Top 5 Tips For Running A Successful eCommerce Promotion Campaign

January 27th, 2010 by Guest Author 1 comment »

Kerrin Hardy writes a blog (kerrinhardy.com) for online store owners on the practicalities of ecommerce for small business. Join Kerrin for her free workshop ‘How to run a Valentine’s Day Promotion Campaign’ – a series of daily tasks to guide you through running a successful campaign this Valentine’s Day holiday.

It’s holiday season again already! Just when you thought you could put your feet up after the Christmas rush and New Year madness, you realise you should have already started your next promotion campaign. Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and according to the US Greeting Card Association, more than $16.9 billion is spent on the holiday. The average consumer spends almost $120 and as an online store owner you know you can’t afford to pass up your share of the spending this holiday.

So, you know you need a Valentine’s Day Campaign but don’t know where to start? I’d like to share my top 5 tips to running a successful ecommerce promotion campaign.

Don’t start without a campaign plan

An ecommerce promotion campaign generally has one or more of the following three objectives:

  • increase your number of customers, and/or
  • increase the number of orders placed by existing customers, and/or
  • increase the order value of orders placed by existing customers.

While many successful campaigns work on all three objectives, you may decide to focus your campaign on just one. Plan your campaign around what you want to achieve. For example, your campaign may consist of a discount for new account sign-ups or successful tell-a-friend purchases to focus on increasing your number of customers. Whereas a campaign such as buy 3 for the price of 2 or buy the matching set half price will focus on increasing the order value of orders placed by existing customers.

A campaign is more than an email

From your home page to your landing pages to your offline promotion materials to your customer service staff, your campaign message should be visible, have a consistent look and feel and a consistent message. If a potential customer clicks on an email as part of your promotion campaign, will they easily find the offer promised in the email?

A campaign needs to offer value to customers

Plan your campaign carefully to ensure that it offers value to customers as well as meeting your objectives without eating away your profit margin to an unacceptable level. Look at the possibility of minimum spends, as an example, before a customer qualifies for the product or shipping discount.

But don’t think that offering value always has to mean more and more discounts. Customers are looking for solutions and your value-add services may be just what they are looking for. Think about services such as gift-wrapping, PDF guides, low-cost set-up services, access to online help guides and so on.

Test, test and then test some more

Every aspect of your promotion campaign needs to be thoroughly tested. Any time you make changes to your store’s home page (and creating new landing pages), test your store pages using all the main browsers to ensure your changes are successful for the vast majority of visitors.

Same goes for your email messages. Have a test list that consists of a number of accounts with different providers that you have set up and also include email addresses of close friends and family. Double check that the email is still legible if images are not displayed as well as the basics ensuring your communication is free from typos and the like.

Next is to test that your promotion offers are actually available. For example, if your promotion campaign consists of free shipping with every order over $100, test and retest that your ecommerce software is set up correctly to apply the discount automatically and accurately in the shopping cart.

Remember the all important follow up

Lastly, don’t leave your customers hanging! Part of the promotion campaign is to engage your customers and bring your online store to mind. Leverage this new relationship by keeping up regular contact – this will continue to remind customers that your online store is the place to browse and purchase items when they are in the buying mood.

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Trust: SSL Extended Validation & Hacker Safe

January 26th, 2010 by Michael J. Kaye 1 comment »

Trust. It’s a big word. It can mean the difference of thousands of dollars in revenue. How do you convey a message of trust to your site visitors? How can you turn them into customers? We touched on this topic in the past: “Maximize Trust Level By Displaying Affiliated Third Party Logos“. Here is some more info that can make or break the bank.

McAfee Secure / Hacker  Safe

If you sign up with McAfee Secure (formerly HackerSafe/ScanAlert), they will give you a logo to display on your site that shows your compliance with their policies. The logo includes the date of the scan, which will always be ‘today’. This logo ensures customers that any personal information they enter into your site is essentially Hacker Safe.

Aside from displaying the logo, McAfee Secure will actually scan your servers on a daily basis and notify you of any errors or vulnerabilities. They will find things like a page giving a PHP error or SQL injection vulnerabilities. They then work with you to resolve these issues.

Another added benefit is the fact that McAfee has partnerships with many Comparison Shopping Engines to display the McAfee Secure logo next to listings from merchants in the program. This can help increase your Click-Thru-Rate on the CSEs.

