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.

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

Why Ecommerce Sites Need to be Aware of Google Updates

Posted on April 24, 2012 by ReferralCandy

All eCommerce sites should embrace SEO principles. Complying with Google’s best practice guidelines improves the likelihood that you’ll rank higher in search results, which is a good thing.

However, these rules aren’t set in stone. Occasionally the search engines will update their algorithms, and this can render existing techniques obsolete.

So you can’t quite “set-it-and-forget-it”. SEO isn’t future-proof. You have to be prepared for updates, so that you can adapt and adjust accordingly.

Easier said than done when you’ve got a busy eCommerce business to run!

Beware of the Panda

The Google Panda update in 2011 demonstrated how a major algorithm change can drastically impact the rankings of millions of websites. This saw the search engine cracking down on sites with poor or duplicate content, demoting many overnight. eCommerce sites took some of the hardest hits.

Businesses relying on flimsy on-page content or generic descriptions went from the first page to nowhere in the blink of an eye. This had a major impact on sales and revenue for a number of retailers. Panic ensued.

Search Engine Watched featured a story in which a furniture retailer saw a million daily visits vanish overnight and asked Google Webmaster Central for assistance.

This is is just one in a long list of struggling eCommerce sites. What would you do if your traffic halves from one week to the next? What would you think? Unless you’re already intimately familiar with search engines and how they work, and you know about their their algorithm updates, you’re in for a rude shock. Fewer visits mean fewer sales.

It happened before, and it will happen again
Panda isn’t the first time that Google has decided to mix things up a little. Back in 2009 there was the Brand Update, which made it easier for larger, more established businesses to rank higher within the search index. This hurt smaller online retailers.

Again, there’s nothing that businesses can do about this. Google are the masters of their own destiny; they can make major changes whenever they choose. Their top priority (beyond ensuring positive returns for shareholders) is to deliver the very best search results, which effectively gives them free reign to do as they wish, so long as they deliver their promise to their users. Consequently, we are all at their mercy as long as we choose to use them as our preferred search engine.

Don’t Forget the Result Pages (SERPs)
Algorithms aren’t the only things that change. Adjustments to the way in which search results are returned can also impact a site’s visibility. Search engine results pages (SERPs) are constantly evolving to incorporate new features.

In recent years, Google has made massive adjustments to the way local results are shown, incorporating videos and social results. Unsurprisingly, this has a major impact on organic results.

When images and videos were first introduced in SERPs, sites that were ranking in third or fourth positions were suddenly being nudged below the fold (i.e. searchers would have to scroll down to find them). This reduced visibility and sometimes negatively impacted the click-rate of some sites.

Things haven’t always been bad for the little guy.
Smaller eCommerce sites were given a boost by swathe of local search changes in 2010. If you were optimizing your site to appear for a particular location and had signed up for Google Places (or the Bing equivalent), visibility for your listings would’ve increased significantly.

It’s a zero-sum game (but it’s an expanding pie!)
In terms of PageRank, SEO is a zero-sum game – so when some sites gets a major boost, others must necessarily fall behind. (The number of people searching globally is increasing though, so it’s possible for you to see your hits and sales go up even if you lose PageRank.)

Respond swiftly.
It’s impossible to predict precisely what a search engine is going to do next (unless you’ve got insider information, maybe), but you can respond swiftly when changes are made. Ensuring optimal visibility is essential for any online business.

Google rankings aren’t set in stone. You do have to work on maintaining and improving them as you go along.

Search engine algorithm updates should inform your future optimisation efforts. What works one year may be redundant the next, so keeping a keen eye on what Google are doing could well save you time and money in the long run. Quality content and a usable, engaging site design are always going to be important, just as competitive pricing and excellent service will ensure your customers keep coming back.

No site is infallible (JC Penney learned this the hard way when they were punished for utilizing link schemes). So get your techniques right and your knowledge up-to-date to remain competitive in an increasingly crowded market.

Sites worth following:
Google’s Official Blog
Bing’s Official Blog
Search Engine Land – leading search industry blog

Final notes
Tactics can get outdated, but principles are eternal. The core fundamentals of SEO remain constant – make a great site that is clear, navigable, understandable with great content (or products, if you’re a retailer) that people will want to link to.

Content Strategy: Prioritizing Your Writing

Posted on April 9, 2012 by ReferralCandy

If you’ve got hundreds, possibly even thousands of pages on your ecommerce site, ensuring that each one includes a sizeable chunk of unique copy can prove difficult. Consequently, many e-tailers choose to cut corners.

However, when you choose to reuse the same text time after time or use a generic manufacturer’s description, this can have a negative impact on your search engine rankings and how visitors perceive your site. On the flipside, writing content requires resources. Whether you have an in-house team or are outsourcing the work to a professional copywriter, there is a cost factor.

