Speed kills. In the case of website usability, the lack of speed kills. Many have erroneously assumed the advent of high speed internet connections would make website performance optimization irrelevant. On the contrary, it seems as internet connection speeds increase, users simply become more impatient and demand faster browsing. Below, I’ve gathered some simple (and advanced) ways to speed up your site.

Before making any changes, I would recommend benchmarking your download time with WebSite Optimization’s webpage optimization tool.

Image Optimizing Tips:

1. Compress .jpg and .gif images: If you use photoshop, always use the “Save for Web” feature. If you don’t have access to PS, there’s a ton of free image compressing freeware out there.
2. Compress or eliminate unnecessary Flash elements: In my opinion, flash is over-rated, slow, and buggy. It has it’s benefits, but make sure you don’t rely on it for navigation or other necessary site elements.
3. Don’t Resize Images within HTML: Don’t use the width or height attribute in the IMG tag to resize larger options. For example, if you resize an image that was originally 300 x 300 to 100 x 100, the user still has to download the full size one. Instead, use thumbnails.
4. Specify Image Dimensions: Don’t leave the width or height attributes blank. By doing so, you’ll slow down the browser rendering of the page, since it doesn’t know how much space to give for each image.
5. Slice Your Images: Slicing doesn’t actually reduce image size (in fact, it increases the overall size). However, it does increase the apparent load time by making each slice appear one at a time rather than one big image popping up after it downloads.

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Tags: 25 Ways Series Web Marketing Website Conversion Tips Website Usability

In some ways, it seems search engines have a grudge against eCommerce sites. Often times, I don’t blame them. Many online stores offer little useful content, including dry manufacturer product descriptions, poor internal linking, and no unique, user generated content. Without a doubt eCommerce sites have unique challenges when it comes to SEO. Below I’ve gathered 25 tips that I’ve successfully used while optimizing eCommerce sites in the past.

