I like conversion increases and I am always seeking higher conversion levels, even tenths of a point at a time (it all builds up.)

Having said that, I thought it was important to point out one thing I tell store owners. I bring this up because many store owners I meet think that increasing conversion automatically means increasing sales and that’s not always the case. You can increase conversion without increasing sales.

You see, conversion rate is a metric that helps you measure the effectiveness of your efforts. It tells you how well your site performs to turn visitors into sales (or into other actions if you consider conversion rate in that respect.) Although it helps you measure effectiveness, and is a critical metric toward moving your business in the right direction, you can actually gain higher conversion without increasing sales.

I have store owners ask me to help them increase conversion—and I am happy to do so (in fact I love that.) But when I explain to them that we can increase conversion without increasing sales they look at me like I have two heads.

Here’s an example of how this is done:

Let’s say you have 100 unique visitors to your website and you make 2 sales from that. Your conversion rate is 2%.

After looking at analytics it is determined that one marketing channel—we’ll say paid search for this example—is delivering unqualified traffic to your site. For sake of this example again, let’s say that 50%, or 50 visitors, are deemed non-qualified. You decide to turn off that channel so as to not waste any more money on it (it’s good to stop the bleeding before you burn a hole in your pocketbook. Take that saved money and put it toward resources that can help you better your business.)

In taking this approach (i.e. stopping traffic from the portion of the channel that is non-qualified) you now have 50 (not 100) unique visitors arrive at your site and you still have 2 buy (because the first sales came from that qualified group of 50 anyhow—so those sales shouldn’t change at all.) If you had 2 before you should have 2 now. All you did was eliminate the bad traffic.

Guess what just happened? Your conversion rate just doubled to 4%! But notice what did not happen. Your sales remained the same and did not increase. Although conversion increased, sales remained consistent.

So what good does it do to increase conversion and not sales? A lot when you know what you are looking at and understand that conversion is a measure of effectiveness. Under the example presented here, the double in conversion rate tells us that our site is doing a decent job at converting the traffic from the channel which is driving the 50 qualified visitors. Knowing that, we could increase sales in several ways, one of which is to attract more of the same traffic from that qualified channel (there are other ways to increase sales as well but I won’t go into them in this article.)

Our conversion rate told us our site was effective at generating sales from a specific segment of traffic. Let’s now say that we attract 50 new visitors from within that same channel (on top of the 50 already arriving at our site.) Ideally, we should gain at least 2 more sales (we win 2 sales per every 50 visitors from that channel.) Now you have increased sales!

Your increase in sales would not have been possible though without the knowledge you gained from understanding what your conversion rate was telling you. So the conversion rate is related to sales and typically an increase in conversion rate can translate to an increase in sales, but not always as directly as some might think.

Conversion rate is a metric that measures performance—understanding what it is telling you about your business is the key toward increasing sales.

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An eMarketer article published today cited statistics from About.com’s 2010 Consumer Study, which involved a significant number of female U.S. online shoppers (representing 71 percent of participants).  The article stated, “More than one-half of online buyers found online ads helpful when researching and shopping online.”

More specifically, it turned out that 53 percent of the study’s respondents appreciate it when ads make them aware of a product or service they didn’t previously know about.  And 33 percent of them like it when ads help them comparison shop and save money.

So these are obviously facts upon which ecommerce professionals should be able to capitalize, since ads that serve these purposes seem likely to get better-than-average responses.  Perhaps advertising in places a little outside the norm for a given industry might cover the “informative” angle.  With regards to saving people money, well, that’s pretty straightforward so long as the budget allows for price-cutting.

As for what sorts of approaches might be avoided, only 10 percent of the study’s respondents think it’s useful when ads try to help them find what they’re looking for.  Then the “other” category - which must cover an awful lot of stuff - got just 5 percent of the vote.  Meaning a lot of companies may want to reconsider how (in)effective their standard online ads have been.

Finally, here are a couple more of About.com’s findings worth thinking about: according to the eMarketer article, “Printable tips were also most likely to earn the notice of US Internet users, cited by 60% as the most attention-grabbing kind of online advertisement.  Video ads came in a distant second, at 19%.”

Ecommerce professionals should consider using all of this information to create a test campaign, at least, and see how it performs next to standard ads.

Watching this unfold I found three important things that ecommerce store owners can learn from it.

