Presented by Jo Benson, AspDotNetStorefront
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Since Google is now charging for product search, we’ll share ten other sources of free traffic. Much of our time is currently being spent helping our users benefit from Google’s changes. One of the many ways we can do that is to spell out the alternatives. This webinar will be devoted to other ways to get visitors to your store.
Presented by Lindsay Taylor, AspDotNetStorefront
Thursday, June 28, 2012
In this session Lindsay will cover some of the lesser-known features of XML Packages, including:
This webinar is geared towards developers who already have experience with the basics of AspDotNetStorefront XML Package. Lessons learned will apply to ML8 and later, but will be presented in MSx.
The goal of any e-commerce website is conversion.
Emphasis on the Product Page in particular, and how it affects conversion rate, shows us that the user experience is VITAL to the success of your online store – to your business.
Here we will cover three (of many) great best practices for improving conversions from product pages.
Three Great Best Practice Tips:
Plus, find out how LittleSupply.com improved conversion and reduced bounce rates based on these three tips!
The importance of the success of your Product Page becomes even greater now with the changes we are seeing in Online Marketing, specifically with respect to Google’s recent changes (see Jo Benson’s webinar “Google Points The Way: Trusted Stores, Commerce Search, Product Ads, Organic SEO and More” for more).
Your Product Page may often times be the first page your visitor sees, and therefore MUST seal the deal. Especially now that you will be paying to have your products seen on Google, visual impact has never been more critical for online merchants.
We are pleased with the success our friends at LittleSupply.com have seen as a result of the Savvy Merchant Challenge they volunteered for in April. This contest, as you might recall, brought forth numerous suggestions to the voluntary merchant by placing their featured Product Page in the “Hot Seat” for all the community to comment on. This prompted LittleSupply.com to make some changes to their product page design.
Here are some of their results:
The first three seconds impact your visitors’ emotions, and determine whether or not they feel like staying or bouncing. Within this limited time, they must feel comfortable and safe. They must be able to answer for themselves… Who Are You? Where Am I? Is this Legit?
The Company Logo/Brand Identity needs to be clearly visible and should reflect the mission of your business (for example, a site selling yoga products would benefit from invoking a sense of serenity and strength, while a site selling tools will want to spark a more industrial and powerful feeling.).
To answer the Where Am I? question, presentation of the purpose of the page must be absolutely clear at first glance. Use of clear, clean product images, along with easy-to-find price and availability are key factors for a successful product page.
Not enough can be said for trust and security. Presentation of how and why the consumer can trust that their purchase with your store will be a success can make or break a conversion. Placement of a trust seal, security badge, as well as payment choices will ease the mind of your visitors, so do make sure those can be seen well, but are not the highlight of the page.
The case study examines the “before” and “after” changes LittleSupply.com applied to their online store and it’s apparant that they have effectively improved the visual impact of their product page.
Noteworthy changes to LittleSupply.com, within the first three seconds are:
Guiding the eye path of the visitor is another vital consideration in the design of your product page. You will need to take into consideration the use of color, spacing, size, image quality as well as white space when rendering the design for your product page. You will want to be aware of and in control of where the average person’s eye will go first, second, third, and so on.
Numerous studies have been conducted to determine “hot spots” of a web pages. We recommend searching on “eye path heatmap generator” to find tools available where you can submit your site for an automated generation of the eye-path of your page.
LittleSupply.com has done well with making changes to their product page layout with respect to action path. Their identity and purpose are well recognized, and it is easy for the visitor to locate where/how to purchase their product. They have done well with drawing attention to their “add to cart” button (where previously, it was in competition with “add to wish list”) – Well done, LittleSupply.com!
“Did I just add this to my cart or not?” – If the result of clicking your ultimate Call-to-Action button leaves your visitor wondering if something happened or not, you’ve got some work ahead of you. Wonder leaves room for discomfort, insecurity, and confusion.
Conversion-increasing best practices call for a visible indication that the click of a button actually did something. We highly recommend Smart Mini-Cart for AspDotNetStorefront online stores – product image dynamically glides into the mini-cart as it expands (either briefly or until the user collapses it) and shows that the product has been added to the visitors’ shopping cart.