More Info: www.mcafeesecure.com

SSL Extended Validation


SSL Extended Validation takes SSL to a whole new level. Instead of the standard lock icon in the address bar of the consumers browser, it will make the background of the bar green and show your company name. This will make consumers feel more comfortable with your site and increase the likelihood of purchasing from you.

Most SSL vendors offer this option, just keep in mind that it will cost you more. But then again, you get what you pay for.

More Info: www.verisign.com

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Posted in E-Commerce

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How To Use Day Parting To Trim Wasteful Spend In AdWords

December 30th, 2009 by Michael J. Kaye No comments »

Simple logic would dictate that if someone searched for your keywords, show them an ad. Sometimes hard facts are completely different from what you would expect. In most AdWords accounts that I have dealt with, I have seen much lower conversion rates and revenue in between the hours of 2AM and 7AM. Here’s how to check if this is the case on your eCommerce site with Google Analytics.

How Do I Check?

In Google Analytics, go to Ecommerce –> Conversion Rate. Select a 3 month date range, last 90 days is the best. The click on the little clock icon where it says “Graph By”. This will segment your conversion rate for the last 90 days by hour of the day. You should see two charts like this sample below.

Conversion Rate By Hour, Click To Enlarge

Conversion Rate By Hour, Click To Enlarge

If your chart is anything like this one, you will see that specific hours of the day perform better than others. This means that your cost per acquisition will likely be higher during those times.

What Do I Do?

There are two possible solutions to help minimize wasteful spend during these hours.

Option A — Lower Bids

The first basic option, is to lower your bids in each campaign during these hours. You can do this by going to Campaign Settings –> Advanced Settings –>Schedule: Start date, end date, ad scheduling. It will pop up a window where you can set hours and percentages of your regular bids. (Click on Mode: Bid adjustment.)

Option B –Pause Ads

The second basic option, is to pause your campaigns automatically during these hours. You can do this by going to Campaign Settings –> Advanced Settings –>Schedule: Start date, end date, ad scheduling. It will pop up a window where you can set which hours you would like your ads to run. (Click on Mode: Basic.)

Bottom Line

Make sure that you are getting the most out of your advertising spend. Every little trick can help. Another thing you can do is to set your campaigns to use Accelerated Ad Delivery to display your ad every time someone searches for your keywords during the correct hours.

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Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Tracking & Analytics

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4 Quick Tips On How To Boost Magento’s Speed

December 10th, 2009 by Michael J. Kaye 4 comments »

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Magento is a great open source eCommerce platform. Merchants love it for it’s full feature set as well as it’s ability to add-on features via extensions. One issue that a lot of people run into is the page load speed. Magento is very picky about the server set up. Here are some tips to help boost the performance and speed of your Magento store.

1 — Query Cache Size

Change the default Query Cache Size, it should be 32 or 64mb.

Magento Blog: Modify the configuration for your MySQL server to take better advantage of your server’s RAM. Most Linux distributions provide a conservative MySQL package out of the box to ensure it will run on a wide array of hardware configurations. If you have ample RAM (eg, 1gb or more), then you may want to try tweaking the configuration. An example my.cnf is below, though you will want to consult the MySQL documentation for a complete list of configuration directives and recommended settings.

Example my.cnf:

example_cnf

2 — Disable Access Time Logging

Magento Wiki: For Linux servers, if you have access-time logging enabled on any of your mysql, web server or cache partitions, try turning it off for a performance boost. If you’re using ext3 or reiserfs there may be faster journal write methods you can use. For more information see Linux.com.

3 — Enable KeepAlives in Apache

Make sure your Apache configuration has KeepAlives enabled. KeepAlives are a trick where multiple HTTP requests can be funneled through a single TCP connection. Since the setup of each TCP connection incurs additional time, this can significantly reduce the time it takes to download all the files (HTML, JavaScript, images) for a website. More information at Apache.org.

4 — Memory Based File Systems

Are you using a memory-based filesystem such as tmpfs? This helps Magento move faster because of all the reads/writes.

Use a memory-based filesystem for Magento’s var directory. Magento makes extensive use of file-based storage for caching and session storage. The slowest component in a server is the hard drive, so if you use a memory-based filesystem such as tmpfs, you can save all those extra disk IO cycles by storing these temporary files in memory instead of storing them on your slow hard drive.

