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Success Online
Help to make your internet business successful
Being Able To Complete E-Commerce Transactions Is Vital
Feb 25th
If you own an e-commerce type of internet business, one thing you definitely want to make sure of is that there are as few barriers as possible between a visitor to your web site becoming a customer.
Report Shows Task Completion Issues
A report issued recently by iPerceptions on the retail/e-commerce industry for the fourth quarter of 2010 indicates that e-tailers need to start paying closer attention to the ability of users to complete tasks on their web sites or risk losing opportunities to convert prospects into sales.
The Numbers Are In – And They Don’t Look Good
A full forty percent of people visiting a site who fully intended making a purchase were unable to complete their intended task. This makes for particularly bad reading in view of the fact that the fourth quarter of every year is the time when online retailers usually see a huge surge in traffic volume, more often than not the highest volumes of the year.
While it’s reasonable for web sites to concentrate most of their efforts on educating users for most of the year, conversions must be the primary objective during the busy fourth quarter shopping season, when most consumers aren’t in a very forgiving mood.
Retailers Must Think Long-Term
Regardless of the time of year or during which quarter an online transaction is being performed, one of the things that can kill customer loyalty and ruin the chance of repeat sales is the inability of a user to complete a desired transaction.
Also, support is another area of concern for consumers and one that needs to be addressed, so that, should a consumer be unable to complete a transaction and look to customer support for help, they should not be disappointed or that may well be the last time they’ll visit that particular web site.
Problem Areas To Be Examined
While it’s not unusual for visitors to drop out somewhere along the way through the sales funnel due to dissatisfaction or inability to complete a phase of the process, when the percentage rates are high, then that is cause for concern.
Of those who failed to complete the buying process, 39 percent weren’t able to find the product they wanted, while in 33 percent of cases the desired product wasn’t available.
8 percent cited lack of product information as the reason for them abandoning their shopping cart, while 4 percent hit a technical snag. The next most common cause for incomplete tasks was a concern over a site’s stated shipping policy, including shipping costs, return policy, etc.
Preparation And Testing Are The Keys
These problems should be addressed as soon as possible to avoid ongoing issues with purchase completion. In the case of site technical issues, stringent and regular testing of all customer-facing interfaces is required all the way through to the final checkout phase. All products should be correctly labeled and carry adequate descriptions, as well as be stocked in sufficient numbers to ensure completion of the product fulfillment phase.
Your goal, as an e-commerce internet business owner, should be to achieve the highest conversion rate possible, so removing all obstacles to achieving that goal should be your highest priority.
A UK internet business consultant can provide the help and guidance you need to set your site up to achieve maximum conversion rates, so contact one as soon as possible to avoid losing prospective customers.
Maximise Impact By Integrating Your Testing And Analytics
Feb 7th
We’ve discussed the importance of testing and analytics previously in separate articles in relation to your internet business, but integrating the two is an important next step, which we’ll cover here.
Testing And Analytics Are A Natural Fit
Combining testing with analytics is a natural extension of just performing one or the other. Testing helps improve your site while analytics examines user behaviour and interactions and helps quantify the success or otherwise of changes made. Integrating the two provides companies with an expanded view of overall testing.
Another advantage of combining the two is that not only will your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) efforts be improved but your understanding of user behaviour will also deepen.
Information Flows Are The Answer
If you already have a measurement tool in place, it’s then just a matter of setting up information flows, which will allow testing to be evaluated across multiple segments not available through observing web site behaviour alone.
Companies are often disappointed when changes made to their web sites don’t result in dramatic improvements. The main reason is that companies fail to define what success means to them in terms of the results of their testing.
Define What Success Means To You
Success can be measured in various ways:
- Increased revenue
- Increased visitor interaction
- Reduction in site errors leading to greater visitor satisfaction
- Ability to change your site’s appearance without negatively impacting results
On the other hand, where testing is concerned, there’s really no such thing as failure – only learning opportunities. For instance, if you place an image on your site that doesn’t cause conversions to increase, you may have learned that either the image itself isn’t engaging your visitors, or it may just need re-positioning to get the results you’re looking for.
Integrating Testing And Analytics
Whatever the systems you have in place, it’s a matter of exchanging data gathered from testing, which can be done either offline in batch mode or in real time.
One of the most important data items to be passed is a test identifier to enable analysis at the visitor and/or transaction level for each test run. The deeper you can dig into your test data via your analytics, the better, so loading metadata would be ideal. But, if your system’s not currently set up to handle that level of testing, bear this in mind for future use as you upgrade your analytics systems.
Integrating your testing and measurement systems can help quantify your test results and allow you to determine the impact of your testing on your business’s performance.
Testing and analysing the results of your testing are vital to the future success of your internet business. For assistance with your testing and analytics, contact a UK internet business consultant, who will show you how to benefit fully from your testing and analytics.
Facebook Is Officially The Most Visited Web Site – Or Is It?
Feb 4th
We’ve discussed the importance of social media as it relates to your internet marketing many times in these columns and, hopefully, we’ve managed to impress upon you how important it is that your internet business has a presence on the various social media platforms, Facebook in particular. If not, this latest piece of news regarding Facebook should make you sit up and take notice.
Facebook Becomes Most Visited Site
A report from Experian Hitwise shows that Facebook has now moved into the top spot as the most visited web site in 2010 in the U.S., taking over from long-time leader, Google.