1. Avoid Manufacturer Product Descriptions: It’s tempting to just copy and paste from the manufacturer’s website, but resist the urge. At the very least, re-write the description in some way to make it unique.
2. Create a SEO Keyword Field in Product Database: Just as every product record in your catalog has a name, price, and other attributes, you should also create a SEO keyword field that is displayed in the title tags, meta tags, and preferably the body as well. As you add products to the site, enter commonly search for keywords in this field. Not everyone will search by the brand name or item number, so this will greatly help your product pages rank for long tail searches.
3. Focus on Singular Keywords on Product Page: As a general rule, I try to optimize for plural keywords on the home page or other SEO landing pages. Focus on singular terms on the product pages by using the SEO keyword field mentioned in step 2.
4. Simple Product & Category URLs: Ideally, URLs should consist of keywords, not useless ID’s or other parameters. If you don’t have the option of using URL re-writing software, at least limit the number of variables passed in the URL.
5. All Products 2 or 3 Clicks from the Home Page: Keep your product pages as close as possible to your greatest source of PageRank. Many sites bury part of their product catalog deep within dozens of pages of categories and subcategories. This can be accomplished by using SEO friendly rollovers or increasing the number of products per page.
6. Unique Title Tags: While it’s debatable whether the company name belongs in the beginning of the title tag, most agree you should not include extra keywords that are repeated in every tag. For example, if you company name was XYZ Travel, include only the company name in title tag, not “XYZ Travel Agency and Vacations.” Use as little duplicate content as possible in order to prevent diluting the value of the rest of the text in the title tag.
7. Unique Keyword Meta Tags: Meta tags, including keywords and description, should be entirely unique on every product page. Though meta content likely doesn’t directly affect your ranking, unique tags will prevent duplicate content penalties. In addition, don’t stuff keywords into your meta tags that aren’t relevant to the specific page they are on.
8. Unique Description Meta Tags: Personally, I like putting the same product description that appears on the product page in meta description tag. This will ensure unique content on each product page.
9. Product Reviews: A great strategy for guaranteeing unique content is displaying user generated content from your customers. Allow customers to review products they’ve purchased or comment on one’s they haven’t.
10. Pass PR Wisely: Obviously, not every page on your site deserves the same link juice. While your Return policy page is important, it likely won’t bring in loads of revenue driving traffic from organic search. Make sure your primary SEO pages, (category and products pages) receive most of the PR flow by capping PR flow on less important links. You can accomplish this via Javascript links, form submit links, the no-follow tag, or the robots.txt file.
11. Internal Contextual Links: Site navigation links don’t tell search engines very much information about the page. Within a paragraph of text, link to a relevant page using keyword rich anchor text.
12. Avoid Session IDs in URLs: Many ecommerce software platforms use cookie-less unique session IDs in the site URLs. Unfortunately, this creates an infinite amount of duplicate content for the SE’s to crawl. There are ways to prevent this using an ethical type of cloaking which serves URLs to spiders without the session ID.
13. Create a Product RSS Feed: Create a product feed and submit it to relevant content aggregators. Google Base accepts an XML like product feed and displays your results for Google Base searches. Product feeds can be a great way of picking up free backlinks directly to your product pages.
14. Product Tagging: With the advent of social media, customers have become accustomed with the concept of tagging. Allow your customers to tag products with their own keywords. When you allow users to tag your products, you’ll likely start ranking for slang keywords that you would have never thought of on your own.
15. Page File Names: If possible, use keyword rich page file names. A page files name such as www.yoursite.com/keyword-phrase-here.html tells Googlebot a lot more than a URL such as www.yoursite.com/?ID=1234.
16. Use iframes for Duplicate Content: If you have repetitive content that must appear on every page, or your product descriptions are not unique, consider placing them inside an iframe with an invisible border. Users will not know that they data technically resides on another page search engines will not penalize you for duplicate content.
17. Links in Product Descriptions: Create keyword rich links from within the product descriptions of one product linking to another. I’ve found this is a very effective strategy for targeting long-tail keywords.
18. Crawl-able Navigation: Avoid JavaScript or css based navigation structures that don’t allow spiders through. If you’re stuck with one, at least duplicate your navigation in the footer of every page with normal hyperlinks. In additional, don’t rely on form based navigation such as drop down lists since the SEs can’t follow them.
19. Don’t Stuff Keywords in your Nav: This is useless and very tacky. Keywords that show up universally in the navigation on every page are not as important as they used to be. Instead, use keyword rich anchor text pointing to your important pages within a paragraph of relevant text.
20. Don’t Use “View” or “More”: On your product category pages, make sure you link to the individual product pages with anchor text that contains more than just words like “View” or “See more”. Vague terms such as these tell spiders nothing about your products.
21. Optimize your Images: With images now popping up in the regular SERPs, every image on your site should be optimized. Make sure all your product images contain unique alt text attributes. By simply populating the alt text with the product and brand name, I’ve seen a huge increase in traffic from Google Image search. In addition, you’re making your site more useable for the vision impaired.
22. Optimize your Internal Site Search: This is more of a usability tip, but it applies perfectly within the context of eCommerce SEO. Because your visitor found your site via a search engine, they will likely expect your internal site search to work as well. I’ve found that many first time visitors landing your site from a SERP will search for the exact same term they typed into Google.
23. Create Brand Landing Pages: If your site sells branded products that customers may be searching for, setup a optimized landing page for every brand.
24. Use Title Attributes in Links: For all anchor text on your site, be sure to use appropriate title attributes (e.g. <a href=”page.html” title=”keywords here”>) in order to provide search engines more information about what the page contains. Although not nearly as important as the actual anchor text, title attributes are factored into the ranking algorithm in some way.
25. Track Page Yield: In order to determine the effectiveness of your site as a whole, take the number of unique keywords you are found for during a given time period. Then, divide that by the number pages indexed by Google. This will give you your page yield, a good metric for measuring the length of your “long tail.”

About Palmer Web Marketing

Palmer Web Marketing offers Ethical SEO services and Expert eCommerce consulting for small to medium size businesses.

I suppose I can title this post “25 Email Marketing Mistakes I’ve Made.” But rather than focus on the negative, below I’ve outlined the best practices I’ve come to adopt over the years. Hope you find something here useful.

1. Diversify your Content: If your entire email focuses on one product, service, or topic, you risk alienating all but the few people who will be interested. Unless you have segmented your database based on previous behavior, do not send an email on only 1 topic. I consistently find that the click through rate increases in proportion with varied content.
2. Don’t Stress about Spam Words: Many experts will tell you to avoid words like “free” or “sale”. In my opinion, ISPs tend to be moving away from content based spam filtering in favor of reputation based filtering. In other words, your sending IP address and from email are more important than whether or not your email contains certain words. Personally, I’ve used words like “free” in the subject line without any affect on delivery rates.
3. Make it Readable with Images Disabled: Always take into account the appearance of your email with images disabled. For email clients such as Outlook, this is now the default feature. Even popular web mails like Hotmail now disable images unless the sender is in the address book of the recipient. The best tactic to create readable emails with images block is use an alt description.
4. Create an Online Version: Always provide an online version of your email for users having trouble viewing images. I’ve calculated from emails I’ve sent in the past that around 5% of users will use this feature.