Although LittleSupply.com features an out-of-box mini-cart, which simply shows quantity of items in the cart, they have plans of incorporating the Smart Mini-Cart into their site in the foreseeable future. An improvement we hope they will adopt sooner rather than later.
That’s right, it’s really quite complicated, and will likely take some experimentation over time. According to the numbers we saw for LittleSupply.com, however, it’s well worth the time and effort. Of course there’s professional help out there too… in small or large amounts and we’re happy to share referrals should you be interested – just post a comment below and we’ll reply accordingly!
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Let the Experts review YOUR product page and find out where you can improve your conversion rate. Our Expert Product Page Review is available to online merchants – no matter which shopping cart software you’re currently using! Learn more now!
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We all thought that product page was important before. But, now Google is making massive changes to how they index your product pages that make conversion absolutely critical. So, we are turning our Savvy Merchant Challenge campaign into an ongoing program to help you thrive despite the changing e-commerce landscape. Membership is free. Take a look here.
5 Ways You Could Be Overpaying For Your Merchant Account
Presented by Ray Kenney, 1stPayGateway
Thursday, June 21st, 2012
The goal of this webinar is to demystify the costs associated with payment processing. During this session, 1stPayGateway will breakdown the 5 ways you could be overpaying for your current merchant account and what you can do to save money on your processing fees. 1stPayGateway has over 15 years of industry experience and they are experts in delivering cutting-edge payment technologies and low cost merchant account services.
Attendees will receive a Free Statement Cost Analysis from 1stPayGateway.Net! After the webinar airs, everyone who registered in advance will be sent an email with instructions for redeeming your free Statement Cost Analysis.
Five powerful ways to engage customers and increase sales with promotions
Offering discounts to your visitors is a great way to entice a conversion. There are numerous possible combinations that can help you determine what you discount, how you discount and how you promote your discounts so that they are seen by your target audience.
Imagine having the luxury to set up virtually any offer thinkable for your customers. Selecting a simple BOGO (Buy One Get One Free), or a more detailed requirement, such as providing a customer who recently purchased a particular product 3 to 6 months ago, to automatically receive 10% off an additional product in your store some time later, are all great ways to re-engage customers and increase customer life time value (LTV).
Here are five simple, yet powerful, ways to engage customers and encourage purchasing behavior. And, with the new Promotion Engine in AspDotNetStorefront MSx 9.3, all of these are now possible and easy to implement.
BOGO
Who doesn’t like to feel like they’re getting something special? BOGO is a classic fallback promo which merchants are fond of offering and customers are keen to take advantage of. There are many ways of offering such a deal to customers, and even more ways of getting that message to them.
Let’s explore.
Let’s say, that by purchasing a specified minimum of a particular product, the customer will receive a specified $ or % discount off of an additional specified product (this could be more of the same product, a related product, or one that you would like to receive some attention – perhaps a new product you’re excited about sharing with the world).
A few real-world examples:
Brand, Category or Product %- or $- off Discount
A temporary markdown on specific brands, categories and/or products is another great way to promote more spending on your site. Sales of this nature are great to send to your entire email distribution list or promote directly right on your site, with banners and ads.
Examples:
Order History based discounts
Get this discount because you purchased another item some time ago.
This is a great promotion to offer your existing customer base, giving them incentive to return to your site and purchase again (also a great time to ask them to leave a review on the product(s) they purchased on previous visit(s).
An example to explore:
A customer has purchased a particular brand and model coffee maker (which came with 100 bamboo filters) 3 to 6 months ago – and now, based on their order history they will automatically receive 10% off any of the compatible filters in your store, but 15% off the bamboo filters.
Gift with Purchase
Customers love a free gift! It goes without saying that the “Gift with Purchase” promotion goes a long way. Merchants may choose to make their free gift offering simple and basic, like:
Or perhaps you’d like to make it a better gift and with just a few more hooks, such as:
Free Shipping
Perhaps this promo is the best starter promo merchants have in their toolkit- Free Shipping makes customers feel special because they aren’t left to wonder how much shipping is going to cost them while they shop. The savvy merchant will need to make sure shipping costs can be covered, of course, before making this great offer by ensuring their profit margin can handle such a promo. They may choose to only offer free shipping for certain products in their catalog, or perhaps offer shipping only after a specified cart total is reached. Whichever way you do it, your customers will love to load up their carts and spend, spend, spend when they know shipping is free!
