OuterBox’s eCommerce Blog
11 eCommerce Website Rules
As eCommerce progresses and grows into one of the largest mediums for selling products, web designers are faced with creating ideas on producing higher quality eCommerce websites. The question lies between the effectiveness of witty ideas or clean-cut standard eCommerce development. When taking a look at some of the most effective eCommerce website today, it seems the second has established itself as the winner.
Usability is key in for a successful eCommerce website when a visitor already “knows” how to use your website. There are certain elements, in certain places, that visitors look for, utilize and expect that will always be available.
Following the guidelines below will help your eCommerce website sell at a higher conversion rate and give you the calls of action needed to be successful.
Using a top or standard side navigation will give the best results. Even though most people would think this is true, not everyone decided to design this way.
#2: Search – Let Them Find It Easily
When a user is on your site don’t make them work too hard. If they want to find something, be sure a search box is always available. Also, add a link to “advanced” or “detailed” search. A basic search bar doesn’t always bring up everything needed. Allow them to search by price range, category and any other specifications that may be relevant to your industry
#3:Cart Preview – What’s In It?
Be sure to make your cart preview visible from all pages of the website. No one wants to click “view cart” every time they forget what’s been added already or what their total is.
#4:Calls To Action – Make Them Visible
Whether it be your “Add to Cart” button or Phone Number (or both), but sure they stand out. Direct people what to do and how to complete their transaction.
#5:Breadcrumbs – Tell Them Where They Are
It’s much easier for a visitor to navigate when they know where they’re at.
#6:Product Photos – Let Them Zoom!
Usually it’s tough to see the details in product photos. Utilize different zoom features and make the details pop. You know what they say… a photo is worth a 1000 words. Spend the time, and money if necessary, to get photos that will sell.
#7:Payment Options – Offer them!
Having multiple payment options makes a huge difference! Always have an integrated merchant account, such as Authorize.net, but also offer PayPal and Google Checkout. When offering PayPal as an option we’ve seen sales jump by 40% in a month.
#8:Our Price vs. List Price
Be sure to show the difference between your prices and the list price. Hopefully your prices are low (important online) and it’ll give the visitor more incentive to buy from you.
#9: Shipping – Offer Flat Rate ( & Free If Possible)
Offering flat rate shipping makes the checkout process a bit easier and you’ll find you’ll convert better as well. If you have set prices for shipping (ex. $7.99 for orders under $50) you can then show the shipping price on the cart page without the user having to enter in their zip code! The less information someone needs to provide in order to get all of their order details the better. Also, if you can offer free shipping, even if this means adding a bit of cost into the products, this can often increase sales dramatically.
#10:Tabs for Product Details
When listings features, specifications, reviews, additional photos, etc. on a product details page look into using a tab system. A remember, use some JavaScript and don’t make the page refresh each time!
#11: Sales & Promotions
It might seem basic but we’ve seen time and time again sites jump 100% + in sales by running a simple promotion. Whether it’s free shipping, a discount code or basic spring sale, always be running some type of promotion. This brings in the “buy it now” factor and gets users to pull out the plastic!
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Top Ten Reasons why Nick knows you need a new website:
1. Your website is hosted with GoDaddy. Just because it’s free, doesn’t mean it’s worth the trade for pop-ups and nasty ad banners to welcome your visitors.
2. Your product pages display, “coming soon” and there is a flashing “road work” sign in the middle of the page. What are you doing!?! That icon is at least 7 years old!
3. Background music is playing. Sorry, music is for elevators and unless your name is Brian Adams, nobody wants to hear your music.
4. “Last Updated March 2001″
5. Your checkout page opens up in five separate windows. Is this even safe?
6. You have a links page with URL’s to all of your competitors. Why are you advertising for them!?!
7. There is a “counter” on the bottom left of all your pages, letting the visitor know they are the 13th person to view your site since 2004.
8. A starburst graphic is claiming that the Webmaster, who built your site in 1997, won an award. Award for what? Please do them a favor and save them the from the embarrassment of their first HTML project..ever
9. There is a disclaimer at the footer that says “Designed for Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 6.x” Why? You’re loosing over 40% of potential visitors because they’re using a different web browser.
10. Your contact email address is Jeff2285370923857134593485793@yahoo.com.
If you made it through without your website meeting any of these characteristics on the list, Congratulations! But, you’ll still need a new website in the next 2-3 years.
