Posts Tagged ‘eCommerce’

Eight Shipping Plans For the Holiday Season

November 21st, 2011

Jimmy Rodriguez is CTO and co-founder of 3DCart, developer of an e-commerce suite for businesses of all sizes. As an authority on e-commerce best practices, Jimmy combines more than 8 years as an e-commerce developer and web programmer with SEO, social marketing and business intelligence.

One of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of selling more product is shipping, a feared part of the online purchasing process during the holiday season. It’s easy to fall to become disorganized during the busy holiday season, but it won’t reflect well on your brand and will turn what could have been loyal customers into one-time shoppers. Luckily if you prepare now and have a system in place you can easily avoid holiday shipping debacles.

1 – Offer a free shipping deal
Make it an exploding offer—or, if you can afford it without cutting heavily into revenues, offer it to all customers throughout the holidays. Shipping costs typically make up 5% or more of the total cost, a significant dent in profits. Still, over 46.5% of small to mid-sized businesses say that offering free shipping increases their profits.

2 - Extend the standard shipping deadline
Inform customers that standard shipping prices will go up on a day before they actually do, then announce an extension to the standard shipping deadline.

3 - Use a shipping aggregator for international sales
Shipping aggregators like Bongo consolidate your international products coming from different warehouses into a single, neat package. Merchants can simply ship to to the aggregators Domestic Facility, and the international shipping experts handle the rest.

4 - Stock up on shipping supplies
If you’re shipping products on your own, make sure you stock up on twice as many shipping resources as your projected sales. Being over-prepared is much better than being under-prepared because you can always use the excess materials for post-holiday shipping.

5 - Give customers the ability to track their purchases
Shipping through popular carriers and linking them to your backend CRM and email autoresponders makes it simple for customers to track their purchases.

6 - Showcase contact information prominently
Online merchants need to go the extra mile to make their customers feel safe and protected. You can put a customer’s mind at ease by displaying your contact information prominently in multiple locations on your site. Also consider listing your phone number and alternative email addresses in your auto-responder emails.

7 - Follow up on shipped orders
Through your order management system, track when shipped items are received and set autoresponders to send follow-up emails with links to feedback resources. Also consider jazzing up your holiday autoresponders with a seasonal images and sayings. It never hurts to spread the holiday cheer!

8 - Include physical promotions in shipped packages
Surprise your customer with a coupon! There’s nothing like the feeling of a coupon in your hand; send physical coupons with every order in hopes of inspiring a return customer. It also makes sure that your customer’s last impression of the purchase is a great one.

The above is an excerpt from 3dcart’s FREE eBook 12 Days of Online Shopping. Download yours today to automatically receive a $75 Google Adwords certificate & $100 Amazon Ad certificate and be entered to win one of 20 $100 Google Adwords certificate!

Image Credit: Drewski2112

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Posted in Customer Service

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Two Years Old

July 15th, 2011

Tomorrow is two years since I published the first post on eCommerceCircle. A lot has changed since then… I have since dropped the pseudonym Michael J. Kaye and started using my name, Menachem Ani. During this time I stopped spelling “E-Commerce” with a dash and switched to the easier “eCommerce.”

Over the past couple of years I have added some new sections, such as:

As always, you can view a full list of posts on eCommerceCircle on our sitemap.

eCommerceCircle would be nowhere without people reading it… So thanks to all my readers who brought this site from zero to 10,000 monthly pageviews. Hopefully that number will keep growing…

Thanks for reading and please let me know what eCommerceCircle is to you…

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Posted in eCommerceCircle

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10 Great Magento Extensions – Part III

May 31st, 2011

We’ve compiled some lists of Magento extensions previously. You can find the previous collections here:

Here are some more extensions that add a lot to your eCommerce store.