Here are a few examples:
Go the Extra Mile
The promotion options with MSx 9.3 are nearly endless. But you can take it even further by tying a creative, targeted discount, to deeper intelligence about your customers.
Take that BOGO for example and imagine that now you can automatically email that offer to your best customers who purchase frequently and spend the most per purchase of all your customers. Or, imagine you could offer a specific product discount to customers that you know used to spend money on that product in your store, but have not done so in over six months. With partner services like Windsor Circle or Listrak, you can combine creative promotions with deeper intelligence to create powerful email campaigns.
Effective June 1, 2012, the FedEx Direct API and FedEx Ship Manager Direct will be shut down. Please take a look at the versions of AspDotNetStorefront ML and MSx that are impacted below and the recommended steps to minimize interruption to your business.
• ML 8.0.1.2 or earlier. (Not ML 8.0.1.3 and on.)
• MSx 9.0.1.3 or earlier.( Not MSx 9.1.0.0 and on.)
1) Have a developer modify your cart to use the newer Fedex API. You can find qualified development partners here.
2) Upgrade to a newer version of AspDotNetStorefront. Need help with your upgrade? Take a look at our new Upgrade Service.
Today we have officially released MSx 9.3. Read all about the cool new features and check out the release notes here.
MSx 9.3 brings some exciting new features to help convert your browsers into buyers.
If you attended WebiMax’s recent webinar, you heard Michael share the essential strategies that help online retailers like yourself not only survive, but thrive – even as Google continually changes the playing field.
How do online retailers prepare for the impact of Google’s latest changes to SEO?
How can you be sure that your pages and your products will still be seen as Google’s vision for SERPs continually changes?
We felt like we all could benefit from hearing even more from Michael, so AspDotNetStorefront’s Jon Humberstone sat down with Michael to dive even deeper into three of Michael’s biggest areas of focus for SEO success: Freshness, Duplication, & Usefulness.
Here are some excerpts of what Michael had to say in his exclusive interview with AspDotNetStorefront. You can read the full interview transcript here.
Today’s Hot Seat Merchant: Portland Compressor
Click here to open the Hot Seat Product Page in a new window.
We are giving away an iPad twice a week. Play along every Monday and Thursday for more chances to win.
How to Play:
Picture this: You’re a 17 year old teenager who has just been recruited to paint Grandma’s garden fence over Spring Break Vacation and you have OTHER plans. But you can’t let your granny paint in the 104 degree Phoenix sun at her age! You’ll do it but you need to find the right tool to get it done right and get is done fast. You need a Graco TrueCoat Pro Cordless, Airless Paint Sprayer and fast!
You have just landed on the page and what do you see? Are you immediately engaged?
Submit your ONE BEST suggestion using the comments below. If the Hot Seat Merchant thinks it’s the best, you’ll win an iPad!
This challenge ends Tuesday, May 1st at 5 PM (PST).
Want Your Page Reviewed?
Crowd-sourced Review: Apply to be a Hot Seat Merchant and get feedback from shoppers, merchants and developers. Click here
Expert-level Review: Get another perspective with an expert product page review directly from AspDotNetStorefront. Click here
Today’s Hot Seat Merchant: Vaughan Safety
Click here to open the Hot Seat Product Page in a new window.
We are giving away an iPad twice a week. Play along every Monday and Thursday for more chances to win.
How to Play:
Picture this: You’re managing a division of the Department of Transportation and recently began working on some desperatley needed road work in the middle of downtown. The traffic is so bad during the day that much of the work must be done during the night hours. You know how important it is to increase the visibility of vehicles, machinery and processes going on in the streets. You need to get some Revolving Bullseye Beacon Lights, stat!
You have just landed on the page and what do you see? Are you immediately engaged?
Submit your ONE BEST suggestion using the comments below. If the Hot Seat Merchant thinks it’s the best, you’ll win an iPad!
This challenge ends Friday, April 27th at 5 PM (PST).
Want Your Page Reviewed?
Crowd-sourced Review: Apply to be a Hot Seat Merchant and get feedback from shoppers, merchants and developers. Click here
Expert-level Review: Get another perspective with an expert product page review directly from AspDotNetStorefront. Click here