Toyota has put in place a method to remedy the accelerator problem and are working to correct it, but they are now also faced with what might be an even bigger challenge—rebuilding customer confidence.

Ecommerce store owners take note, here’s what we can learn:

1. Speed. The speed at which they addressed the issue from the customers perspective was slow. It has been reported that many customers have vented frustrations over the slowness to respond to the issue, and the lack of a “public face” being tied to the issue.

   You see, as we know, customers expect a number of things and one of those is speed. Speed in shipping, speed in customer response times, and speed at correcting any problem if one should arise are just a few.

   When a problem arises customers want someone to stand up, take blame personally, and fix it fast. According to reports and feedback gathered from consumers, Toyota failed (at least in many consumers eyes) to address the issue fast enough. Yes, they are doing it now, and that is a good thing, but many customers confidence has already been shaking by the initial response time.

2. Service. Customer service, quality, and reliability are some of the top ways Toyota has been able to distinguish themselves to this point.

   At least in the customers eyes, Toyota did not provide the level of service they (the customers) are use to when it came to this problem (again, initially). Toyota reports that they are indeed working on, and have remedied the issue, and are in the process of shipping out “the fix”, but as we’ve seen, some damage may have already been done in the eyes of the customers.

   Depending on how they handle this issue from here on out will determine how well then can rebuild customer confidence. Handle it properly and they should be able to correct the initial perception, but it would have been better to have addressed it from the start the way customers expected it to avert this confidence problem entirely.

3. Growth. Growth of all business is welcomed. It’s what we strive for. Growing too fast however can cause problems.

   I heard one reporter say that Toyota set out as one of its objectives to overtake GM as the world’s largest car manufacturer. And they succeeded in doing that. But that success came with a price.

   It’s the old “quality vs. quantity” issue. The fewer of something you make (in general), the more attention you can pay to its quality. The more of something you make, the less time there seems to be to devote to quality (at least this is the way it tends to work out.) This is why sometimes you get better service from a small business (who knows you by name) over larger businesses where you tend to become just a number.

   In this case, Toyota grew, but they may have grown at the expense of quality—at least temporarily. It’s not always good to be the biggest—it quite often is better to be the best at what you do.

   If that means slower growth, then so be it. Your growth will breed quality and for that your customers will remember you.

So what can ecommerce store owners learn from Toyota?

1. When issues arise, be fast and open to inform your customers of them, take blame if required, and correct those issues asap. It’s inevitable that at some point you’ll encounter customer service issues. It’s not a question of if, but rather when (even the best can’t avoid it.) How you deal with these issues when they arrive is what will determine your outcome.
2. Grow your company at a rate that your internal operations allow. If the infrastructure is not there to keep up with growth, your company will have to sacrifice something to keep that growth alive and that sacrifice usually ends up hurting in the end.

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Among the top-gaining Retail sub-categories were Jewelry/Luxury Goods/Accessories, Sports/Outdoor, and Flowers/Gifts/Greetings sites, each growing more than 20 percent versus November. Jewelry/Luxury Goods/Accessories sites attracted nearly 23 million visitors during the month, representing a 30-percent increase from November.

eBags, Inc. led the category with 2.9 million visitors (up 28 percent), followed by Coach.com with 2.2 million visitors (up 26 percent), Zale Corporation with 2.1 million (up 48 percent) and Kay Jewelers with 1.7 million (up 69 percent).

Sports/Outdoor sites grew to nearly 39 million visitors during the month, a 25-percent increase versus November, led by eBay Sports U.S. with 5.1 million visitors (up 21 percent), which was closely followed by Cabelas, Inc. with 5.0 million visitors (up 26 percent). DicksSportingGoods.com grabbed the #3 position with 4.6 million visitors (up 39 percent), followed by SportsAuthority.com with 2.9 million visitors (up 29 percent).

Flowers/Gifts/Greetings sites saw a 23-percent gain, reaching nearly 39.8 million unique visitors in December. AmericanGreetings Property led the category with 13.6 million visitors (up 18 percent), followed by Gifts.com with 6.8 million (up 49 percent), Hallmark with 5.6 million (up 46 percent) and 1-800-Flowers.com, Inc. with 2.9 million (up 48 percent).

Check out the full press release

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Also know as a “Google Base Feed” or a “Froogle Feed,” the Google Shopping feed is basically a file containing a list of all your products along with relevant information like pricing, image locations, and so on. Google has a list of minimum requirements for a shopping feed, but it pays to provide as much information as possible.

