10 Ecommerce Tips and Tricks

By: Ben Halverson, Petdesheddingtools.com

1. Add another “Add to Cart’ button – Screen Resolutions, minimized windows, font size, and several other facts can cause your customers to scroll through product page and when they are ready to buy not have the quick “Add to Cart” button readily available. A great tip for this is to set your screen resolution to 800 x 600 or something similar and add a second “Add to Cart” button below the screen “fold.”

2. Product descriptions should be written as if you were shopping for the product in a store. For example, if you are search for a dog shedding control shampoo, you wouldn’t want to simply write features about the ingredients that the shampoo has. Not many people care about the ingredients vs. their need. Write bullets on how each ingredient will help “stop shedding” or “reduce pet shedding” or “controls pet shedding.”

3. Google Webmaster Tools – If you haven’t already verified your site with Google. Do it soon. Although most of the information may not mean much to marketers, there is enough information to make necessary tweaks based on what Google recognizes as potential issues or areas needing help.

4. Don’t get caught up in reading the Google Toolbar’s indicator of Page Rank. Many ecommerce experts have done research on this tool to know that it doesn’t update often and some have even narrowed it to a quarterly update. Spend more time building quality, relevant inbound links to your site; this is what will help you score big with your page rank.

5. Generic Images are a no no – When you walk into a store to buy a piece of merchandise, you hold it, you size it up and you determine if it’s the right price. If someone looks at your product, realizes it’s a generic image that only partially represents your product, you are not giving your customer what they need to determine their need for purchase. Real images that give as much quality detail as possible will only increase conversions. We have all heard a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, on the web, it could be worth $1000 dollars…in sales

6. Still Waiting….Good by – Test your website load speed. There are numerous free tools on the web that determine how fast your page will load when someone stops by. Keep in mind that this will be determined based on the internet speed connection of your customer but for those with a fast connection expect a fast loading page. You can find out what types of connections your customers have in your Google Analytics. If your load speed is slower than normal, the patience of a customer may run out and turn to the next site on the list. A good page load speed is anywhere from 3 – 5 seconds with a typical cable/DSL connection.

7. Short, Sweet and Descriptive – When writing your product descriptions, know your audience. Are they going to read through a paragraph of text to determine if its what they want? Try testing bullet descriptions, its quick, to the point, and often just as descriptive as a paragraph description

8. What time is it? – When you set up your Google Adwords accounts, pay special attention to when the ads will run. If you are a BtoC advertiser that has products that many cannot shop during work hours, try testing lunch times, after hours, before work. This may reduce unnecessary browsing clicks from those who can’t make a purchase until they are not on the clock.

9. OMG, IDU – Oh my Gosh, I don’t understand! Exactly. When writing content for pages, articles and products don’t abbreviate, use acronyms or slang. First, your customers will surely misinterpret and the search engines will definitely have a hard time figuring out what you are trying to sell. Write out everything, it will help your customers, help your site with the search engines, and give your overall credibility.

10. Home Page vs. Product Page – Customers searching for products are getting better and better at providing targeted searches. What that means is homepages become less of a landing page and product pages become more of what your customers will land on. It’s important to spend just as much time building a good selling proposition on your product pages as it is for your home page.