IIMA – International Internet Marketing Association » Blog Archive » Event Review: The Marketer’s Guide to the Ecommerce Galaxy

January 20, 2010

by Charlene Brisson, MAPC
Marketing & Communication Specialist, @charlenebrisson

Jason Billingsley, ecommerce guru and founder of http://www.elasticpath.com/, promised to unveil 42 ways to sell more online. To the IIMA event audience, leaving with this info would be a terrific benefit. So when Jason over-delivered with more than 100+ tips – and all of them valuable – the audience was thrilled.

The presentation focused on B2C retail, although one can easily transform any one of Jason’s recommendations to a B2B site. His sense of humor showed immediately when he presented his favorite website http://www.arngren.net. His moral, “no matter how bad you think your site or your client’s site is – this one is worse – so DON’T PANIC.”

Jason encouraged the crowd to “keep asking yourself if the project is achieving the goal.” To help accomplish the goal, he provided proven ideas to enhance sales in five main components of an ecommerce site (SEO, email, PPC, the home page and product pages).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Shorter URLs … domain.com/product will convert higher in the rankings. Place product name as close to the base domain as possible.
Optimize for the first Link. Crawlers hit first link on a page and follow it out.
Put text link first as Google gives them a higher rank than an image link. Visit http://www.firstlinkchecker.com/ to check out your links.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Bid exact match campaigns slightly higher – the campaign will double as it drift-nets all the words that can’t be thought of.
Separate out content ads from search queries. People aren’t in a hunting mode, they’re in a browsing mode so use a product category or 10% off if you click here.
Ensure the landing page delivers on the promise.

Email

Email is the highest converting channel in almost all instances in retail channels.
Put your offer in the first line of your email so it will show in the preview panel of the viewers email provider.
Make sure your emails are getting delivered. Set up test accounts in Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail and send ALL your emails through before delivering to your list – for both transactional AND marketing efforts.

Home Page

Sites with more products on the home page sell more and show search engines that it’s an ecommerce site. Amazon.com is the granddaddy of showing products and prices on the homepage.
Google has search results that show 50% of people will scroll down, but only 12–15% will go to page 2. If you have lots of products show them. http://www.clicktale.com/ has fantastic research on scrolling vs. clicking.
If you have a model on the page, make sure they look at the product – eye tracking shows that people will follow her/his eye to the product.

Product Pages

Image size and context is critical. Show 500 pixels by default if your layout allows and zoom to 1000 pixels. If there are other colors show them, or they’ll never sell them.
Set a baseline of what the product value is – ie. show manufacturers list price and calculate how much they save. See this example http://tinyurl.com/yh77nov Use color and prominence to show your pricing.
Eliminate uncertainties. As soon as possible show buyers the total cost. It will decrease abandonment on the cart.
BONUS TIP: Get the money first. Use an anonymous check out giving buyers an option to get a password at the end.

Random and Q&A

A site that loads in 2 seconds out-performs one that loads in 8 seconds. http://www.compuware.com/fastcal/ will tell you how much money you’re losing by having a slow site.
To build confidence, customer reviews are a MUST.
If you place a $300 and $50 product with one for $100, the $100 product will sell the most.

Best Event Tip: http://www.getelastic.com/ is the most popular ecommerce blog in the world with 15,000 readers. Sign up now!

Now a professional ecommerce coach, speaker and owner of flipretail.com, Jason is looking for two e-coaching clients that are $1-2m and one client in the $10m range. If that may be your company, contact him at Jason@flipretail.com or 604-270-6959.

Follow Jason on twitter @jbillingsley

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