So, do you take the risk and decide that duplicate content is better than nothing at all, or should you invest in unique copy for every page?

There’s certainly no one-size-fits-all answer to this particular quandary. For smaller, newer online businesses, other priorities may exist. For instance, there isn’t much point in spending your entire budget on content if you have insufficient stock to meet demand. So there is a balance that needs to be made.

This is why it’s important to have structure and a plan when it comes to creating content for your ecommerce site. Make sure that your top level pages are given priority. You don’t want to have low quality or duplicate content on your homepage for instance; so if you’re working with a restricted budget, make sure some of your resources go towards populating your most profitable pages.

Remember, despite the fact that you might have hundreds of pages, each of which offers a potential entry point to your site, your homepage is still the first place that most people will navigate towards. This is where the majority of inbound links will be pointing and also the page that will be optimised for your primary keywords. So, if you can only afford to cover the cost of one page of content, this should be your starting point.

As your business grows and revenue increases, then you can perhaps look at developing your on-page copy. Build your category pages, sub-categories and popular products.

But why is duplicate content an issue?

Google has always sought to punish low-value sites, using a number of metrics to measure quality. The relevance and originality of text are central to these checks.

Whilst duplicate content has been penalised for some time now, the Panda update in 2011 really brought this issue into the wider public consciousness. Millions of pages were demoted overnight, many of which featured small snippets of information or copy that was used elsewhere.

As with many major algorithm changes, the Panda update hasn’t finished yet. Every month Google tweaks it, adding new elements and targeting different ranking factors. We’re currently up to Panda v3.3, with v3.4 due in the very near future. This provides a decent demonstration of just how seriously Google is treating content issues and the levels they are willing to go to in order to solve them.

So if your site is found to have duplicate content, it can be tricky to get a footing in the search engine results, particularly if your domain isn’t particularly strong or the term you are targeting is particularly competitive. Whilst Google claims that there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty, it’s certainly true to say that they don’t look kindly on sites that borrow copy. As a result you may not be penalised, but you also won’t feature above other sites that are better optimised (which is pretty much a penalty in a different guise).

One potential workaround is to introduce user comments on the page. As we discussed in an earlier post, allowing your customers to leave reviews on product pages will not only help to encourage others to make a purchase, but will also bolster on-page copy. Whilst the content is unlikely to be too in-depth and may lack the quality of a decent product description, it ought to be unique and also contain your target keywords.

So, effectively, your customers can do some of the hard work for you. It certainly works for some of the larger online retailers. Whilst it is a regularly used example, Amazon offers a classic example of this. Whilst their domain strength is probably enough to ensure decent rankings, many of their pages simply have a short manufacturer’s description or expert review taken from other sources. As such, they shouldn’t (theoretically speaking) have enough content to realistically rank against better-optimised sites. However, thanks to a wealth of user reviews on each page, they generally have hundreds of words of context-rich, keyword optimised unique content ready for search engine spiders to crawl and index.

Does this apply to every page on the site?

Ideally, if a page has its own URL, it should have an element of unique copy. However, if you are a clothing store and you offer men’s jeans in sizes 28-42, it would be excessively time-consuming to write an original description for each variation. Minor changes are often all that is required, just to ensure that the content reflects the item that users are looking at.

It’s important to remember that you don’t optimise websites, you optimise pages. Every link will increase its strength (and that of the domain as a whole) whilst the content provides context. There are other factors to consider, but these are certainly the big two. Therefore, investing the time to produce an engaging, unique piece of copy can help you to leapfrog competitors and start attracting new customers from a wider selection of search terms.

So what have we learnt?

Firstly, there aren’t duplicate content penalties per se. You can still achieve rankings, but the likelihood is that you will always be limited as to where your pages will appear within results. So if you value Google rankings as a source of traffic, some form of original content is necessary. Whether you start from scratch (preferable) or rework sections of another piece of existing copy that you’ve produced, there should be no room for endless duplication.

Your visitors should also appreciate this. When you produce your own copy, you can put your own stamp on it. This means that it reflects your brand as well as the individual page. This creates an ongoing theme, developing familiarity for existing customers and encouraging others to give you a try. Site content is essentially a written sales pitch, so make the most of this opportunity.

The Advantages of User Comments for Ecommerce Sites

Posted on March 8, 2012 by ReferralCandy

Some consumers require more convincing than others. Whilst a detailed product description and expert review might suffice for some, there will always be those who want more. So why not give it to them?

A commenting system is a great way of developing unique on-page content as well as allowing visitors to share their insights. If they can read independent reviews of an individual item or service, they see how real users perceive products, not just the manufacturer or reseller.

