This article is written by rick from Mitash. More informative articles, tips and secrets are available on Roam Express.

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This article is written by rick from Mitash. More informative articles, tips and secrets are available on Designwyse.

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This article is written by rick from Mitash. More informative articles, tips and secrets are available on Credit Card.

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Two days ago I received the email all online shoppers fear; the dreaded “Sorry, but our security system has been breached and someone has accessed your personal details.”  This single, often unavoidable error is something that can destroy the reputation of a company overnight, causing sales to plummet and making consumers think twice about shopping online.  Fortunately my card details weren’t accessed, yet my email, phone number, address and other bits might have been. See the key parts of the email Zappos sent me below:

First, the bad news:

We are writing to let you know that there may have been illegal and unauthorized access to some of your customer account information on Zappos.com, including one or more of the following: your name, e-mail address, billing and shipping addresses, phone number, the last four digits of your credit card number (the standard information you find on receipts), and/or your cryptographically scrambled password (but not your actual password).

THE BETTER NEWS:

The database that stores your critical credit card and other payment data was NOT affected or accessed.

Zappos is owned by Amazon, the company famed for its cloud storage. It is unclear yet as to whether Amazon was housing this data on their cloud facility or elsewhere, but it if was the former, this will be a major setback for consumer confidence in cloud storage. The good news here is that credit card details at Zappos are kept in a separate database, a wise move that other IT managers should take note of. Zappos also moved quickly to contain the damage, automatically resetting passwords and contacting customers with directions on how to set up new passwords.

It’s at times like this ecommerce businesses need to sit up and take notice, asking themselves just how well protected they are against the threat of hackers. At the time of writing this no specific information regarding the hack has been released, but even when we know the cause, no doubt the hackers are one step ahead and working on a new improved hack.

This article is written by ash from Mitash. More informative articles, tips and secrets are available on Zappos Hacked In Big Security Breach.

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A click, a conversion, a sale, a nice profit; add all the sales up at the end of the month and deduct what you spent on clicks; voila! Well, that’s what it looks like if you aren’t calculating the real cost of your PPC campaign. It isn’t quite as simple as that, and there are a few things you need to consider to make sure your accounting is accurate.

1.   Credit Card Rejection

Make sure you look at all the transactions that were denied by banks throughout the month. You need to find a way that your system can cross reference each one and determine whether it arose from a PPC click. Often businesses count the sale, not thinking twice about tracing possible rejections, which can occur up to 48 hours later.

2.     Order Returns / Exchanges

Again, if you have a return/exchange policy of 28 days or more, you will need to adjust your ad spend figures for the previous month, as they will be affected by returns and exchanges.

3.     Order Changes Via Phone

The original order may change by phone rather than via cancellation and reorder through the system, and while the change may be logged in the system, it won’t filter down to you when you are calculating your ad spend. Ideally your system should be automated, so that when an order is changed, if it came from a PPC click, it will then automatically adjust your ad spend accounts.

4.     Cancellations

If you are a one or two man show, it is easy to forget cancellations in busy periods. Make sure you pull up a list of cancelled order when calculating your monthly ad spend. One or two cancellations could be the difference between your campaign being in the red or black.

This article is written by ash from Mitash. More informative articles, tips and secrets are available on Calculating The True Cost of Your PPC Campaign.

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This is one for SEO beginners and something I have overlooked writing about until now. As you know, or should know, it is important to select keywords relating to your website that receive high search volume in the search engines.  When conducting your keyword research, it is likely that you will identify one primary keyword phrase that best describes your site, such as “leather handbags” or “meditation mp3s”, depending on your industry. This keyword might not necessarily be the most lucrative in terms of buyers, but it will describe your site with exact relevance, identifying the primary purpose of your website to the search engines.

Once you have identified this keyword phrase, there are a number of places you need to use this keyword on a regular basis to continue optimising your SEO.

1. The title tag for your homepage

This is probably the most important place as this will be the first thing indexed by the search engines. Don’t miss this one out whatever you do!

2. The heading of your site

For solid on-page SEO, this keyword phrase should feature in the heading of your site, and try not to dilute it. It should appear as the majority of people will search for it. For example: “Real Leather Handbags” not “Real Handbags In Leather.

3. Alt-tags

Any pictures or versions of your logo can have an alt-tag attached to describe the image to the search engines. Of course, on other pages you may choose to target other keywords in the alt-tag that are more relevant to the theme and content on that page. But on your home page, in particular, make sure you use alt-tags to target your primary keyword phrase.

4. In Anchor Text in links from other websites

As part of your SEO strategy you will be building links from other sites back to your site. If you have the opportunity to control the text from which the link arises, use your primary keyword phrase to link from. Again, bear in mind that when linking to sub-pages you may want to diversify and link from other keywords that you have identified in your keyword research.

This article is written by ash from Mitash. More informative articles, tips and secrets are available on 4 Places You Should Be Using Your Primary Keyword Phrase.