#1 – Follow Up Emails

The Follow Up Email extension is a powerful auto-responder and customer relationship tool that helps to keep your site in the customer’s mind always. Use this automated email follow up Magento module and you’ll never lose track of your customers even if they have abandoned their shopping carts. You can set up as many alerts as you want.
Demo | Extension Info | Price: $199

#2 – Easy Catalog Images

This extension will help to display child categories in products catalog. Installation and configuration will take approximately 5 minutes.
Demo | Extension Info | Free

#3 – Canonical URL for Magento

This extension adds the new canonical links to the head of your Magento pages.
Extension Info | Free

#4 – Daily Deals

Daily Deals Extension for MagentoWith an eye catching flash countdown our extension adds a deal of the day functionality to your magento store.
Demo | Extension Info | Price: $99

#5 – Customers Who Purchased This…

The extension displays in different Magento blocks products that were purchased by other customers together with the product being viewed.
Demo | Extension Info | Price: $39

#6 – PDF Customiser

Easily change the look of your PDF print-outs. This extension adds 20+ new options to your Magento back-end to fully customise the PDFs your shop produces.
Extension Info | Price: $59

#7 – Unirgy Gift Certificates

Allow your customers to purchase and use Gift Certificates.
Extension Info | Free

#8 – Refer A Friend

Refer a Friend extension is a smart piece of software that helps you benefit from a combination of viral and affiliate marketing (without launching a conventional affiliate program). It stimulates your customers to invite their friends to your store.
Demo | Extension Info | Price: $99

#9 – Product Questions

Let your potential customers ask you product-related questions and display the answers on the product page itself.
Demo | Extension Info | Price: $129

#10 – Call For Price

This mod adds a new administration tab to all products that will provide the option to remove the “add-to-cart” button from that products Grid/List/Display page and allow you to display a custom text snippet of your choice. This is great for items which have a MAP policy that does not allow you to show a price.
Extension Info | Price: $27

Did we miss any of your favorite Magento extensions? Let us know in the comments.

More From This Series: Magento Extensions

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Posted in Platform

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Magento Go

February 17th, 2011

Magento Go

What is Magento Go?

Magento just announced  Magento Go, a hosted version of the popular Magento eCommerce. This is very exciting news for small businesses that want the benefits of a platform like Magento, without the hassle of getting it set up and managing the server. Just sign up, fill out a few forms and you’re good to go (pun intended).

The idea behind Magento Go is almost as old as eCommerce itself. A few of the big names in hosted eCommerce are BigCommerce, Volusion, 3dCart, AmeriCommerce… There are so many, it hard to keep track. The question is… How do these stack up against Magento Go? Stay tuned to find out once we receive more info from Magento.

From The Magento Blog:

Coming in February, Magento Go is a hosted, SaaS service designed for small and emerging merchants who want the benefits of selling online, without the complexity of managing servers and software. It provides them with a robust platform at a cost that any small business can afford.

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How To Setup Conversion Tracking In Microsoft adCenter

November 4th, 2010

Microsoft adCenter Conversion Tracking

Now that Microsoft adCenter is powering ads for both Bing.com and Yahoo.com, it is extremely important to make sure you are tracking your campaigns properly. Here is a quick guide on how to set up revenue and conversion tracking for Microsoft adCenter.

Step 1 – Turn On Conversion Tracking

In adCenter, conversion tracking must be turned on for each individual campaign. You can do this by navigation to your campaign and clicking on the “Change Settings” link. In the top right corner of this page you will find a check box to Track Conversions. Check this box.

If you just want to track the number of conversions, you can click the link to “show code” and paste it into your order confirmation page. If you want to track revenue too, then you’ll want to follow the next steps.

Step 2 – Revenue Tracking

In order to track the revenue generated from orders originating from adCenter, we will need to set up custom code. Start by clicking on the “Open Campaign Analytics Tool”. This will bring you to the Campaign Analytics section of adCenter. The next step will be to set up a goal by clicking “Create Goal”.

It will bring you to a simple form that you will need to fill out. Most of the form is self-explanatory. Just make sure you select “Variable” under the “Revenue to track” option.

Once you fill out the form, click “Save and generate code”. Copy and past the code and…

Step 3 – Inserting Revenue Variable

At this point you should have code that looks kind of like this:

<script type="text/javascript">if (!window.mstag) mstag = {loadTag : function(){},time : (new Date()).getTime()};</script>
<script id="mstag_tops" type="text/javascript" src="//flex.atdmt.com/mstag/site/dexe4973-10a0-2abe-823e-5b2123f42eb0/mstag.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript"> mstag.loadTag("analytics", {dedup:"1",domainId:"XXXXXX",type:"1",revenue:"",actionid:"XXXXX"})</script> <noscript> <iframe src="//flex.atdmt.com/mstag/tag/dexe4973-10a0-2abe-823e-5b2123f42eb0/analytics.html?dedup=1&domainId=XXXXXX&type=1&revenue=&actionid=XXXXX" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="1" height="1" style="visibility:hidden; display:none"> </iframe> </noscript>

At this point you need to generate the order total from your eCommerce system and pass the variable in the two places it says revenue. Here is an example, look at the word revenue on lines 3 and 4.