Trust is a huge issue for any online business. Many consumers still have reservations when it comes to buying products from ecommerce stores. Whether this is driven by security fears or concerns over the reliability of the seller, you have to do everything possible to put your customers at ease. One such solution is to provide an area for existing customers to leave comments.

Developing Content and Reaching New Audiences

Thanks to the development of social platforms, your comments needn’t simply be restricted to your website. By using an integrated Facebook sign-up, product reviews can also be posted directly onto the walls of your customers. This can help to improve brand awareness and should also drive further sales, with the buyer providing endorsements for both the item and your business.

You should also look to include social bookmarking widgets to help users to share their recommendations with friends on Twitter and Google+. Working alongside your commenting system, it can open up your store to a whole new audience. It also provides an opportunity for you to promote any other social profiles you have, including Facebook fan pages and YouTube channel.

Of course, this all relies on the reviews being largely positive. If customers are continually leaving messages of disapproval on particular products, then sales could be severely impacted. However, this shouldn’t put you off.

If a product is proving to be unpopular, then it’s better that you are aware of the issues and take action. Continuing to offer stock that attracts criticism is only going to damage your reputation with customers. Again, offering an open forum for impartial comments can help you to identify any such problems, enabling you to investigate further and respond quickly.

Honest, Independent Reviews

Most consumers don’t expect to see hundreds of glowing reviews from anonymous individuals. Instead, they want honest insights into the products and services on offer. For instance, budget products are unlikely to offer the same quality levels as a premium alternative, but most customers will understand this.

Comparing the two directly would provide a false impression. This is why unbiased comments work so well. People that have purchased an item often have similar expectations as those who are likely to make the same investment in the future and so are in the best position to provide frank advice. Therefore, the more reviews you receive, the more shared opinions and insights your pages will have.

Adding Context to Product Pages

As you are probably already aware, on-page content plays an integral part in Search Engine Optimisation. It helps to provide context and can improve the authority of your site too. Consequently, your rankings should improve, resulting in increased traffic. Whilst some site owners may be concerned about comments watering down the keyword density on their pages, this really shouldn’t be an issue.

Remember, search engines are looking for context, not just a single word or term repeated endlessly. Just as with your product description, reviewers will naturally mention its name, features and even related items. This, for search engines at least, is just as important as a blurb full of perfectly placed keywords. Content adds context; therefore, if you were able to increase both on a single page, higher rankings in Google should be your reward.

You will have to be vigilant when it comes to moderation though. Whilst you don’t want to be seen to remove negative comments, you shouldn’t allow links, spam or bad language to infiltrate your pages. This could present you with a number of credibility issues with the search engines and, more importantly, your customers. So ensure that every comment is checked before it is set live on the site.

Whilst this might sound like a lot of extra work, it is an investment that can reap real rewards. Many of the major ecommerce sites are now employing commenting systems as a way of building trust and encouraging users to return in future. Whilst you shouldn’t immediately look to emulate what your competitors are doing, this is certainly one instance where you should give it serious consideration.

No matter how big your business is, or how many products your store offers, opening up your pages to customers is a fantastic way of increasing your conversion rate and site traffic in one fell swoop. As the site owner, you can remain in full control throughout, removing anything that you deem to be inappropriate. Essentially though, you should be looking at it as free content and impartial endorsements on your pages. It really can be a win-win situation, when managed correctly.

Using Heatmaps to Optimize Your eCommerce Website

Posted on October 3, 2011 by ReferralCandy

My grandfather owned a furniture store and used to sit behind the counter and observe how his customers interacted with his products. When an item in a great location got overlooked he would quickly swap out that item with something that got more eyeballs. Similarly, if he had a very high-margin item that he wanted people to notice, he would typically place that product next to a “hot” product that got a lot of attention.

Fast forward to 2011 – In the world of real-time analytics our goal is to be able to apply the same type of logic to our product pages as my grandfather would so easily do for his retail store.

Aside from actual user testing and tracking – the best (and cheapest) solution you can use for this type of behavior analytics are website heatmaps. There are a few types of heatmaps you can use to optimize your product pages – but in this blog we will highlight three.

1. Click Heatmaps

Click heatmaps show you exactly what visitors are clicking on.

Homepage:

Homepage with click heatmap:

Practical use #1:

Images for specific product types

Click heatmap for specific product types

The above example features three images on a website. Clearly, the picture in the middle is getting the bulk of visitor attention while the picture on the right is hardly noticed. Using real-time click heatmaps allow a site owner to notice the clicks and to swap the picture on the right with a different one to see if clicks and interest are improved.

Practical Use #2:

Click heatmap for element

The above example shows an object on a page that is clearly receiving visitor clicks. If you look closely at the copy in the green circle, it says, “ Call for details”. This object is NOT a button – but visitors mistake it for one. Click heatmaps expose objects that visitors presume are links that often are not. Turning this object into a link would increase conversion and improve user experience.