According to Hitwise, Facebook had become the leader in monthly traffic, over Google, back in March 2010, but this marks the first time the social networking behemoth has been recognised as the winner of the traffic race over the course of a year.
Fact Or Fiction?
But, is Facebook really the winner when all facets of web traffic are considered? What we’re referring to here is the fact that Google’s online empire is made up of many sites these days with Google itself ranking number 2 and Yahoo ranking number 5, so that the cumulative total of the traffic to all the sites within Google’s network resulted in a 9.85 percent share, making Google the winner overall. When taking into account the cumulative totals, this resulted in Facebook being ranked second with 8.93 percent, with Yahoo! and its related sites coming next with 8.12 percent.
However, of all the individual web pages, Facebook was the most visited, with Google.com in second place.
Is Google Its Own Worst Enemy?
The ironic thing in all this is that the number one search term for the year 2010 was Facebook, which means that a lot of the traffic supplied to Facebook came courtesy of its biggest rival, Google.
The results show that the 10 biggest sites on the internet attracted 33 percent of all traffic, an increase of 12 percent over the previous year. This means more traffic for the bigger sites and less for the small business owners.
Small Internet Businesses Benefit From The Big Boys
But, the important point in all this is that, regardless of whether search or social is the winner, the overall winner in all this is the small internet business owner, who benefits from both Facebook and Google and owes the success of his business, and, perhaps its very existence, to these two giants.
An UK internet marketing service can help you to set up your business to use both search and the social networks to boost the success of your business online.
Google Enhances Local UK Search With Nearby Shops
Jan 27th
If you are a UK internet business owner and you also run a brick and mortar retail store, you should be extremely excited about the recent introduction of the feature known as Nearby Shops into the UK.
A Boost For Both Online Shoppers And Merchants
Not only will online merchants benefit from this new feature, thanks to the increased visibility afforded their businesses through Google‘s global and local reach, but online shoppers will also benefit from increased awareness of the shopping options available to them in their vicinity.
Shoppers searching for products online using Google Products will be shown a map displaying shops that are nearby that sell the item or items entered in the search criteria, along with shops selling similar items.
The way it works is by you, the merchant, syncing up your account in Google Places (if you don’t have one, then obviously setting this up first is a pre-requisite) with the products you have listed in your Merchant Centre Account (again, this also needs to be created if not already there) by linking the two with the same URL, resulting in your shop being listed in the Nearby Shops results for a particular product search.
Local Is Going Global
Providing consumers with local information and options is becoming increasingly important for many of the bigger internet companies. A prime example is the fact that eBay decided to take the plunge into the local arena, just before Google made its move into local, through its purchase of the local shopping site, Milo. EBay’s new tool is called GiftsNearby, which combines its product inventory tool with the Milo software tool to provide searchers with local results.
Competition For Local Supremacy Is Increasing Dramatically
Competition in the local sector is growing more fierce as consumers’ preference for local search and results increases and the competition is only expected to intensify in 2011.
To that end Google has made dramatic improvements to its tools with a view to refining its local search capability. The company acquired Blue Dot to add mobile product inventory to its Product Search tool, which it further enhanced with the addition of two new search tools, Popular Products, which lists products by search volume, and Aisles, which sorts products into sub-categories.
The online search, offline purchasing market is huge, and, if your internet business isn’t set up yet to take advantage of this burgeoning market, contact a UK internet business consultant who can assist you with your local search efforts.
Five Trends That Every Business Should Follow in 2011
Jan 20th
Today we start by looking at looking at 5 internet business trends that are set to have particular significance in the upcoming year.
1. Security
Security is an everyday concern, and 2011 will be no different. This year, it’s predicted that mobile will be a major target, thanks to its startling growth coupled with the inherent fragility of cellular infrastructure and the slowness in implementing encryption strategies.
These threats should be taken very seriously and measures implemented to combat them as soon as possible, making sure users realise they and their security are your number one priority.
2. Mobile
2010 was undoubtedly the Year Of The Mobile Device with users increasingly turning to their mobile phones for their online activities. And the move to mobile will only increase during 2011, so setting up a mobile presence is vital for any online business, no matter how small that may be, be it just having a mobile version of your site, a mobile app or simply advertising.
3. Digital Couponing
Groupon is one of the fastest growing sites on the internet, but offering online coupons isn’t limited to Groupon, with local newspapers and radio stations getting in on the action and small web sites partnering with local businesses to offer deals.
Of course, offering coupons doesn’t mean you need to give everything away; use them as an up-sell tool or as an incentive for spending a specified amount.
Whatever the strategy you use, coupons should be a part of your marketing mix going forward.
4. Search Remains Universal
While not grabbing the headlines like mobile, search remains a massively important feature at all levels, from Google to site-specific search. It’s important for every web site to provide a search option – look at Twitter and Facebook and see how even they provide a search bar. If it’s important to them, it needs to be important to you, so optimise for various keywords and phrases and make sure you’re in the search game.
5. Expanding Business Models
These days, it’s all about diversifying, and the same applies to online business. Look beyond your current offerings to see what kind of different yet complimentary products or services you can offer your customers to add value to their experience with your site.
These are the major trends you should look to incorporate into your internet business.
For help with any of these initiatives, a UK internet business coach can supply all the expertise you need.
