55 Ecommerce Tips That Totally Rock

1)     Your site title is an important SEO benefit but more importantly it will attract click throughs when constructed properly. Use it wisely!

2)     You must ensure that the images you use in your shop are of high quality. Customers will be quite put off by low quality pictures as they will perceive the product to be the same.

3)     Establish who the competition is, look at what they are doing and then do it a whole heap better. Also look out for opportunities of joint ventures and collaborations.

4)     Make sure that you have your payment terms clearly displayed on your home page. This is a convenience and an added trust factor for your customers.

5)     Have you started to capture email addresses from your customers? Make sure that you have a sign up box with a special offer for customers or you are leaving money on the table.

6)     Use a picture on your ‘About Us’ page where poss and an introduction video is even better. Write a great page as it’s often clicked and checked by a customer prior to them making a purchase, so use it to build trust.

7)     High traffic is irrelevant – it’s conversion that counts. Concentrate on using targeted keywords for targeted buyers.

8)     Consider using promotional items like fridge magnets in your parcels. Most people do actually pop them on the fridge and therefore have a constant reminder of you and your business.

9)     Put your most important info above the fold on the home page. Images, Special Offers, Contact Details and Secure signs have all been tested and proven to work well.

10)  Consider using a blog. Ecommerce sites are not consistently updated but blogs are, so by putting out fresh content that leads to your site, you are also keeping your site regularly spidered and indexed by Google.

11)  Don’t send all of your links to your home page. Spread the link juice throughout your site so that different products rank well in the SERPs

12)  Don’t add anything like ‘We’re a Brand New Store’ or anything to suggest that you are a newcomer to the business.

13)  Give your customers the WOW factor. Ways you can do this are by sending a free gift with their purchase, sending their purchase FAST, email a thank you to them or follow up with a special offer. Anything that makes them think ‘Wow, what a great company and a great service’.

14)  SEO is important but build your site for the customer and not the search engines. Any long paragraphs of keyword stuffed text will not only put a customer off, it will also get you penalised by the Search Engines.

15)  Never, EVER, ever have hidden text/keywords on your site. You will get your arse kicked and may even get de-indexed.

16)  Social Media creates a natural footprint for your customers or potential clients to check you out. Don’t say anything online that you may come to regret because once it’s out there, you can’t retract it – so use social media wisely!

17)  Don’t be boring – use your blog to inject a little bit of personality to your brand, whilst also building the trust factor.

18)  Don’t make your customers jump through hoops to buy from you because – they won’t! Making them register to see things like shipping costs is old school and detrimental to your business.

19)  Educate your customer and help them make that decision to purchase. If your product enable you to do a demonstration via video or even pictures, then add it to the product description or on ‘how to’ article pages within your site (with links to the product). This will dramatically increase your sales.

20)  Difficult customers that are dealt with in the correct manner, can often become your biggest and most loyal customers, so be patient and be nice!

21)  For SEO purposes, make sure that your product names are in the title tag of the corresponding page – before your company name if you are using it here.

22)  Become an expert within your niche. Don’t just sell the product, blog about it, the history, facts, stats etc. People like to buy from an expert and will actually pay you more for it than a competitor!

23)  Don’t try to sell everything, be niche specific. You are not Amazon so do not try to be, focus on niche products to a niche audience.

24)  Create loyalty by finding ways to reward existing customers, special offers, competitions, bonus points, discounts & freebies etc

25)  If you offer a live help or chat service, make sure that you actually log in to it and be on hand to answer queries. If you consistently get too busy, consider dropping it so that customers are not left waiting.

26)  Make sure that you constantly update for FAQ’s page with any new queries that come in. Not only is this great for the search engines it also saves both you and your customers precious time.

27)  A good place to remind customers about your newsletter is on your ‘thank you’ page after their purchase. They are already committed to you through their purchase and are in the best frame of mind to now sign up. Add an incentive like 10% off your nest order to clinch the deal!

28)  Keep the customer informed about the progress of their order BEFORE they have to come and ask you. It shows that you are a professional, caring company and adds an additional layer of trust. Plus, if there were any problems with their purchase, they are far less likely to kick off if they have already had contact from you and decided that you are a good company to buy from. Folks don’t like to admit they are wrong and tend to go with their initial appraisal.

29)  Utilise free services such as Google Base as these can bring you highly targeted traffic and more links within the SERPs.

30)  You don’t have to sell your products cheaper than the next guy (who probably isn’t making any profit). People pay extra for a professional and excellent service.