<script type="text/javascript">if (!window.mstag) mstag = {loadTag : function(){},time : (new Date()).getTime()};</script>
<script id="mstag_tops" type="text/javascript" src="//flex.atdmt.com/mstag/site/dexe4973-10a0-2abe-823e-5b2123f42eb0/mstag.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript"> mstag.loadTag("analytics", {dedup:"1",domainId:"XXXXXX",type:"1",revenue:"1234.56",actionid:"XXXXX"})</script> <noscript> <iframe src="//flex.atdmt.com/mstag/tag/dexe4973-10a0-2abe-823e-5b2123f42eb0/analytics.html?dedup=1&domainId=XXXXXX&type=1&revenue=1234.56&actionid=XXXXX" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="1" height="1" style="visibility:hidden; display:none"> </iframe> </noscript>

Your final code should look something like the code directly above. You can paste this code into your order confirmation page.

NOTE: Don’t copy and paste this as it won’t work, because I removed all the IDs that adCenter uses to identify which account this is for.

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Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Tracking & Analytics

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Magento Hosting Guide

July 29th, 2010

Finding a reliable hosting company that fits your needs can be tough. As with any other platform, Magento has it quirks and needs to be set up on a decent server. Here are a few of the hosting providers I’ve dealt with and some basic info on their services and pricing.

Nexcess:

Nexcess, a Magento Enterprise Partner, has a few hosting plans that are optimized specifically for Magento. For a starter site, the Nexcess mag|SIP 100 account works well enough. If you have a site with many products or a lot of traffic, you may want to try one of their better plans.

  • Support: The support team is available via email only (no phone support), however their support team is VERY responsive and I consistently get replies to my emails within 10-15 minutes.
  • Pricing: The Magento optimized plans start at $24.95/month. They do have other plans that start as low as $6.95/month, but these are not recommended for use with Magento as you will have very high page load times.
  • Up Time: I have been using Nexcess for several years for a few different clients and I have found their up time to be pretty good. They do have occasional downtime, but they are very responsive in such cases.
  • Features: Nexcess uses the SiteWorx control panel, it has everything you need from DNS Settings, Email Setup and MySQL management.

Bottom Line: Nexcess is a great host with reliable service. Recommended.

Sign Up w/ Nexcess Hosting »

Crucial Web Hosting:

Crucial Web Hosting, a Magento Professional Partner, has two levels of hosting plans: Split-Shared and Split-Dedicated. The Split-Shared plan is perfect for a start site. While larger sites will want to go with the Split-Dedicated option.

  • Support: The support team is available via email only (no phone support), however their support team is responsive and I consistently have gotten replies to my emails within 15 minutes.
  • Pricing: The hosting plans start at $25/month.
  • Up Time: I have used Crucial for a few clients and I have found their up time to be pretty good.
  • Features: Crucial uses cPanel, so if you are familiar with cPanel you should feel right at home.

Bottom Line: Crucial Web Hosting is a reliable host with very simple and efficient service. Recommended.

Sign Up w/ Crucial Web Hosting »

Simple Helix:

I have not used Simple Helix, but I have heard great things all around. They offer 3 simple plans, the starter which is $20/month, professional for $50/month and semi-dedicated for $75/month.

Sign Up w/ Simple Helix Hosting »

Blue Host:

They only offer a simple shared hosting solution for $6.95/month. If you are just looking for cheap hosting to get started with, Blue Host may be for you. This is not optimized for Magento but will handle a small site.

Sign Up w/ Blue Host »

NOTE: Links in this article contain affiliate IDs, if you sign up by clicking on any of the links I will get commission. Please support eCommerceCircle.

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Posted in Hosting

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Top 5 Tips For Running A Successful eCommerce Promotion Campaign

January 27th, 2010

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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Posted in Marketing

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Tips & Tricks On How To Use Twitter For eCommerce Marketing

October 27th, 2009

Twitter is growing by leaps and bounds every day. By the last count Twitter.com had 58 million visitors worldwide during the last month. In addition, they just signed major deals with Microsoft and Google to supply them with a firehose of all Twittering Tweets.