For the unfortunate, please contact us. We’re here to help!
Plane Crash Icon on News
Found on local news station in Cleveland, Ohio. I’m not sure where they found this plane crash icon, but either someone needs to upgrade their version of paint or stop using gif’s from the 90′s.
Moonlight Kayaking Ad
Click for the larger version. Found at a camping resort in Ohio. The first sentence in the middle is missing a question mark and I do not believe the “22th” is correct…
Handicap Sign with Gun
Found inside a gun range. Not sure of the location, this one was taken off of a reality TV show.
Tissue Logo – Really?
I’m not too sure who designed this. I guess a 1st grader won the contest.
Found in a grocery store in TN.
Google is the New Word of Mouth
When designing websites and talking marketing with certain clients or prospects, often they will mention “Word of mouth is the only advertising we do.” This may be in response to the question, “Are you interested in search engine marketing”, “Do rankings matter to you” or “What is your general business marketing strategy”.
We all know that word of mouth works and a referral is much more beneficial than someone finding you in the Yellow Pages (any one use that anymore?). Word of mouth converts because it is a direct referral and someone saying, “This company is good”. So, what if you can only grow your business to a certain point on word of mouth referrals? This strategy may hit a pinnacle at some point and you’ll need to look into other advertising methods to continue on-going growth. What we need to think is “Who else could refer potential customers to me?” At this point you may think, “Let’s hire another salesman”… and guess what, I’ve got the best salesman you could ever ask for.
His (maybe her?) name is Google. If someone is looking for a Home Builder, for example, they may go to Google and search “Home Builder Cleveland Ohio”. You’ll get results on the left hand side (Google picks these) and results on the right, called “Sponsored Listings”. What we’re focusing on are the listings on the left hand side, and we should focus on them considering nearly 80% of people visit those listings only.
The websites that appear on the left hand side of Google are the sites that Google feels are best. You cannot pay to be there and you cannot beg to be there (I’ve seen people try). The only way for Google to list your website is for your website to have the qualities that Google is looking for. These qualities, from a basic standpoint include:
- Content relevant to your business and the keywords related to your business
- A decent amount of content (1 paragraph or a few pages usually won’t cut it)
- Other websites linking to yours
- A website that is built properly and coded correctly
Of course there is more that goes into search engine optimization, but right now we’re dealing with why it’s important, not how to make it happen.
OK. Why does this matter?
If you haven’t put together the title of this post yet and figured out why ranking in Google is important, let me tell you. Google is your new salesman. The new guy saying, “You need someone? I know the perfect person!”. All Google does is refer new potential customers and clients to your website, 24 hours a day. We’ve built our business on it and it works. We have clients all the time saying, “We found you at the top of the search engines” and they trust us because Google has referred them. No one wants to work with a company that is not trusted and this is why PPC (pay-per-click) and sponsored listings can only take you so far. Not everyone wants to chose a company based on an ad. They want a referral and Google will provide it.
Google has a big mouth and is screaming from the rooftop. Is it yelling your name?
Internal Link Building for eCommerce Websites
When most people think of link building, they think of other websites linking to theirs. An important part of link building, whether you have an eCommerce website or informational website, is internal link building. The idea of internal link building is linking from one page to another within your own website. Doing this properly can have a significant impact on your rankings. We take many of these practices into consideration when designing an eCommerce website.
The basics of internal link building is linking pages of specific topics to other pages with relevant content. This allows the search engines to realize your topics, group your pages and rank them appropriately. Developing an effective internal linking strategy is something that must be well planned and thought out. You do not simply want to link every keyword to the page that has to do with the specific word. Some of the tips below will help you to create an internal linking strategy, especially for an eCommerce website.
Now remember, external link building is still a big part of SEO and internal link building is not to take the place of links from outside websites. The combination of internal linking and external linking will improve your rankings and boost your website rankings.
- Create brand landing pages – An easy way of link to multiple category, specifically with brand keywords in the links, is to create a brand landing page. Often this page will offer a general description of the brand, what products they offer and then link to all of the appropriate categories / products on your website that contain products by the specific brand.
- Related Items – When a visitor is on a product details page you should also be displaying related products. This will allow the search engines to index your products more easily and will also create an internal linking structure.