31)  Include promotional flyers in your parcels. Discount vouchers to encourage return visits, catalogues to showcase your other products etc

32)  Have a search facility, customers like to be able to search for what they want rather than wading through tons of pages. On the flip side – only have this available if it is a good search facility. Searches that result in shoddy results could mean that your customer won’t find what they are looking for even if you sell it.

33)  If you often get asked a lot of questions about your products then include a keyword rich FAQ’s page, very good for SEO purposes.

34)  If you hold your own stock the ship orders FAST. You’re now in the shadow of eBays ‘want it yesterday’ mentality. Within the past couple of years, people have gone from waiting a few weeks for their purchase to now expecting it within a few days of ordering. If you can’t meet those demands – have a clear and precise shipping policy so that you’re customer is aware. It’s also wise to include this information again on their receipt and any follow up emails.

35)  Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and go through your buying process to the very end. Is it easy? Are there steps you could eliminate? Are there add-ons that you could insert?

36)  Raise your profit margin and encourage larger orders by offering free shipping for multiple item orders or orders over a certain amount. You could also factor the cost of shipping into your products and offer free shipping on everything. If you do this right then the rise in sales will counteract any loss made on shipping and you will be in profit.

37)  If you are selling the same product as someone else, add something to the title tag that makes yours stand out from the competition.

38)  Try new things in your store. Promotions, layout, offers etc But test, test and test some more. You need to fail in order to succeed so fail fast and move forward.

39)  Your internal links are incredibly powerful. Learn how to structure these correctly to optimise your store to its full potential.

40)  If your thumbnail image says ‘click here to see a larger image’ make sure that a larger image actually appears!

41)  Study your after-sales care. One-off buyers do not create a business, you want to create a base of loyal, returning customers that rave about you to their friends.

42)  Remember the 80/20 rule. 20% of your customers prob make up around 80% of your sales – so work on creating the ultimate customer experience.

43)  Be contactable. Have your companies telephone number clearly displayed on your stores home page and make sure that all of your calls get answered or dealt with swiftly.

44)  Use testimonials if you have them. Electronic signatures and video also add the extra trust factor.

45)  Have a prominent area to feature special offers or products. Keep it either on the same day each week or do it daily so that customers become accustomed to where it is and look for it.

46)  Try and incorporate a reviews section. If you can do this on each individual product and get the software for customers to leave reviews themselves, then this is great for customer confidence. If a product gets continually bad reviews then stop selling it. Since companies like Amazon and eBay introduced reviews and feedback, it’s become a mark of trust that buyers like when they can have it.

47)  Make your site easy to navigate. Customers won’t hang around to dig for a product so hand it to them on a plate. If they want some green earrings, they won’t want to go through a process of clicking like this:- home page >> jewellery with stones >> silver jewellery with stones >> earrings >> earrings for pierced ears >> green earrings – keep it as simple as you can! Less clicks = more sales.

48)  Respond to customer complaints swiftly and politely. Bite your tongue if need be as your reputation is your livelihood.

49)  Make sure that you have a prominent and strong guarantee and refund policy. Offering a great policy will increase your sales.

50)  Avoid having flash banners that tell folks you’re in the top 50 of something or other. It looks lame and most people know that these ‘trophies’ are just meaningless. Unless it’s a badge worthy of showing – don’t show it. Also avoid those entire ‘listed in the blah, blah’ directories – so what? Your customer couldn’t give a hoot and it makes your site look cheap.

51)  Add a best-sellers section to your website. It encourages more sales as people are naturally curious to see what other people are buying and also use that as an endorsement of the product to buy it themselves.

52)  Make sure that your spelling and punctuation throughout the site is faultless. Use a spell check to make sure as it’s something that will make your site look very unprofessional. And it’s not even that you’re a bad speller, most folks won’t condemn you for that – but they will condemn you for not being bothered to ‘check’ your written word. If you can’t be bothered with that then maybe they can’t be bothered to buy from you.

53)  Use an 0800 number for your biz if you can or at the very least have a separate line so that your business calls can be answered in a professional manner, rather than your 2yr old as you’ve nipped to the toilet! If your company is getting very busy then consider hiring someone to answer the phone our re-route your calls to a call centre.

54)  Don’t make customers fill out unnecessary fields in the buying process. If billing and delivery addresses are the same, let them check a box to say that rather than having to type it all out again.

55)  If Google isn’t indexing all of your pages then you probably don’t have enough links OR you have some duplicate content issues. Double check the pages that are not being listed and find out why. Address the problem and re-submit (or add) an XML site map to Google.

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