Twitter Tools

You are only as good as the Twitter tools you have. Here is a brief rundown of the best Twitter tools for keeping track of your brand and interacting with your customers.

Brizzly

Brizzly allows you to control multiple Twitter accounts from the same interface without having to constantly log in and out. Some of the great features it offers that are helpful with managing an eCommerce site’s Twitter account are Groups and Saved Searches. Although Twitter.com offers the ability to save searches, it is much easier to skim through the results and answer them inline on Brizzly. The Groups feature can help you segment your follow list by category so that you can more clearly see what’s happening in your Twitter world.

Brizzly is in private beta, and can be accessed by invitation only. I have a few invites to give away, please leave your email in the comments for a free invite.

Brizzly Twitter Client Screenshot

Screenshot: @Remiel

CoTweet

CoTweet is the Twitter tool of choice for many large corporations such as Pepsi, Starbucks, Microsoft and many more. CoTweet has some unique features that cater to companies with multiple people posting from a single Twitter account. Their core features are multiple Twitter accounts, multiple users managing a Twitter account, CoTags, saved searches, and scheduled Tweets.

From within CoTweet you can give access to multiple users to manage your Twitter account, the best part is that you can set up CoTags which CoTweet will append the initials of the person Tweeting to the Tweet. They generally add CoTags in this format “^MK”. This helps avoid confusion and helps your followers identify who said what.

CoTweet also allows you to schedule Tweets for a specific time, this is ideal for when you are unable to post manually but would like to keep your followers updated.

CoTweet Twitter Client Screenshot

Screenshot: vincentgallegos

HootSuite

HootSuite has pretty much the same major features as the others, however it sports a more desktop like client interface with multiple tabs and columns for follower updates, saved searches etc…

A unique feature that HootSuite offers is the ability to auto post Tweets from an RSS feed. This is great if you have a company blog that you would like to automatically post the updates to Twitter.

HootSuite Twitter Client Screenshot

Screenshot: cambodia4kidsorg

TweetDeck

All the above Twitter tools are web-based, TweetDeck is a desktop application that works on the Adobe AIR platform. Like HootSuite, it has a multiple column interface for easy following. The good thing about TweetDeck being a desktop application is that it has notifications built into it. It can pop up a message when your company is mentioned on Twitter.

TweetDeck Twitter Client Screenshot

Screenshot: merilyn_j

What To Post

Having a great tool is only half the battle. How you use it, can impact your results in a major way. The best use of Twitter is to update with a mix of Marketing/Promotional tips, helpful tips, and interact with other Twitterers.

Marketing

Post Tweets with special coupons, promotional content and deals exclusively for your Twitter followers. Give people a reason to follow you. Try not to post only promotional content and links to your site, make sure to include a healthy mix of other content as well.

Transparency

Let your customer base see the human side of your company. Post small updates that may make someone smile. Talk about your brand and what it stands for. Post helpful tips relevant to your industry.

Customer Service

Interact with your followers and potential customers. Say good morning and help fellow Tweeple with their problems. Providing help to someone who is not a customer, may turn them into one. Become an authority in your industry.

Usage Examples

Here are examples of companies using Twitter. Learn what you can should and shouldn’t do from them.

Woot

Woot posts links to their ‘daily sale’ every and blog posts on their company blog. They currently have over 1.4 million followers and they use this channel as a natural extension to reach their already loyal following.

Comcast

Comcast says they care, and it seems that they really do try to help anyone who voices their frustrations with the cable provider on Twitter. They scan Twitter for anyone who mentions ‘Comcast’ and will reply and help you out pretty much instantaneously. There are the naysayers (that may be correct) who say that you shouldn’t have to go to Twitter to get customer service.

Zappos

No post about Twitter and eCommerce would be complete without Zappos. When Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh breathes on Twitter 1.45 million people hear him. Aside from that, it is ingrained in the Zappos corporate culture to Twitter, they even host a mashup site where you can see all Tweets from Zappos employees.

Bottom Line

A dollar spent keeping an existing customer happy is the best dollar spent on marketing your brand. Use Twitter to interact with customers to provide a satisfying shopping experience as well as to promote your latest deals.

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Posted in Social Media

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