For more in depth tips on how to boost performance on Magento, see the Magento Blog.

Image Credit: Viernest

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How To Track Magento eCommerce Sales In Google Anayltics

December 9th, 2009 by Michael J. Kaye No comments »

In a previous post we covered how to set up 3rd party tracking pixels in Magento. Setting up Google Analytics eCommerce tracking is much easier. There are two steps to this process:

Magento Configuration

In Magento, navigate to System –> Configuration –> Google API –> Google Analytics. Select “Enabled” and enter your Google Analytics account number. (The account number can be found when you login to Google Analytics on the main page, right next to the site URL.

Magento-Google-Analytics

Google Analytics Configuration

In Google Analytics, navigate to Analytics Settings –> Profile Settings –> Main Website Profile Information. Set “eCommerce Website” to “Yes, an E-Commerce Site”. This will track orders, total order amount, products ordered and quantity. It will also allow you to break down revenue by geographic location.

Google-Analytics-eCommerce-Tracking

Bottom Line

eCommerce Tracking is very simple to set up in Magento. You may as well take advantage of it.

Read how to track eCommerce sales in Google Analytics on other platforms. You can also track Site Search behavior in Google Analytics.

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Posted in E-Commerce, Tracking & Analytics

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How To Setup Conversion Tracking In Magento

December 2nd, 2009 by Michael J. Kaye 6 comments »

3rd Party Conversion Tracking

Magento Commerce has the ability to track eCommerce sale with Google Analytics out of the box (more on that in a future post). Something that a lot of merchants struggle with is how to set up conversion tracking for other tracking software or comparison shopping engines.

ConversionTracking

How To

Here is an easy hack to track conversions for Shopzilla, PriceGrabber and the likes:

Open the file: app\design\frontend\XXXX\XXXX\template\checkout\success.phtml

At the end of the file, add the following code, this will create two variables with the order number and the order total:

<?php
	//Get Order Number & Order Total
	$order = Mage::getModel('sales/order')->loadByIncrementId(Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->getLastRealOrderId());
	$amount = number_format($order->getGrandTotal(),2);
?>

After the above code snippet, copy and paste the tracking code from the third party analytics software of comparison shopping engine. Insert the following variable where they suggest placing the order ID and the order total:

<?php echo $amount; ?> // Order Total
<?php echo $this->getOrderId() ?> // Order Number

Here is a code example for the Shopzilla conversion tracking tool:

<script language="javascript">
	var mid            = 'XXXXX'; // Your Shopzilla Merchant ID
	var cust_type      = '';
	var order_value    = '<?php echo $amount; ?>'; // Order Amount
	var order_id       = '<?php echo $this->getOrderId() ?>'; //Order Number
	var units_ordered  = '';
</script>
<script language="javascript" src="https://www.shopzilla.com/css/roi_tracker.js"></script>
<script language="JavaScript" src="https://eval.bizrate.com/js/pos_193511.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Image Credit: Search Engine Journal

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Posted in Platform, Tracking & Analytics

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How To Display Google Base Products In AdWords Ads

November 30th, 2009 by Michael J. Kaye 13 comments »

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Google has been testing product ads for some time now. As of last week they have turned on this featured called Ad Extenstions. By turning this feature on you will attract more eyeballs to your ads and in effect raise your click-through rate. Google stated on their blog post which announced this new feature that some advertisers have seen a 10% increase in their CTR.

Here is how to turn on AdWords Ad Extensions, it must be done for every campaign separately:

Go to Campaign –> Settings; under Networks, devices, and extensions; click on edit under Ad Extensions and check the box that says: Connect to my Google Merchant Center account. This should automatically bring up your Google Base (Product Search) account, once it finds it, just click Save.

AdWords-Ad-Extensions

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Posted in Search Engine Marketing

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Subscribe To eCommerceCircle Via Email

November 19th, 2009 by Michael J. Kaye No comments »

You can now subscribe to receive new posts via email. Head over to our email subscription page and enter your email address or enter it below:

Your email:

 

Other ways to connect with eCommerceCircle:

Thanks for reading!

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How To Manage Your Price Comparison Data Feeds

November 18th, 2009 by Michael J. Kaye No comments »

What’s The Problem?