- View Products from This Brand Also – When on a details pages, let’s say for a pair of running shoes, you might want to offer your visitor other suggestions via a text link. Example: “Running shoes by Nike”. You could list out the other brands you offer for similar products. This is like related items, but more so “Related Brands”.
- Featured Items – When viewing your homepage, a category page or just about any page on your site you should be displaying featured items somewhere. Put the most searched for and most popular products in these areas. Remember, even if you’re displaying images of your products, be sure you have anchor text (text links) to the product as well that includes keywords.
- Create a Blog – As simple as this sounds, most website owners do not want to take the time to do it. Believe me, we understand, it’s time consuming… but it helps. If you blog about a certain product or about a topic, you can then link to those products or pages from your blog post.
- The easiest way to create internal links is to look at where you have content and link from your keywords to your landing pages. Take into consideration a visitor on your website when doing this and make sure it’s not annoying. From a visitors standpoint it’s helpful and easier to navigation when keywords are linked appropriately to the page of interest. This way a user can navigation directly from the text they are reading instead of having to try and find the link to that subject within your main navigation.
To Pay or Not To Pay (Per Click)
These days we all need to find ways to market our business and website in a more effective way. We could all use a few thousand more visitors a month and not paying for each of those would be great! As you may or may not know, the sponsored listing on Google and Yahoo are “pay-per-click” ads. This means each time someone visits your website from your sponsored listing, you’ll pay for it. The price can range form .10 cents to $5.00 plus. So, let’s say you’re paying$1.00 a click, you’ll spend around $1,000 a month for 1,000 visits. Yep, that can get expensive.
So, what’s an alternative? Organic search engine optimization (SEO) is a good place to start. The goal of SEO is to bring your site to the top of the search engines for the keywords that most relate to your business and will sell your product or service. Whether a sale is the end goal or generating a lead, driving traffic to your website through the search engines is probably the best method of advertising.
Another advantage of SEO over PPC (pay-per-click) is the long term value. When SEO is performed on your website you’ll grow your traffic and continue to on-going. Also, the company performing your SEO should be making updates to your website that will also improve the visitors experience. The goal is SEO is to evaluate your website not only from a search engines perspective, but from a users. Remember, traffic is great, but converting the traffic is even better.
Now, don’t take this the wrong way. PPC is still value and is a great way to advertise! If the budget is low, SEO may be a better way to go and you should get more traffic for the price, depending on your industry. To get an idea of how much you may pay for each click, visit https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox . This tool will allow you to get a better idea of the traffic you may be able to receive for certain keywords as well.
Link Popularity Importance for Search Engine Rankings
As our company begins working with new clients on search engine optimization (SEO), many clients often wonder what strategies are used in optimization of a website and how link popularity comes into play. Many different tasks and strategies are used, while developing link popularity for the site is a major step in the process. Below we go over the basics and offer a few suggestions on how to begin link building.
How link popularity works – When another website links to your site, this gives you “link popularity”. Think of it as homecoming and you just got a vote (congrats!). The more votes you get, the more popular you are and one day you just might end up as homecoming king or queen, or in this case #1 in Google.
The thought process behind link popularity, is that someone would like to your website because you have valuable content or a quality product. The search engines look at this as a vote for your website. The more votes you have, the better your rankings should be.
All votes are not equal – The better the website that links to you, the more valuable this is to your website. Deciding whether or not a website will be a valuable link is not always easy. Websites with that deal with the same subject, or a subject that is similar, are usually best.
Trading links – It can be difficult to find websites that will link back to your website without you linking to them. Trading links can be beneficial, but making sure the website you’re trading with has a quality site is very important. Linking back to a website that Google has banned or does not give a good quality rating to can actually hurt your websites search engine rankings.
Blogging – Writing your own content, and content people actually WANT to read, will be a great help in receiving links to your website. Creating a blog and talking about topics in your industry is very powerful. You’ll find people reading and in-turn linking to your website.
Press Releases – Submitting your press release to a website such was www.prweb.com is a great way to build links and also “get the word out”. When writing a press release, be sure that the topic is one that is interesting. If you’re lucky, it may get picked up by a major news source. Also, be sure to optimize your press release and link to your website within it. This will give you the link boost you’re looking for. To add links within your press release usually costs more than a free press release. On PR Web the cost is $200 for a “Search Engine Optimized” Press Release.