How do you know if you need to optimize your feed? If you have an active feed which gets lots of impressions (views), but very few clicks, then you may want to make some adjustments. Likewise, if you have a lot of products listed, but aren’t getting many impressions, then you have an even greater need to fix the information in your feed.

Here are some hints for feed optimization:

• Do a little keyword research - By using the Google Keyword Tool, you can find out which keywords related to your product get the highest search demand.
• Be Original - Lots of people might be selling the exact same product using the manufacturer’s title and description. Originality can set you apart, and get more attention.
• Put Relevant Information First – Aside from appearing in the Google Shopping Results, a truncated title for your product may appear among general searches, so make sure that the first part of the title (product name) describes the product succinctly.
• Include Part Numbers – Many people know exactly what they’re looking for. This is especially true for people buying ink cartridges, batteries, and memory cards.
• Include Brands – This is very important in shopping. Brand searches have a very high conversion rate, and you can list items in shopping feeds that have trademark filtering in PPC engines. An item like the “HP 60 Combo Pack Ink Cartridge” illustrates relevance, part number, and branding, plus it ties in with the principle that someone looking for this item is a motivated buyer.
• Write Good Descriptions – Create a compelling, keyword-rich snippet encouraging the reader to buy the product. Note that descriptions in shopping feeds are also used to help the engine deliver relevant results. Once again, the best information should be at the beginning of the description.
• Check Images – Remember that people are doing their shopping from the pages of Google, so make sure that the image presented portrays the product as clearly as possible. Listings that show good images are far more likely to get clicked.
• Check Pricing - This can be the biggest reason you’re not getting clicks. If somebody else sells the exact same product for a dollar less, the consumer will consider the other site first!
• Add Attributes – More detail helps the search engine show more relevant products. You can add product attributes like color, compatibility, height, length, weight, year (useful for automotive accessories, collectibles), and custom attributes. If you sell products that are based around a variety of factors, you can gain a competitive advantage by being the most relevant.
• Disclose Shipping – For competitive items in Google Shopping, Google will show a list of base prices, a list of shipping costs, and then the total cost. If you have free shipping, you can float to the top of a vendor list when people are looking for the lowest total price. (For an illustration, type in “ipod touch 32gb” into Google Shopping and then hit the “compare prices” button.)

Optimizing a Google Shopping feed is not a one-time process, but requires a little tinkering. Basically, what you want to do is make a few changes, see how consumers react over the space of a week or two, and then make adjustments to products that aren’t showing results. Part of the process also involves searching for specific items and seeing how your competitors are describing the same item. Put yourselves in the shoes of a consumer, and ask yourself if the competing product listing has any features that should be part of your offering. Considering the high relative value of a click from Google shopping, a well optimized feed can improve your bottom line with very little additional cost on your end. If you’ve been running the same feed for a long time, and haven’t been getting the results you want, then a little feed optimization can go a long way.

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Can you offer your customers guaranteed delivery by Christmas Eve?

If yes, then go send an email to your customers right now and let them know!

Include a coupon for free shipping or 10% off to sweeten the deal. Make sure to highlight all the reasons why they should be shopping online at your store:

• No parking
• No lines
• Guaranteed in stock
• Guaranteed arrival
• Secure shopping
• Free shipping

Offer your customers the ability to share their coupon. In fact, encourage them to forward the email to their friends, coworkers, and family members.

If you cannot guarantee arrival in time for Christmas, offer your customers the ability to purchase gift certificates from your website. Create a beautiful gift card for your customer to give to their loved ones.

I did a search on Istock and found a few gift cards that you can easily add your company name and amount too.

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Google recently unveiled a new Ecommerce Search Solution. It looks to be geared toward big ecommerce retailers and the pricing scheme for it will depend on the number of products/items on businesses’ data feed and search queries.

The Official Google Blog says Commerce Search aims to make the otherwise cumbersome task of searching for products on e-commerce sites easier and more fun.

The features Commerce Search provides are as follows:

• Lightning fast Google searching technology applied to retailers databases enabling consumers to find the right products in a snap
• Scalable hosted solution that aims to increase seasonal query volume
• Search refinement functionality that can automatically generate groupings based on user query and matching items
• Easily manageable product promotions that provides complete control to marketers and e-commerce site administrators
• Full customization option for controlling how products are displayed on search results landing pages
• No additional adminstrative cost for deployment and maintenance
• Customized reporting and statistical analysis via integrated Google Analytics

Information on Commerce Search it can be found here:

http://www.google.com/commercesearch/

If anyone has had any experience with this new tool I’d love to hear about it. What are your thoughts?

