Building E-Commerce on Rough Economic Terrain

Today I've read this great article from the E-commerce Times, about the most important factors to consider when starting an eCommerce store in today's tough times. These key points are not only important to develop a start up business, but they are also big issues that some existing sites can't forget and have to pay more attention to:

Great Web Content and Design
First and most important is to have a unique and branded Web design to attract potential customers. A Web design that looks like it hasn't been updated since 2002 will not give your customers the feeling of security that they need to purchase merchandise online.

While e-retailing has been around for a decade, it has finally become fully saturated throughout the mainstream population -- growing in an economic recession while brick-and-mortar stores stumbled -- and consumers expect a level of professionalism in the Web design they see from their e-retailers.

The site doesn't have to be complex, but having a sleek and well-maintained Web site is the first step to ensuring that customers do more than just glance at your home page before moving on to the next link advertising pink bunny slippers for under US$20 with free shipping.

Detailed Product Information, Quality Images
As customers rely more and more on descriptions and pictures to purchase their products rather than walking into the store to look at it person, e-retailers must ensure that they are giving the consumer as many details about the product as possible.

Especially in these cash-strapped times, when customers are very careful about what items they are going to spend their hard-earned dollars on, giving them as many details as possible will help ensure they spend those dollars at your store -- not your competition's store.

Savvy shoppers want to know the exact details of the product, especially since they are not able to hold it and examine it before purchase. Providing more than just the basic details of a product can really make your e-store stand out from the others.

Customer Feedback and Reviews
Customer reviews and feedback are the greatest ways to build your brand loyalty and establish a trusting customer base. Customers who can't see a product in person depend on the reviews of others who have purchased it before them.

Economic conditions have led consumers to become very engaged, thoughtful shoppers, it is important that they trust the products displayed in your store, and having other reviews boosts that trust.

These reviews can help extend the data that you've already provided about your products, and cement in your customers' minds that purchasing items from you is the safe route to great finds.

Search Engine Optimization
An additional benefit of detailed product information and reviews is that they help improve your ranking on search engines. Creating keyword-rich content on your site that matches what prospective customers are looking for on search engines like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Bing can help ensure your store is found on the first search page.

As a result, more consumers will be directed to your store and products. In addition to creating keyword rich content, you should also populate your site's meta-tags (hidden text on a Web site's pages that tell search engines what type of content is on the page), submit your store's site map to search engines, create page URLs that are search-engine-friendly, and get other popular sites to link to yours.

One of the main reasons that consumers shop online is the ease and convenience of finding products and services, so ensuring that your e-store is at the beginning of their search gives you a much better chance of hooking them with your great store and prices.

Email Marketing Spurs Repeat Business
The final step to successfully starting and growing an e-commerce store in a down economy: Once you have your customer base, the trick is to keep them coming back again and again.

Set up email marketing lists so you can reach out to your customers, giving them promotions, reminding them when sales are going to be occurring, and letting them know when new stock has arrived.

By keeping your best-selling items in stock and reminding customers that you have them available for shipping at any time, you become their go-to shop for whatever particular item you sell.

Additionally, repeat customers are more likely to recommend your store to friends or family, in turn growing your customer base through grassroots means. Keeping a customer is less expensive than trying to gain new customers, so to save your e-store some much needed capital as the economy slowly bounces back, it's best to retain your satisfied customers.

Even with the growth of e-commerce consumption, successfully launching an online store in a volatile economy is tough, so it is key to have these five components firmly established. Consumers are going to continue purchasing online due to the ease and simplicity of e-shopping, and having great content and design, as well as improving your site's SEO, can turn your site into a repeat experience for customers.

If your eCommerce store needs help with any of these aspects, Gproxy Design can definitely help you in taking your online business to the next level. You can contact one of our Sales Consultants by calling to 1-800-814-4761 or click here to send us an email.

Source: ECommerceTimes.com

A good Maintenance, Measure & Upgrade Service for your website is vital for your business success.

As eCommerce evolves every day, your site also needs to continue evolving. At the same time, your online store has a life cycle, which indicates that after launching your site,you need to continue developing and enhancing it based on your customer´s feedback, new trends and also to keep up with new technology (example: new browsers), updates in your shopping cart and new functionalities that exists.

