The E-Commerce Blog

There is a lot of speculation about whether this online shopping season was a bust or boom. Some reports just before Christmas shows online shopping down 1% over that same time last year, and other reports I’ve seen show slowed overall growth, but numbers still above 2008.

In this slowing economy, many online retailers (myself included) were worried about this holiday season. We ramped up for our holiday season in early November with specials and regular email promotions, and it paid off. We’re predicting a 178% increase in online sales over last holiday season and a 220% increase in online sales in December alone.

There are likely several reasons for the increases… extended customer service hours, increased Pay Per Click budgets, long-tail search rankings that set us up as industry leaders inside our “niche of a niche.” We anticipated a strong holiday season and prepared by hiring additional staff early, beefing up on inventory, and adding features to our website such as date-specific messages about shipping times which decrease customer service inquiries.

In the midst of a rocky economy, my e-commerce sites and several of our clients’ websites continue to grow. How did you do this holiday season? To what do you attribute any increase or decrease in sales?

Your e-commerce store’s conversion rate is the ratio of visitors to customers. It’s the percentage of visitors that actually complete a sale online. Simple example:

20 sales / 1000 unique visitors = 0.02 = 2% conversion rate

Your store’s conversion rate is critical to your success. The average conversion rate for retail B2B e-commerce is 2-4%. I think this metric is actual skewed however, because many of the largest e-commerce businesses have conversion rates of over 10%.

I’d estimate the average e-commerce store with revenues under $1,000,000 has a conversion rate of less than 1%. And I’d bet that most of the owners don’t even know their conversion rate is that low because they either don’t understand what a conversion rate is or they don’t check it often and do anything about it.

Knowing your conversion rate is necessary if you plan on improving it. There are website analytics tools such as Google Analytics that can be configured to show your store’s conversion rate very easily. Use a tool and monitor your store’s conversion rate at least monthly, and especially whenever you make changes to your store’s layout or design.

It’s the end of the busiest shopping season of the year, and a lot of retailers are probably thinking they could have done more to spark growth in holiday sales. Did y ou do everything you could to increase sales this season?

Probably not. None of us did… there are hundreds — thousands — of ideas for increasing sales, and it’s almost impossible to implement them all in time for the holiday season, even for large companies. We had a list broken down by priority, and as fast as I could check items off the list, another 2 ideas would be added.

We had a great holiday shopping season, but now that it’s almost over, I realize that I should have started much, much earlier. With more time, some more of my ideas could have materialized.

So, my advice as this holiday season comes to an end — Start planning for Holiday Season 2008 now. Make a timeline and start working towards it now… so when October/November rolls around next year, you’ll be ready!

Are you ready for the holiday shopping season? Thanksgiving and Christmas will be here soon, and you better have your site ready now because people are out in force shopping online so they don’t have to get stuck in traffic jams and hectic malls getting last-minute gifts.

Here are a few tips to help you get ready:

• Make sure your website is error-free.
  There’s nothing worse than getting halfway into the busiest season of the year only to find out that you have an error on your shopping cart pages. Test your entire site for errors, misspellings and inaccuracies.

• Make sure your website is error-free
  There’s nothing worse than getting halfway into the busiest season of the year only to find out that you have an error on your shopping cart pages. Test your entire site for errors, misspellings and inaccuracies.

• Review your Pay-Per-Click Campaigns
  Check your Pay-Per-Click campaigns to make sure that you are bidding on all the appropriate terms, and make sure you have conversion tracking setup to test your campaign’s effectiveness.

• Dust off your email list
  If you haven’t seen an email newsletter lately, now is the time. Make sure you have an opt-im list and start promoting your seasonal specials to your customers and newsletter subscribers.

• Check your search engine rankings
  Check your ranking in the major search engines. It’s a little late to get a large improvement before the holiday season, but you can make small changes that will have an impact. Even moving up one position can make a big difference in overall sales.

• Check with your suppliers
  Make sure your suppliers have ample inventory for the holiday season, and place orders to fill in any inventory you are low on now. As December comes closer, many suppliers will begin having shortages and will be shipping slow because of the volume.

• Update your return and shipping policies
  Let your customers know about your holiday return policy and shipping policy. When is the last day they can order and still have their items for Christmas? What if they need to return after the new year?

• Update your home page
  Make seasonal changes to your website and home page layouts to show off new colors and specials. Show your customers your holiday spirit.

Do ugly websites sell more than professionally designed websites? Some people tend to believe that ugly websites are as effective, or more effective, than their professionally designed counterparts.

I think good design is more than just graphics - user interface, layout, typography, graphics, content and usability all work together to make a design good or bad. Still, the number of successful ugly ducklings out there suggest there is something more that affects conversion. Most professionals the e-commerce and web development will tell you the design and marketing of a website determine its success, but that’s just not the case.

First and foremost, the product determines a website’s success. If the website’s product or service appeals to people, it will probably be successful (unless it’s just too hard to use).

So if you’re concerned that your conversion rate is low and nothing you do to your design seems to help, take a look at your products and target market. Do they match? Do people want what you’re selling?

As both an e-commerce store owner and e-commerce & online marketing consultant, I face e-commerce issues from two sides daily. Since 1999 I have been building and managing e-commerce businesses for myself and clients, and I have decided to share some of the knowledge I have acquired.

This blog will be focused on e-commerce and will provide reviews, tips, articles and news related to running a successful e-commerce business. I will write about everything from warehousing and drop-shipping to pay-per-click marketing.

I will share my personal experience (including failures) and from time to time, I will bring on experts and industry leaders and interview them to get their insight.