Friday 31 January 2014

Top 4 e-commerce conversion myths to eliminate in 2014

 eCommerce Conversion Maths


Conversion is one of the most challenging metrics for most e-commerce stores. Conversion Rate Optimization is one of the key performance indicators and most merchants fall prey to various myths associated with conversion, while evaluating this metric.

So, which are the basic myths associated with conversion optimization?

Visitors like crisp content

Longer pieces of content on the web pages kill conversion. Well, let’s bust this myth. Customers and prospects like reading crisp content, but only crisp content might not work well for the pages that require long description.  An in-depth understanding might be required for a certain type of products off the shelf and if the same is supplemented with short descriptions, prospects might walk away and choose a competitor that demonstrates it more carefully. Long block of texts can only kill conversion if the content is not catchy. Try to format the long content into a story with bullet points, images, headings and links. Avoid labyrinths and scattered text for a better conversion with long pieces of content, Hire and e-commerce Development Company for your content needs.

Social proof boosts conversions

Certainly, social proof boosts conversion rates. Reviews and ratings integrated with social word of mouth make more customers easily however; it’s not a magic broom. Along with the social proof integration, an e-commerce store needs to win multiple other challenges to boost the conversion rates. Right from product descriptions, image processing, content marketing, SEO to store management everything counts to boost up the conversion rates. Some merchants feel conversion rate gets hampered due to improper calls to action. This might be true for some merchants but for most others, many different factors affect the conversion. To mitigate the challenges, consult an e-commerce development company.

Store’s success is measured through CRO

Conversion rate optimization is one of the vital KPIs for any e-commerce stores.  Conversion attracts ROI and expands the bottom line however; this is not the only vital metric an e-commerce store should eye on. There are various other important metrics like the loyalty ratio, recency, bounce rate, browser and resolution percentage, cross selling ratio, email capture ration etc. An ideal conversion technique should emphasis on all of these metrics and not just the pure conversion of prospect to a customer.  Some stores resort to a web application development company for various apps development enabling better customer experience and conversion. 

More the traffic better the conversion and ROI

Many stores partner with SEO companies to leverage on the website traffic. Most merchants feel that conversion is the byproduct of traffic, which is a myth. Let’s bust this myth. Traffic is certainly important to boost the conversion rate however; apart from the traffic conversion happens on repeat purchases and other factors on the site. Understanding the customers’ requirements and improving the product delivery, merchandising etc. might as well boost the conversion. Developing an app for easy checkout might shoot up the conversion rate too. 

Summing it all up, e-commerce conversion is vital and the base of growth, but do not have any of the above myths in your mind while aiming to grow your store to the pinnacle. 

Wednesday 22 January 2014

How hiring an agency can boost up your e-commerce efforts?

E-commerce is the business of products. A standalone e-commerce store can’t sustain during the tough times. It is advisable to partner with a complete e-commerce solution provider to ensure long term expanded bottom lines. An e-commerce agency can help merchants of any size and shape with a host of services. So, which are these services that help shooting up your e-commerce ROI?

Hiring an agency for the below services might add value to the store’s success:

SEO
Search Engine Optimization is one of the back breaking and challenging task for most merchants.  With the regular updates by search engines like Google, it is vital to practice ethical SEO techniques at a regular period of time and be in the top of the search engine result pages. An agency that provides complete e-commerce solution might help merchants with keywords research, reporting and a lot more. Some of the modern boutiques also offer other services like content marketing so to ensure that the content is published in good sites and it in turn helps in generating traffic and boost the SEO efforts.

E-commerce Development
Apart from SEO, some of the agencies like QualDev also offer e-commerce development services to clients. Such agencies help the e-commerce merchants to develop entire e-commerce store with proper merchandising, technical support and e-commerce app development, if the client desires.

Email Marketing
Email Marketing is challenging process as it involves list building, campaign design, coding and automation. Modern day agencies help e-commerce merchants in setting up an email account in the ESP, designing the email considering email design best practices convert the design into HTML email and also shoot the campaign on behalf of the client. These agencies also ensure that the email is delivered in the inbox and it does not battle a poor open and click through rate.

Marketplace management
Agencies also help e-commerce stores manage the On-line marketplaces like e-bay and Amazon. They make sure that the merchandising is appropriate and the products continue to perform well across all the marketplaces.

Product uploading and Image Processing
Every month e-commerce stores have to upload new products to their store to ensure that the store attracts new eyeballs and updated with new products. Product uploading is a cumbersome task as it involves product name, description, delivery times, pricing strategy, high resolution images and a lot more. The agency can help merchants in converting low resolution images to high resolution images and upload products with right categorization and content. While writing content for products, these complete e-commerce solution providers make sure that the content is formatted properly and written in an informational way to boost sales.

Agencies can help merchants with a host of activities that are essential to run the e-commerce store successfully. Moreover, partnering with agencies will help e-commerce stores for all their operational, marketing and technical needs. If you too are expanding efforts on e-commerce development, hire an e-commerce agency that can pillar your store and customize the same as per your requirements.