Our Maintenance, Measure and Upgrade (MMU) plan is an excellent way of keeping your website up to date and in perfect shape, while keeping your costs to a minimum. It is also a great way of ensuring you will be able to get help when you need it. Aside from general updating, your site also requires regular scheduled maintenance to ensure your website’s availability and performance.

Why do I need a maintenance plan for my website?
Having a maintenance plan gives you peace of mind because you know your site is in good hands and well taken care of. Your site will be regularly checked, optimized and backed up. A team of eCommerce experts will be assigned to your online store, becoming familiarized with it so as to ensure faster and more efficient updates are done when needed.

Our goal is to help you maximize the value of your eCommerce investment. We will work side by side with you to keep your eCommerce business at the top of the game.

To learn more about this or other services we offer, please contact our Sales Consultants at 1-800-814-4761 or click HERE to send us an email.

61% of shoppers use a search engine when they shop online, study says

94% of shoppers conduct research online before making an eCommerce transaction, according to the “Compete Shopper Intelligence Study.”

And, overwhelmingly, they turn to search engines. 61% of shoppers say they always or often use a search engine when shopping online. That outpaces coupon sites (35%), retailers’ marketing e-mails (29%), online reviews (24%) or shopping comparison sites (22%).

However, the survey also found tremendous variability in the sources shoppers turn to before making a purchase.

For instance, among the sources shoppers turn to before making an apparel purchase are:

• Retailers’ marketing e-mails, 38%
• Retailers’ web sites, 26%
• Online advertisement, 18%
• Search engines, 12%

Among the sources shoppers turn to before making a consumer electronics purchase are:

• Retailers’ web sites, 59%
• Search engines, 45%
• Online professional reviews, 29%
• Online consumer-generated reviews, 21%

“It is essential for retailers to understand how consumers in their space shop online in order to effectively retain and acquire customers,” says the report. “Instead of trying to utilize all available outlets, retailers should understand their particular customer niche and develop strategies unique to them. In an environment with tight consumer wallets and even tighter marketing budgets, retailers can’t afford to invest their money in resources their customers don’t use.”

If you as a retailer need assistance to develop those online marketing strategies, Gproxy's Consulting Team can assist you in many ways. Click HERE to contact us and learn more about our eCommerce Business Strategies or call us to 1-800-814-4761.

Source: Internet Retailer

INTERNET MARKETING: Conversion Optimization Strategies

Conversion optimization was born out of the need of lead generation and e-commerce online marketers to improve their website's profit. As competition grew on the web during the early 2000s, online marketers had to become more measurable with their marketing strategies. They began testing with website design and content variations to determine the layouts, text, offers and images to improve their conversion rate.

Frequently, when marketers target a pocket of customers that has shown spectacular lift in an ad campaign, they belatedly discover the behavior is not consistent, with online marketing response rates fluctuate widely from hour to hour, segment to segment and offer to offer.
Conversion optimization methods, are then taken a step further to run in a real-time environment. The real-time data collection and subsequent messaging as a result, increases the scale and effectiveness of the online campaign.

As part of our Consulting Services, we offer a Conversion Optimization Program to our clients who want to learn more about their visitors to improve their conversion rates and overall ROI:

• Analyze your existing traffic in your Google Analytics account. This includes looking at the keywords, entry pages, exit pages, bounce rates and the conversion goal funnel. This will help the expert working on your site, to better understand your overall traffic and also help determine what areas we focus on when we setup visitor tracking on your site.
• Setup Visitor Tracking Analysis. You can monitor and record visitors browsing sessions. This is an incredibly powerful service that you can continue to use together with A/B, Multivariate testing as your toolset to further optimize your landing pages, maximize conversions and minimize shopping cart abandonment. This will give you the capability of watching “movies” of your visitors’ browsing sessions and analyze their behavior, and seeing heat maps showing where visitors click, where they look and how far down they scroll.
  

