.

We’ve got some help. The updates listed below are ones you can make right now on your website. Together they’ll make a difference in terms of user experience and conversion.

Let’s begin.

1. Make All Calls To Action A Consistent Color

Amazon uses consistent colors for its calls to action for the most part.

One of the most confusing things for website visitors is the color of the calls to action. It’s not all about being contrasting. While that’s important, it is actually more important to have a consistent call to action color.

If you look at the Amazon example above, you’ll notice that the color orange is used on nearly every call to action. When you hover over text links in the left navigation area you’ll see that they even change to orange.

Creating consistent coloring for your calls to action gets visitors programmed. When people go to Amazon and they see the color orange they automatically know that it’s something they should click.

Amazon still has a few exceptions. The Add to Cart button is yellow and the search button at the top is black. The search button could easily be changed to orange, but overall Amazon does a great job of keeping things consistent.

2. Have One Main Action For Each Page

The Overstock website is very focused with prioritized calls to action on each page.

A good way to go into design discussions for your website is to have one main action for each page. This keeps things easy for the visitor, which leads to more conversions. It also gives you more control over the pathways people take on the site.

The tendency on ecommerce sites is to put as many calls to action as possible on every page. We naturally want to give people all the possible options they can think of when they’re browsing the site. The problem with that is too many options is too confusing. It’s better to limit those choices to just a few things.

Look at the Overstock example above. There is one main action on the page that stands out – Shop The Sale. The action is in bright yellow and it’s probably the first thing you noticed on the page. Yes, there are other actions on the page, but they are secondary and in the background. Keep the focus to a single action. Make all other necessary actions secondary.

3. Add Search Suggestions

Zappos helps visitors by providing search suggestions.

Search is likely in the top three actions visitors take from your homepage. That surprises some people. Sure, visitors may look at your feature image, but they’re more likely to start searching right away. This usually means they have something in mind already, but even those people need some help refining their search.

You can see in the Zappos example above that there are search suggestions. These are subtle hints to get the visitor started. You want the search experience on your site to be as fuss-free as possible. By offering suggestions you’ll help people find the right words. They’ll be able to find what they want easier and that makes them happy.

A happy shopper is one that likely converts.

4. Add Reinforcement Messages on Product Pages

Newegg reinforces their offer with “Free Shipping”

You probably offer free shipping on occasion. Maybe you even offer 20% off or 25% off from time to time. These are great offers. Yet when a visitor gets to the product page they still have that final moment just before they hit the “Add To Cart” button when they wonder if they really need this item.

Reinforce your offer at this point. You can see in the Newegg example above that Free Shipping is reinforced. Now the shopper can see the free shipping notice and make the final commitment to make the purchase. It’s the last little push they need to make a purchase and become a happy customer.

5. Consider Adding Lightbox Forms to Interior Pages

Don’t be afraid to use lightbox forms.

More companies are using lightbox or popup forms for different reasons.

Even LL Bean, a traditionally conservative company, is using the lightbox form. You can see above that LL Bean is reinforcing their free shipping offer.

What is interesting about the LL Bean example is they have this popup occur on an interior page. A new visitor is not shown the item on the homepage, but once they get to an internal page like the Men’s Shirts page they are reminded.

You can use a lightbox on internal pages to reinforce a message like LL Bean or you could use it to get more subscribers to your email address. It’s a great way to get a little more aggressive without scaring off every new visitor that comes to your homepage.

6. Use Branding To Your Advantage

Edwin Watts knows that golf is about brands. They put a brand drop down in their top navigation.

Further down the page Edwin Watts includes logos of the brands they sell. Branding matters.

Brands are usually important in ecommerce. It depends what industry you’re in, but chances are good that people recognize the brands you sell.

Take for example the Edwin Watts site from the examples above. At the top of the page you’ll see the drop down option to shop by brand. At the bottom the site includes the actual logos of the brands.

The company realizes that brands are important in the golf industry. Amateurs see their favorite golfing pros on TV with logos plastered on their shirts and hats. They want to golf like those players so they buy the same brands.

From Edwin Watts’ perspective they know they need to show the brand logos right away so a new visitors can immediately find what they’re looking for on the site.

If your industry is influenced by brands be sure to make it evident on your site.

7. Images Trump Text

Ebay has huge images on its website.

People notice images before text when they visit a site. Just look at the Ebay example above. You looked at the image of the red mixer first. From there you noticed the blue call to action buttons (see: Call To Action Colors above).