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The release is timed perfectly for the holiday season rush, which happens to be online retailing’s busiest time of the year.

Google Commerce Search is a new enterprise product which allows website owners to power online retailing directly via cloud based product database. According to the New Google Commerce Search area, it aims to:

Improve your shopping experience with fast, intuitive Google search technology.

• Enable visitors to find the right products faster
• Filter results by category, price, brand or other attributes
• Provide user-friendly spelling options and synonyms
• Increase website conversions and sales
• Boost or promote chosen products within search results
• Deploy search solution in days, and scale effortlessly
• Customize, track, and optimize performance

To use Google Commerce Search, users will submit their product data to the Google Merchant Center and Google Product Search. This can be done via direct upload, data feeds or using Google’s API.

User can then go to the Commerce Search administrative console to customize look and feel of the search experience, and also add special offers, promotions and other product/search options.

As with most Google enterprise offerings, there’s extensive reporting to ensure you can optimize the results from your online retailing efforts.

If you want to uncover more detail about Google Commerce Search, watch the video below:

Now before you cancel the subscription to your existing e-commerce software or application, note that the new Google Commerce Search starts at a cool USD$50,000 per year. I’m sure a more affordable model will be released in due course.

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This latest statistical ‘he said / she said’ consists of different numbers regarding the state of e-commerce. Today’s particpants are, “In the red corner”, comScore. They are in the red corner because they are reporting that e-commerce is slipping for the first time in the history of the world (you get it right?). “In the blue corner” is Forrester who tells everyone to not get our knickers in a twist because even in the cruddy economy e-commerce is the light on the hill or a veritable economic ‘beacon o’ hope’. Today’s match is brought to you by the Wall Street Journal.

On Thursday, comScore reported that U.S. online spending in the third quarter slipped 2% to $29.6 billion versus last year. That represents the first time since comScore began tracking the figures that online spending has shrunk for two quarters in a row. (Online shopping was flat in the first quarter, and slipped 1% in the second quarter.) ComScore was slightly more upbeat about the potential of growth in the fourth quarter, if only because we’ll be comparing it to last year’s dismal fourth quarter.

But on Monday, Forrester Research put out a report that reached a different conclusion: online sales in November and December are likely to grow 8% compared to last year. Moreover, a survey Forrester conducted with the National Retail Foundation found that online retailers reported sales in the third quarter grew 16%.

Geesh, can’t we all just get along? Let’s just say this. The rest of the article is the two researchers pointing fingers at each other saying that how they collect data is better than the other guy and having a researchers equivalent of a “my dad can beat up your dad” argument.

How about we do this? How about we look at what has happened and then work toward getting better. Then we assess if we did or did not get better after we actually DID SOMETHING! What a concept.

Aren’t rosy predictions and unfettered prognostications how we got into this mess in the first place? Isn’t predicting the future that never was a mistake? If the Internet truly is a better way to do things then why can’t we find a better way to assess things rather than act like we have some magic 8-ball or crystal ball that tells the future as well. We don’t.

My prediction? People will go out and do their very best to make something happen in Q4 regardless of these predictions and then they will live in the world of reality of whether things are good or bad, not in the fantasy land of what they may or may not be in the future. This research is for the big boys and not the rest of the world and even then it’s dicey at best. One man’s opinion. Have a fun Friday!

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As part of your marketing calendar you should have planned for Black Friday with your own store. Pushing the best sale ever (or a one day sale) should have started at least a week ago. However, if you have not planned for it, you’re not out of luck. You could still quickly put up a sale along with a banner and gain some advantage for those visitors who come to your site. Get it up at midnight tonight and you’re in good shape.

Although Black Friday marks the beginning of the season, in 2005, Shop.org coined the phrase Cyber Monday as the first Monday following Thanksgiving. This has long been one of the busiest online shopping days of the year. Many consumers go online to begin there shopping. Again, this date should have been on your merchandising calendar already but it’s not too late to get something in place. Last year I wrote an entry listing 6 promotional ideas you could use for Cyber Monday. Those tips would be a good place to start if wondering what you can do.

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