Tips

Five Tips for a Merry Ecommerce Season

1. Photo Quality — High-Quality, Background, Lighting, Composition

  • Professional-Quality Photos sell! Do not use quick shots from your camera phone.

2. Detailed Product Descriptions — Engaging, Interesting, Complete

  • Truly describe your product. Don’t make them guess. Full descriptions sell.

3. Shipping – Upfront, Transparent, Full Disclosure

  • This is a deal breaker/maker for many. Don’t make your shopper login to find the cost. Price as low as possible. Free Shipping Sells.

4. Discounts and Specials – We all like a bargain

  • Introductory prices, close outs, use your imagination

5. Know Your Customer – This honestly should not have to be on this list, but is too important to omit.

  • New, Returning, Gender, Age, as well as you can ascertain.

Bonus: Tips for Empowering your Thank You page

Branding With Every Email – Get Your Email Delivered – Professional Presentation

" src="https://www.webwisedesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/you-email.gif" alt="Domain email" width="246" height="80" />I wrote here about using domain mail over five years ago. With the number of people not taking advantage of one of the simplest means of branding available, I believe the subject deserves another go round. I am talking about those who are not using their domain email accounts when sending or replying to business email. Domain email is simply an email account using a name of your choice, e.g., or .

Here are just three of many reasons it is important to use domain mail.

  • Branding
  • Deliverability
  • Professional Presentation

Branding 

In businesses and on websites of all kinds, too often you will see contact email such as , (now outlook.com), , or something similar. Those same addresses get used routinely in emails to clients, prospects, and co-workers. Instead of those personal addresses, your prospects, clients, vendors, and others should be seeing email from , , , , , or .  EVERY email sent from and replied to your business should be reminding your prospects, clients and vendors of your brand. Using domain mail is the least expensive branding tool you can implement, and you are branding with every email you send.

Deliverability

If your email doesn’t get delivered and opened, you are wasting your time writing and sending it. Spam has become ubiquitous, and your prospects and clients may hesitate to open an email from a , , or address. Deliverability can be critical when you are sending a proposal or answering a specific request. Domain mail addresses are not as prone to be caught in spam filters as the “other” @ addresses I have been mentioning. Your recipients will, at a glance, know the email is coming from your business if you use your domain mail account.  Get every email you send delivered and opened.

Professional Presentation 

In other manners of communication, i.e., phone, letters, faxes, and face-to-face, nearly everyone does their best to present themselves and their business professionally. You would be surprised at the number of people who spend thousands of dollars on traditional marketing materials, their web sites and nicely done email campaigns, yet diminish their value by including an inappropriate email address. Using your domain email will present you professionally as many times as you send an email. Why wouldn’t you want to do that with every email you send?

Okay, let’s address the two most common excuses for not using domain mail. The first is, “I don’t want to check two or more email accounts.” With today’s email programs that easily check more than one account at a time (I check over a dozen at a time), that is not a very good reason to miss out on branding with every email. If you honestly feel you can only check one email account, then your email provider can forward as many accounts as you like to just one account. Of course, that account should be a domain mail account.   The second reason is, “I like Gmail, and I use .” I will grant that doing this is better than using personal non-domain email accounts. It still doesn’t give you the branding or level of professional presentation that is afforded by using domain mail. If you feel you can’t live without Gmail, then use Google Apps for Business, which included Gmail that uses your domain mail. Your mail will get sent from and to , but you will still have all the advantages of Gmail’s web-based interface. Google charges $5/user/month or $50/user/year.

Start using your domain mail for every email you send today!

P.S. If you are a client of ours and are not using your domain mail, call or email us and we will be happy to help you get started.

Is your community Web site Economic Development friendly?

Last night I had the opportunity to give a brief talk to the GCEDC – Grant County (Wisconsin) Economic Development Corporation monthly meeting in downtown Livingston, WI. I gave them a checklist to help them make sure their community web sites are Economic Development friendly. As you may suspect, this checklist can be applied to community and economic development sites anywhere. In fact, many of the items should be implemented on every web site.  Obviously, we talked in more detail about most of the items.