Images trump text when it comes to shopping. People are visual and they want to be able to see every aspect of the item they’re considering for their purchase. You can include large images to make this easier for your visitors. You could also add videos to the site. More companies are doing this and finding it increases conversion.

Just because images are important, however, does not mean you should limit text. The content on the page is still very important. After someone examines the images on the page and become interested, they will dig deeper. They’ll read the content in detail. You want to make sure there is enough content on the page to satisfy any question a shopper might have. Text is also good for SEO purposes.

8. Use Reviews Everywhere

JCP takes reviews and puts them on multiple pages.

When customers visit a site they’re looking for validation. They might see something they like on your thumbnail page, but they want a little more than just something that’s interesting. People want confirmation that an item has potential.

Reviews are a great way to prove that items on the page are great. Check out the JCP example above. You can see that product reviews are pulled in and used on the thumbnail page. Not only do the reviews make the product stand out, but they also validate that these items are popular and well-liked.

Use reviews throughout your site. Add them to thumbnail pages. Add them to the feature image on your homepage. Also use them in emails and in social media.

Reviews are one of your biggest assets. They convert visitors.

9. Add a Top Line Banner

A top line banner is becoming popular.

This is an interesting trend in ecommerce. The trend dates back maybe a year or two, but it must be working because it’s everywhere.

The trend is the top line banner. Notice where it says, “Clearance 70% off top designers” at the top of the Target example. A few of the other examples above also include something similar.

This is a new trend and it’s really a good way to share a message with your visitors. The top bar really stands out from the rest of the page. If you have something interesting you want to promote, this is a great way to accomplish it with every visitor.

It will be interesting to see how long this will remain effective. For now, it seems to still be working really well, and will probably be around for a while.

10. Focus on the Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Walmart knows they are all about low prices and they show that to every visitor.

When you think of Walmart, you think about low prices. The company has spent years beating customers over the head with this USP. The reason people shop at Walmart is because they know they can get just about any product at the lowest price possible. What you need to do is figure out what your USP is, and then feature it on your website.

You can easily see the prices in red on the Walmart website. Maybe the USP is nothing about your company, but something about your product. Showcase that feature or benefit next to the product image when your promote it on the homepage, or in an email campaign.

It’s a simple concept, but it’s overlooked way too often on many sites.

Conclusion

None of these items are extremely difficult to implement! Put them high on your website revamp priority list. They’ll improve conversion and ultimately they should improve sales, which is really what matters.

Do you think anything missing from the list?

Share your ideas in the comments below!

Five New Years Resolutions For Your Sales Funnel

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Alvinl

The year 2013 has arrived, and although you’ve likely made resolutions for your personal life, now is the time to chart a bold new course for your sales funnel as well. It’s always tempting to leave well enough alone, but the best marketers are never content to just let things be and are constantly striving to hit new benchmarks with their sales. This year, commit to getting your hands dirty with the following five time-tested commitments for your funnel.

1. Truly Talk To Your Customers

This year, don’t be content to to simply count your sales. Instead, commit to getting to know your customer base. You can do this by using surveys and phone interviews to ask probing questions, and get to the core of what they are really coming to you for.

These insights can be used to echo back shopper concerns, motivations, and desires in your sales copy, which is much better than trying to craft a letter from the powers of your brain alone. Talking to your customers might not seem like ground breaking advice at first, but it goes beyond merely looking at the emails they send – it’s about starting conversations and encouraging a dialogue with them. Don’t ask leading questions like “Do you want lower prices on widgets?” Instead, go for open-ended questions like “Why did you come to this website today?”

For more ideas on how to think about the right questions to ask, and how to learn from the responses you receive, have a look at this great post on how to talk to your customers.

2. Decipher More Data

Going data-less is no way to make a killing in 2013. Anyone can record their data but it takes a seasoned mind to sift through the data and extract meaning and patterns from it that can be converted into actionable improvements. For instance, a beginning marketer would celebrate “more traffic” coming in, but a dedicated professional looks for which particular traffic is converting, and who is leaving without making a purchase.

Actionable data is how you begin to cut all the fat off your sales funnel and turn it into a lean, cost-effective conversion machine. In 2012, you might have thought “I’m spending $25,000/month on advertising, and my retail website is bringing back around $40,000. I’m coming out ahead so I’m doing well!” Don’t stop there this year. Instead, ask how much of that $25,000 is pure waste, and how can you squeeze even more effectiveness and sales out of your investment.