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Well, it is not enough to have an online store or e-commerce website made. In this age of fierce competition, online marketers have to leverage the online marketing strategies available to promote their business and generate leads. Such strategies require hard efforts from the marketers and are really crucial. If you do not implement online marketing strategies then you won’t enjoy web traffic, cannot generate leads and moreover your website will be lost in this virtual world of Web.

Following common online marketing strategies must be used to market your products or services over internet and attract web audiences.

1. E-Mail Marketing –
   Very important and still a gem for marketers. E-mail marketing gives you a platform to get in touch with your target audience and customers. It helps two way communication between you and your clients or prospects. All you need to do this build a list of e-mail ids of your visitors and send them, newsletters, information about offers, schemes and events on a regular basis. E-mail marketing is a direct form of marketing and connects you well with your audience.
2. Search Engine Optimisation –
   Importance of SEO or search engine optimisation can never be ignored. SEO is a long term process and help your website get higher search engine rankings. Today, almost 80 percent of web audience refers search engines to find out a website that serve information, products or services they are looking for. If your website is search engine friendly then it will certainly get good traffic volume which you can convert to achieve your business goal.
3. Pay Per Click Management –
   After you successfully launched your online retail store, the first online strategy that you can utilize to market your store is PPC or Pay Per Click. It is an exclusive advertising model or a type of paid search marketing. It is really cost-effective and offer promising results quickly. In PPC, a marketer has to pay only for the clicks that online visitors make to get redirected to your website from search engines.
4. Banner Advertising –
   It is a type of display advertising on internet. The primary idea behind banner advertising is same i.e. to get a stream of web traffic flowing into your website. Marketers advertise with the banner ads of their website on popular websites. The idea is to get your information or marketing message exposed to a lot of online visitors and attract them to visit your store and convince them to buy your products or services.
5. Social Media Optimisation –
   In the present web scenario, the best way to market your business online is social media optimisation. Today, the trend is social networking through several websites. Social media optimisation (SMO) is almost no cost way to advertise or market your business and build a solid customer base. You can reach masses and enhance your online presence and brand reputation. Also called as Social media marketing (SMM), SMO gives you an opportunity to interact with web audience and let them form opinions about your store or business. It helps you create buzz.
6. Video Marketing –
   Sometimes words fail to paint pictures and impress your target audience or your online visitors just browse through your website and do not read content. In such condition, you have only a few minutes to impress your audience and get your marketing message across. To do this video marketing serves as the best online marketing strategy available. Simple, you can upload a video of your product or message to your website. Web audiences, usually watch videos and understand what you want to express. It is an impressive way to address your online visitors personally and convert them.
7. Online Press Release –
   Just like traditional press releases, online press releases help you share your news / views, opinion or information about events, products, services, etc. with online visitors. Press releases help you generate traffic to your website which gets redirected from PR directories or websites. Online press releases help you build and maintain strong public relations.
8. Blogging –
   Blogging is not a new online marketing strategy. However, it could help you tremendously with your marketing objectives. Blogging help you share your views, information or news with web audience. It gives you a platform to interact with them directly. By blogging you can inspire online visitors to participate in online discussions and provide you an opportunity to find out what your web audience thinks about your products or business.
9. Viral Marketing –
   Viral marketing is nothing but a new form of traditional word of mouth advertising. Here marketer can create a buzz around his website, products or services and business. Viral marketing give opportunity to marketers to improve their brand awareness. It creates a buzz and inspires audiences to share your marketing message with their friends, family or relatives on social networks and through other mediums. It is very effective medium but requires close monitoring otherwise you may end up with ruining your brand image.
10. Web Analytics –
    It is not an online marketing strategy as such but it is the back bone of all your online marketing efforts. The best advantage of marketing your business online is that you can track the performance of your campaigns and make necessary changes as desired. Web analytics help you understand visitors’ behavior, their responses towards your marketing efforts. Web analytics can measure the effectiveness of any of your online marketing campaign.

So, once again I would like you to congratulate for your online store and remind you to use online marketing strategies discussed above to be successful in all your endeavors.

This article is written by ash from Mitash. More informative articles, tips and secrets are available on 10 important online marketing strategies to implement after launch of your online store.

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Strategic image placement

While shopping in the off-line world, you may have noticed how supermarkets create elaborate floor plans to attract your attention and ensure that you browse through all the products in their various aisles. You must do the same for your eCommerce website to attract online shoppers and compel them to browse and purchase products from you.

You can start by creating something like a window display that one would have in an off-line store. All you need to do is to strategically place images of the products you sell, for each of your departments various sections.

Audio-visual product descriptions

The image of your product should be accompanied by audio-visual content that demonstrates how your product is used and displays its features along with the user benefits. Research has proven that online shoppers are extremely video savvy and prefer viewing a product in real time, instead of merely reading the product description. By incorporating product videos on your product page, you can create a potent ecommerce solution.