That said, in addition to the nice dinner served by Rebel’s Northern Exposure restaurant, and the gracious hospitality of our Livingston hosts and that of Ron Brisbois, Executive Director,  and John Murphy, President of GCEDC, here are the questions I posed last night:

Site Checklist:

  1. Is Economic Development prominently displayed in the navigation?
  2. Do you have text on the home page about Economic Development in your community?
    1. Specifically a paragraph with search terms that Economic Development professionals, business owners, job seekers, and relocating workers would use to find information.
  3. Are there links in that text that take visitors to the appropriate pages on your site?
  4. Does your Economic Development area include community profile information such as:
    • Transportation
    • Utilities
    • Emergency and Medical Services
    • Education/Employee Training
    • Major Employers
    • Taxes
    • Area Labor Force Information
    • Available buildings, sites, businesses
    • Housing Information
    • Community Contacts
    • Business & Industry Contact Information
  5. Is ALL of the information current?
  6. Have two people proofread your information for errors and accuracy?
  7. Do your Economic Development pages have the appropriate Title and META Description words?
  8. Do you have contact information on every page (in the footer) that interested parties will have in front of them after they print ANY of your pages?
  9. Do you have a Google (or other mapping service) Map/Directions page?
  10. Have you tried searching Google using the terms you believe prospects would use to find a community such as yours, when searching to locate a new/existing business, or  for personally relocating? If so, how did you do?

I also spoke briefly about using AdWords for Economic Development and gave them this very short list of AdWords Advantages:

  • Reach people who self-qualify themselves
  • Deliver them to the exact landing page that has content relevant to their search
  • Fully control your ad budget – Chose daily budget; change or stop it in seconds
  • See your ads on Google within minutes of creating them
  • Very flexible, pause, start, change, create ads in seconds or minutes

Quick tips that will get you results.

Tips for Empowering your Thank You page

Every point of contact with a customer or prospect is an opportunity to provide better customer service, and to plant the seeds for a sale.  Your Thank You pages should confer your thanks, but it also can offer customers and visitors to your site something they may not have noticed, and that may be of interest to them.

Most of us don’t fully utilize the Thank You pages that get displayed after purchases, or when an inquiry is made via a form.  Too often, those pages, simply say “Thank You” or “Thank You for your order” or something like, “Your request is being processed. We’ll get back to you soon.”

Those types of pages are better than nothing, but they are missed opportunities. So, here are some tips for empowering your Thank You pages.

If you offer online shopping:

  1. Make the words Thank You bigger than the other text. While you are at it, tell them you appreciate their business
  2. Be sure to prominently display your Toll-Free phone number. If you don’t have a Toll-Free number, you are not serious about wanting customers.
  3. Have a link to the Customer Account login page.
  4. Display the special of the day, week, or month.
  5. Display at least two items, saying, “People who bought this also bought these items:”
  6. Have a link to your “Specials” or other RSS feeds
  7. Have links to your Shipping & Returns pages.
  8. Make sure your Thank You page has <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>  in the header,  so you don’t mess up your analytics. The only time anyone should see your Thank You page is after they place an order or fill out another form.
  9. Use  Adwords conversion tracking on your Thank You page. If you are not using Google AdWords, you should be.

If you don’t offer online shopping, you likely have a Contact, Request Info, or Sign Up form. Here are some tips for you.

  1. Make the words Thank You bigger than the other text. While you are at it, tell them you appreciate the time they gave you.
  2. Be sure to prominently display your Toll-Free phone number. If you don’t have a Toll-Free number, you are not serious about wanting customers.
  3. Prominently display an email address they can use if they want to contact you later instead of having to use your form again.
  4. Display and have a link to a daily, weekly, or monthly feature or  News (RSS) Feed.
  5. Make sure your Thank You page has <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>  in the header, so  you don’t mess up your analytics. The only time anyone should see your Thank You page is after they  fill out a form.
  6. If you are using Google AdWords, use conversion tracking on your Thank You page.

Use as few or as many of these tips that are appropriate for your site. As with any page, I am not suggesting a bunch of clutter. Use some thought as to positioning, layout and use of white space.

Turn that Thank You page into a customer service and sales opportunity!

Please add your own tips or thoughts by leaving a comment.

Home Page – Simple as One, Two, Three

Simple as One, Two, Three? Well, almost. The basic concept of a home page really should be that simple. That said, it takes work to make something worthwhile and simple.

Whether visitors realize it or not, they are asking themselves three things when they land on your home page. Here is what they are asking, and what you can do.

  1. Am I in the right place? You have only seconds to get a visitor’s attention. Communicate clearly (write simply), be careful of using industry jargon that your visitor may not understand (or may make their eyes cloud over). Use visuals. Don’t clutter.
  2. Do I believe these people? Build confidence. Do you look credible? Are you real people? Are these items easy-to-find: phone number, email address, address, photos of your business and/or staff?
  3. Where do I go now? Can I buy something, learn something, look at photos, leave a comment, contact you?

If you do your job well enough that visitors decide to click to other pages, give them consistent page design, with clear navigation, and page layout that puts things where your visitors expect to find them.

There you have it. Three simple steps to a quality home page.