If you really don’t have a clue about analytics and you run an online store, you could do worse than to start by watching this 60 second video on how to track ecommerce with Google Analytics!

3. Build a Stable of Great Products

(source: coolmikeol)

As advertising costs continue to soar, it becomes increasingly difficult to make a profit on your very first sale. This underscores how important it is to sell more things to the same customers over time. This creates a functioning cycle of more profit, which leads to more funds available for advertising, which leads to more profit.

Conversely, if you only have a single $50 product for sale, it might be very hard to continue to profit as you expand your efforts from PPC to inbound marketing and beyond. But by creating a stable of products that build on each other and can be sold to the same customers to increase the profitability of bringing them into the funnel, you can survive the stormy seas of rising ad costs.

4. Refine Your USP

Many businesses are afraid to repel certain parts of the market. They shy away from bold, polarizing messages because they are worried that they might lose potential customers that aren’t necessarily in their exact narrow market space. Paradoxically though, by keeping your unique selling proposition (USP) tame and vague, you are missing out on the opportunity to completely blow away those in your target market and might be missing out on untold numbers of sales that could be made through total ownership of that space.

Find out the biggest benefit that your business is specially designed to serve and focus on reaching that market specifically. For some thought exercises to help you better define your USP, consult this quick guide from author David Airey.

5. Make This The Year Of The Test

Experimenting with what works can be a scary proposition. “What if I break it?” is a common fear, especially when you’re talking about something like your headline, or the sequence of your follow up emails. However this flawed logic is the same that keeps people from asking out the love of their lives, or switching up their work out routine in the gym. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

A better approach is to make calculated experiments to the aspects of your sales funnel that could produce the biggest gains. Try split testing your offer page across several different variables:

Headline
Sales copy
Navigation design
Color scheme
Call to action

You can try out services such as Optimizely and Visual Website Optimizer, which are designed to make testing easy and effective for you.

Remember, if your experiments are a success your sales funnel will be better for it. If they are not, you can always revert the website back later. For a complete guide to user testing including speicific ideas and strategies you can begin rolling out today, check out the book Don’t Make Me Think by author Steve Krug.

Always Be Improving

There is a common theme running through these five separate resolutions: always be measuring and improving. Whether you’re taking feedback from your customers, performing behavioral testing on your landing page, or refining your sales letter, your key to success in 2013 (and every year for that matter) should be to stay hungry. Once you decide that your funnel is “good enough” and stop thinking of small ways to improve it, you set a cap on how great your company can be.

Image credit: Hiddedevries, Marius B, Dphiffer, Milosz1

How to Get Feedback for Your Website

Posted on October 22, 2010 by ReferralCandy

Like my website? Tell me more about it! Good feedback is the one thing we all seek after our store or website is set up. Ideally from someone who hasn’t been worrying over the store design for the past 24 hours.

Forums:
The first thing you might turn to are forum postings. And the community may have a few valuable insights about your store. However, you usually don’t get a lot of responses from forums and they tend to be tempered by the fear of offending you with their frank opinions.

So what other options do you have? Other than forum posts, there are many tools out there that can help. Some are free, others aren’t. Here are a few that would suit store owners who are looking to get feedback quickly.

Concept Feedback – Free feedback from a community of professionals. The site has an interesting credit system which encourages the community to give quality feedback.

Feedback Roulette - Free community driven peer review site. The idea behind this site is simple. Review other websites and other people will review your website

Feedback Army - Straight and to the point, this site offers 10 reviews for $15. They use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service to gather feedback. To protect you, you have the power to reject any poor responses that you receive.

These three tools involve little work on your part and are pretty cheap. But there is no free lunch, and it’s no surprise that the quality of feedback will vary. There are other tools out there that help you to conduct your own analysis for in-depth feedback. Here are some others for you to check out.

Five Second Test – Analyze the most prominent elements of your design.
Usabilla - Remote usability testing to get visual feedback on your website.
Click Tale – Record visitor actions and detailed heat maps.
Userfly - Record user visits.
Clixpy - Track everything your site’s users do.
Crazy Egg – Visualize every click your visitors make.

Here are some other excellent sources of information for your reading pleasure!

Information Gathering – A Round-up of UX Applications - by UX Booth
10 Excellent Services To Get Feedback For Your Design Works - by InspiredMag
Quick and Dirty Remote User Testing - by A List Apart

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