2. Scroll Heatmaps

We all know that a website has a fold. What we often overlook is that a website has MANY folds. Scroll heatmaps expose how far down a page users are actually scrolling to.

Example:

Practical Use:

The example above shows the submit button to join a mailing list on furnitureesuperstore is placed where only 56% of people actually see it. If that button were moved up 1 inch, you would get 21% more eyeballs on it.

3. Mouse Movement Heatmaps

Tracks the mouse pointer to generate an eye tracking heatmap. This heatmaps shows users what parts of the page users are actually paying attention to.

Example:

Mouse movement heatmap for ecommerce website homepage

Practical Use:

Mouse movement heatmap for ecommerce website homepage zoomed

The example above illustrates a website whose visitor attention is largely focused on the left bar of the screen – the call to action however, is right justified. If the site owner were to justify the text on the left side of the image, closer to the navigation bar, many more people would pay attention to the announcement.

To wrap things up, driving traffic to your site is difficult enough as it is. Heatmaps and analytics allow site owners to professionally optimize their site to convert more leads while cost effectively testing new products or ideas.

This post was written by CEO of SeeVolution, Edo Cohen. SeeVolution’s tool provides heatmaps and simplified analytics that allow site owners to monitor activity and click paths in real-time – leading to increased conversion and optimization.

Essential Content Every eCommerce Website Needs

Posted on September 8, 2011 by ReferralCandy

When you are building a great shopping site, having a functioning, easy-to-use shopping cart is only part of the battle. An essential hurdle you need to overcome is trust. You need to show the customer that you are a reputable company that will deliver what you promise. There are some types of content consumers look for, and content that Google even recommends librarians and other researchers look for, when trying to asses how trustworthy a website is.

About Us

While most consumers rarely read an “About Us” page, it is one of the things they look for. When you are starting out, it should be something simple that conveys a sense of reliability and trust, something that suggests you are knowledgeable and reliable in your area of expertise. A more advanced strategy is to create a remarkable “About Us” page as a link building tool.

Contact Us

Having a “Contact Us” form is another key element of trust. Consumers look for physical real world addresses, telephone numbers, and contact forms. Having a PO Box may work when you are first starting out, but in most cases having a real world address is better. Sometimes you solve this problem with a virtual office that screens and holds mail as a way of getting you a physical address with a suite number. Check with your tax advisor if you are setting up an address in a different county or state. Any time you put up an address, try to use rich markup language for addresses as specified in Schema.org. If you don’t know how to use the proper markup, try the markup generator from Raven Tools.

Privacy Policy

While almost no one ever reads a privacy policy, they do like to see one there. A privacy policy is a legal document. If you aren’t going to have a lawyer review or create one for you, try the privacy policy generator. Make sure you follow what you say you are doing in your privacy policy.

Terms of Service

A “Terms of Service” page is similar to “Privacy Policy”: it’s a legal document that says how you will interact with people who visit your website. If you aren’t going to have a lawyer craft a unique TOS document, try the online terms of service generator.

Frequently Asked Questions or FAQ

Chances are good that your customer service department has 10-20 questions they get asked on a regular basis. You should put these online in an FAQ. Usually I recommend putting one question per page, which allows you to optimize each page for one search term, but sometimes one FAQ page is better. You should update and add to this section on a regular basis.

Buying Guides

Buying some products is more difficult and complicated than other products. Depending on how complex your products are, you may need a buying guide. A buying guide should be easy to read and digest. An effective buying guide takes complicated issues and explains them so they are easily understood. The costumer should feel confident about choosing a product after reading a product guide.

Care Guide

Some products require special care so they perform as expected and have a longer lifespan. Creating care guides to help customers after they have made the purchase is a key step to building loyal customers. Again, care guides should be easy to understand and follow. Adding pictures and videos are often very helpful.

Repair Guides

It would be nice if products lasted forever and didn’t need maintenance, but this isn’t realistic. For example, if you own a dishwasher, it’s almost guaranteed to need service and repair at some point. Simple-to-follow repair guides with pictures and videos are almost always better. If a product does require an experienced technician or repairman, let the user know.

Customer Photos and Videos

Sometimes having pictures/videos of customers using your products or with your products in their homes or offices can be great in garnering consumer attention. As an example, box.net created a series of people using their products, which was very successful in getting a lot of attention. Here’s an example of customer photos on the Roku website.

To wrap things up, these types of pages go a long way towards fleshing out a website and making your website more legitimate and trustworthy. If you link to them within your website, they can answer a customer’s questions and help you make sales. Make sure you allow the search engines to crawl and index them for maximum effectiveness too!

Image credit: PhotoSpin

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Category Archives: Website Optimization