With consumer usage of smartphones continuing to skyrocket, it's past time for your brand to have a mobile presence, be it a mobile-optimized site, app or both. To help your efforts in generating sales from mobile devices, consider the following eight tips:
Amy Africa
If you have any sort of search engine optimization or pay-per-click program, chances are you've heard about the "new" Google Shopping. "New" is in quotes because it's not really new — it's just different. To improve the shopping experience on Google (translation: to help Google make more money), Google Product Search recently transitioned into a comparison shopping engine (think PriceGrabber or NexTag) based on product listing ads (PLAs) and will now be known as Google Shopping. Here are 14 things you should know about Google Shopping and how you can use it to improve your customer acquisition program:
Don't make the user confirm. If you do, you'll lose more than 40 percent to 60 percent of your sign-ups on average, sometimes more depending on your category and/or your target demographics.
Mobile users will give you a lot of leeway on things like design and user interface. What they don’t have tolerance for? Slower-than-death websites. Users expect your mobile site to load fast — within just a few seconds — which means that you’ll likely need to keep your page weights low.
In the July/August issue of Retail Online Integration, I discussed how important merchandising, strong navigation, instigated chat and customer reviews will be to achieving online selling success this holiday season. Here are five more things you should consider doing with your e-commerce site before it's too late.
Here's a checklist of some of the most important things you should do with your website to get ready for the upcoming holiday season
Recently Google announced the launch of +1 (yes, plus one, a name even more unfortunate than iPad), its version of the Facebook "Like" button. Google says +1 is shorthand for "this is pretty cool" or "you should check this out," and that it's designed to help you "share recommendations with the world — right in Google's search results."
There's been a lot of hype about mobile so far this year. It seems that everyone's talking about it, but very few are doing it. And sadly, the majority of those who are doing it aren't doing a very good job.
Google unveiled its newest search enhancement, Google Instant Previews (GIP), in November. Denoted by a small magnifying glass to the right of a search listing, GIP allows searchers to look at a mini version (also called a snippet) of a specific web page before they commit to clicking on it. Is this a game changer? Not exactly, but it certainly does make things interesting.
Sure, you're entrenched in the holiday season by now, making sure your website is up to date with the most current inventory and that every one of your customers is happy and well served. But that doesn't mean it's time to rest on your laurels. In fact, the holiday season is a great time to test new web attributes and programs that may improve your shoppers' experiences, and ultimately bring you more sales.
It's Christmas in July! Or it better be if you plan to have your e-commerce website optimized for the first holiday season since the great recession theoretically ended. Here are 12 tactics to implement now if you want to maximize your products' slice of Santa's workshop budget.1. Add More Email Sign-UpsDuring the holidays, the number…
Q: I hired a company to recast my existing website into an e-commerce site. I've spent the last six months begging, pleading and nagging them to finish. Now they won't even return my calls. Any suggestions about avoid it next time?
There are two things that almost every marketer doing business online is obsessed with these days: social media and conversion. And that's not in reference to social media's conversion/return on investment, because really, why be obsessed with something that's typically negative or flat in terms of contribution? So in reality, the obsession should be all about website conversion, compensation and measuring what matters. Here are six surefire tips to help you measure site conversion:
You’re too old-school. Why don’t you retire already?” Ahhh … another day, another client meeting. Another fresh-faced punk who thinks he’s a social media expert because he has accounts on Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Twitter — and his ever-so-charming personality on about 50 online dating sites.
The Internet isn’t pink, and it’s certainly not gray. It’s pure black and white. Users want Web sites to be like grocery stores: It doesn’t matter which supermarket you go to in the U.S. — whether it’s a Piggly Wiggly in South Carolina, Safeway in Seattle or Shop ’n Save in Maine — you know milk will be near the eggs, flour close to the sugar and the bananas in the vicinity of the apples. You don’t expect ice cream in the dog food aisle or pickles sandwiched between puppy chow and cat litter. A typical grocery store is full of absolutes. Same