Find more about this and other Services from our Consulting Department here or visit our website at www.gproxy.com. Alternatively, why not call us directly on 1-800-814-4761 or click here give us your contact details and we will call you back.

Source: Gproxy Consulting Services and Wikipedia

Gproxy Design: Global Online Services

Over the years Gproxy Design has grown to form a very cosmopolitan team of professionals from North America, South America, Europe and Australia. This has helped us get a global view of how to care for our customers and work more effectively with our wide range of partners.

Our awareness of the key differences in the way people do business, communicate and interact has helped us grow from a company focused on the needs of the US market into a provider of services for businesses of all sizes and all industries globally.

We currently supply our design, programming, development and SEO services to companies on five continents and we are continuously working hard to learn more and improve on what we already do well.

We have implemented a range of strategies that mean our clients receive the highest quality of service and the clearest information about their websites development throughout each step of the web design process, regardless of location or time zone.

If you are looking for a partner to provide web design services, SEO or online marketing strategies and your company are thinking globally, then please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@gproxy.com or take a tour of our website at www.gproxy.com.

Ecommerce Trends – The Multi-Tab Store

One of the latest trends in the ecommerce industry is to have one store with a multi tabbed approach to different verticals or brands within that store.

This technique allows store owners to display different ranges of products with a strong brand identity while linking them into the same inventory management system.

A good example of this can be found at www.silkystore.com.


As you can see the site showcases the products on offer from Silky Saws, but by selecting the second brand name, shoppers can check out what is on offer from Kask.

This site was designed by our team at Gproxy Design, if you like the idea of this innovative approach to website design and layout and would like to find more then why not visit our website at www.gproxy.com or click here to see our portfolio.
Alternitavely, why not call us directly on 1-800-814-4761 or click here give us your contact details and we will call you back.

Gproxy's Partner Fluid Inc. Joins Facebook® Preferred Developer Consultant Program

Fluid Inc. today announced that the company has been named to the Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant Program, along with a small group of leading agencies. Facebook created the program to match brands, celebrities, companies and organizations with the best resources available to build flagship applications, and employ best practices on the Facebook Platform. Focused exclusively in ecommerce, Fluid is an industry leader in the thoughtful use of social media to increase revenues and providing purchase validation to shoppers. Fluid delivers highly custom Facebook applications from its agency team and has developed Fluid Social, a productized solution for using social media to enhance an online store.

"We're extremely pleased to be a Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant and to be part of a program made up of such forward-thinking, creative companies and people," said Amy Lanigan, Director of Client Strategy at Fluid. "Our work with a number of clients -- including Vera Wang Princess, JanSport and The North Face -- has demonstrated that the Facebook Platform offers immense opportunity for us to execute innovative and exciting solutions on behalf of our clients and their customers."

"Seeing Fluid on this list is no surprise to us," said Victoria Bluvstein, Director of Global Marketing at Coty Prestige. "Fluid created and implemented a custom Facebook solution for Vera Wang Princess that has engaged and resonated with our target audience and exceeded our expectations in terms of results."

Fluid Social was one of the earliest ecommerce implementations to utilize Facebook Connect. Seamlessly built into a retailer's site, Fluid Social enables shoppers to tap into their social graph for product ideas and purchase validation. Shoppers utilizing Fluid Social on JanSport average 59% more product page views and spend 147% longer on site than shoppers that do not utilize the product.

The initial program features 14 companies who have built flagship applications on Facebook and are well-versed in building Facebook integrations and offer solutions ranging from contests, polls and campaigns to deeply integrated social experiences. Fluid was chosen for the program based on the company's long history in the development of innovative, socially engaging online retail solutions for highly successful brands, including JanSport, AT&T, Calvin Klein Fragrances and others. The entire list of Facebook Preferred Developer Consultants can be found here: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Preferred_Developer_Consultant_Program

About Fluid, Inc.
Fluid creates engaging online retail experiences that drive conversion, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Founded in 1990, Fluid has a customer list that includes major online retailers such as Reebok, Lucky Brand Jeans, Diapers.com, Warner Entertainment and The North Face, among others. More information about Fluid is available at www.fluid.com.
Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.


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Source: Marketwire