Every eCommerce business wants to advertise on as many channels as possible. When it comes to comparison shopping, you will want to syndicate your products to the top shopping engines. The problem is that every comparison shopping engine has a different data feed format and category structure. This creates an extra headache for the business owner. You have no choice if you want your products on their site…

The Many Solutions

Depending on the size of your company and your skill set, you have many different options ranging from hacking scripts and full service management.

D.I.Y. Style

  • Download your products into Excel and copy and paste until you got it right. Any business that means business cannot do it this way. It is too time consuming and you won’t be able to update it often enough.
  • Hack together some scripts to automatically create the files for each CSE. You get bonus points for automatically uploading to each CSE via FTP.
  • Use a third party self service tool to syndicate your feeds self service style. MerchantAdvantage is a great desktop tool for this, it is priced at $695 per month with no limits on websites, products or CSEs.

Third Party Syndication

Use a third party system to automatically create and syndicate many feeds from one file that you upload. This is ideal for smaller eCommerce sites with approximately 5-10k products. Here are some companies that provide this service:

  • GoDataFeed — Plans available for $50/$75 per month, with a 5,000 SKU limit.
  • SingleFeed — Plans starting at $99 per month, with a 100,000 SKU limit.
  • VersaFeed — Plans starting at $195 per month, with a 10,000 SKU limit.

Full Service Syndication & Managment

I would suggest using a small but reputable agency to syndicate your feeds, they are generally prices better than the big guys but give you a lot of personal attention. Here are a couple of such companies:

Another option is to go with a full service management solution from one of the big guys. I’ve had pretty good success with ChannelAdvisor specifically.

Do you have any experience with any of the companies listed above? Do you know of another company that provides such a service? Please let us know in the comments.

Photo Credit: alles-schlumpf

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Posted in Comparison Shopping

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Twitter Tool: PHP Auto-Follow Script

November 14th, 2009 by Michael J. Kaye 2 comments »

Twitter LogoI found this script on webupd8.org that will help you jump-start your Twitter campaigns. You can run it on any PHP server as a standalone file. What it does is search for anyone who mentions a relevant term. Just copy and paste the code below and change the following:

  • enter_your_twitter_username_here // Example: eCommerceCircle
  • enter_your_twitter_password_here // Example: imnottellingyou
  • enter_the_search_term_to_follow_here // Example: iPod Touch

You can upload to your server and just load the page from time to time or set up a cron job to do it automatically. Keep in mind that Twitter has follower/following ratios in place and that at most you cannot follow more than 1.5 times the amount of people following you as well as a 1,000 follower a day limit.

<?php
// Twitter Auto-follow Script by Dave Stevens - http://davestevens.co.uk

$user = "enter_your_twitter_username_here";
$pass = "enter_your_twitter_password_here";

$term = "enter_the_search_term_to_follow_here";

$userApiUrl = "http://twitter.com/statuses/friends.json";

$ch = curl_init($userApiUrl);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $user.":".$pass);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

$apiresponse = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$followed = array();

if ($apiresponse) {
 $json = json_decode($apiresponse);
 if ($json != null) {
  foreach ($json as $u) {
   $followed[] = $u->name;
  }
 }
}

$userApiUrl = "http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=" . $term . "&rpp=100";
$ch = curl_init($userApiUrl);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $user.":".$pass);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$apiresponse = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

if ($apiresponse) {
 $results = json_decode($apiresponse);
 $count = 20;
 if ($results != null) {
  $resultsArr = $results->results;
  if (is_array($resultsArr)) {
   foreach ($resultsArr as $result) {
    $from_user = $result->from_user;
    if (!in_array($from_user,$followed)) {
     $ch = curl_init("http://twitter.com/friendships/create/" . $from_user . ".json");
     curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $user.":".$pass);
     curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
     curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,"follow=true");
     curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
     $apiresponse = curl_exec($ch);

     if ($apiresponse) {
      $response = json_decode($apiresponse);
      if ($response != null) {
       if (property_exists($response,"following")) {
        if ($response->following === true) {
         echo "Now following " . $response->screen_name . "\n";
        } else {
         echo "Couldn't follow " . $response->screen_name . "\n";
        }
       } else {
        echo "Follow limit exceeded, skipped " . $from_user . "\n";
       }
      }
     }
     curl_close($ch);
    } else {
     echo "Already following " . $from_user . "\n";
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
?>

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Posted in Social Media

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