Create product review and rating sections

Alongside your product image and description, your ecommerce site should also include a customer review and rating section to further augment your sales. When customers are given the liberty to rate and review your product it improves your sites credibility while allowing customers to interact with one another and delivers prospective buyers with unbiased information. Once again studies indicate that ecommerce sites which include customer reviews and ratings increase product sales by well over 25%.

Recommend relevant add-ons

Most online shoppers in the buy-mode are quite literally an easy target to gain you sales, if only you play it right. While browsing, they are most likely to click on the first link that comes their way. Hence it makes great business sense for you to place relevant product suggestions on the product page of every item they browse. For instance, if you sell sportswear, on your product page for trainers, you could suggest add-ons like a nice pair of coordinated track pants or socks to go with it. While this add-on suggestion may involve some extra scripting and require a more elaborately designed website, it is sure to benefit you with additional shopping from your customers.

Create last-minute deals

Now that the customer is heading straight towards making the payment after finalising his order via your shopping cart software’s interface, don’t leave him by himself. Continue to engage him with exciting offers. Create last-minute deals that he would find interesting and therefore difficult to resist. The last-minute deal is an extension of the earlier recommendation offer; however it’s more of an impulse purchase.
All you need to do is offer an affordable item that will again accessorise or add-on to the product that the customer is purchasing, which makes him believe that it is important to add to his shopping cart, especially at the price you are offering it to him for. Most shoppers will buy-in to this last-minute deal offer in the belief that these extra items will not make too much of a difference to the total amount.

Single-page checkout

While an ecommerce website should be visually appealing, it must also include an important usable feature of a single-page checkout. Thoroughly verify your e-commerce shopping cart solution, as the checkout process is built into it. When customers realise that they have to keep on clicking through your web store’s checkout process to make a purchase, they will certainly get bored and sign-off midway in the shopping process.

Finally, gaining greater profits is not merely about attracting more customers to purchase from you. It is much easier and advantageous to attract the same number of customers to buy more from you. As you are achieving this increased profit without paying more for additional traffic or optimizations.

This article is written by ash from Mitash. More informative articles, tips and secrets are available on Ecommerce Site Design and Usability Guidelines to Gain Sales (Part 3).

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Deliver precise product information

Just suppose a website visitor has managed to narrow down your product list and discovered the product that he wants to purchase. Now, he needs to further feel comfortable that your product is the appropriate one for him based on the information you’ve provided. As an online e-tailer, you have a great advantage of displaying comprehensive product information unlike a printed brochure, which has limitations. However, the information should be conveyed in a factual, informative and interesting manner. You should refrain from merely highlighting product specs and instead focus on delving on the resultant benefits to the customer. This way, you will spur on the customer’s interest to purchase your product.

In addition, you need to place a thumbnail photograph of the product which the customer can enlarge and view from various angles.

Display product prices

The fact that your website visitor can view the price of a product, while trying to make an online purchase is often a deciding factor in converting him into a buyer. In viewing the price, he has the option to compare dealers or make a decision to purchase directly from the manufacturer. This ability has effectually been found to increase conversion rates by as much as three percent. Alternately, if the price is not displayed the customer has to go through the laborious process of clicking through to every dealer to review their price, which violates the ‘reduce the number of clicks’ thumb rule.

Ensure your credibility

While a new customer visits your website with the intention of purchasing your product; he is simultaneously filled with trepidation on several parameters, as to whether he can trust you; from delivering him value for his money, to protecting his identity despite the data you hold. He has concerns as to whether he will receive the product he purchased from you and if you are going to sell his confidential information to blacklisted sites.

You need to overcome this critical credibility hurdle by incorporating a declaration statement to the customer stating, ‘We will never give out your e-mail address for any reason.’ You further need to enhance your credibility by listing your physical address on the website as well as including a photograph of yourself and key company associates and possibly shots of your office building too.

Display out-of-stock Dealers

It is interesting to note that more than half of all customers commence their online shopping with product searches on a retailer website. This is evidence of the fact that consumers do have preferences when it comes to where to shop. Therefore it is important to include relevant dealers in your listing even if their products are out of stock. This is simply because if you do not include some dealers you could deter prospective shoppers from purchasing at your site. You can still show the dealer who stocks the product, mentioning that it is currently out of stock, giving the consumer the option to wait if he so desires.

Avoid delays during product purchase

Now, that your customer is well on his way to purchase a product from your site, you need to make the process easy for him. More often than not, several online sites end up haggling customers with questionnaires just as they are poised to give them their sale. This practice of trying to collect customer data at such a moment is less important than clinching the customer sale. You run the risk of detracting your customer and losing his trust and resultant sale. Reserve customer data collection for a later stage, after the order is placed and the sale is yours.

Finally, the potential of usability should go beyond navigation and extend to website design and placement. It is as critical as navigation in advancing usability and ensuring you bag that online sale. In my 3^rd and final article on ecommerce design and usability guidelines I look forward to sharing with you insights on the finer design aspect of ecommerce websites.

This article is written by ash from Mitash. More informative articles, tips and secrets are available on Ecommerce Site Design and Usability Guidelines to Gain Sales (Part 2).

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