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Tags: 25 Ways Series best practices E commerce e mail marketing ecommerce email marketing Internet Marketing Transactional Email Marketing Web Marketing

Hopefully, you’ve already begun to consider any necessary improvements to your site to accommodate the influx of holiday traffic.  Below I’ve compiled holiday improvement ideas for e-commerce sites. I hope you find something here useful.

1. Offer Bounce Back Discounts: Think about how much traffic your site will receive during the holidays. How can you harness that traffic to create year long business? Consider offering a good discount incentive for customers to come back and shop in January. You can automatically email them a coupon after each order, or send one along with the package. Make sure that this coupon is not valid until after the holidays.
2. Loosen Up on Your Return Policy: While a 30 day return policy is commonplace for the rest of the year, it may scare off early shoppers during the holidays. Make it clear to your visitors that you will accept returns and exchanges on all Christmas gift purchases.
3. Use a Website Monitoring Service: Odds are, your website will go down at least once during the busy holiday season. If you’re not big enough to have a 24 hour IT department monitoring your server, signup for a website monitoring service such as Alertsite, who will email or text message you if your site goes down.
4. Gift Receipts: Gift givers hate revealing how much they spent on a gift. Make sure you allow customers to click a Gift receipt option that will hide the prices on the packing list from the recipient.
5. Gift Messages: Let your customers add a personal message to their gift. For simplicity, you can have the message appear on the packing list which will already be included in the box.
6. Determine Shipping Cut-off Dates: This is quite possibly the most important information to communicate to customers during the holidays. Check with your shipping carriers to determine what the cutoff days are for the various methods of shipping.
7. Prominent “No Hassle” Return Policy: Your return policy should be easy to find. Consider re-packaging it as a ”no hassle” policy in order to calm the fears of first time buyers.
8. Holiday Graphical Themes: Show some holiday spirit and redesign some of the artwork on your site with a holiday theme. Hopefully, this will get visitors in a buying mood.
9. Increase Server Capacity: Talk with your web host about how you can increase your server performance during the holiday rush. You don’t want to end up like Walmart or Amazon on last year’s cyber Monday. Here’s a sad, but funny example of Macy’s servers getting overloaded.
10. Checkup on your Domain, Web hosting, and Merchants: God forbid that your credit card or domain name expires during the Christmas rush. Double check the basics just to be safe.
11. Audit Your Online Product Catalog: Have a detail oriented person visit each of your product pages to ensure accuracy. Check for typos, broken images, and bad hyperlinks.
12. Seasonal SEO and PPC Landing Pages: Don’t forget to optimize your SEO and PPC campaigns for seasonal keywords. Visitors searching habits change around the holidays, so your marketing strategy should as well.
13. Mystery Shop your Site: Either do it yourself or hire a professional service to mystery shop your site. Mystery shopping should include ordering, contacting customer service, and returning the product back to you.
14. Learn from Your Past Mistakes: Just for fun, checkout your site at Christmas time last year on the wayback machine. You’ll likely spot issues that can be improved this year.
15. Learn from Your Competitors: Also, checkout what your competition was doing last year. It may give you some tips on what or what not to do this year.
16. Build up those Wish Lists: Start encouraging your visitors to build their wish lists now. Come Christmas, they’ll know exactly where to find what they want. Check out this post for Wish list improvement ideas.
17. Offer Online Gift Certificates: If your site doesn’t offer online gift certificates, and your visitors don’t find that perfect gift, they will just leave. Gift certificates make great last minute gifts. In addition, they’re a great way to drive sales at the beginning of next year.
18. Gifts by Price: Organize and suggest gifts by price range. For example, highlight gifts under $10, 25, 50, 100 or whatever price points are appropriate for your business.
19. Gifts by Person: Organize gifts intended for different people groups such as kids, teens, parents, grandparents, etc.
20. Get 404 and 500 Error Notifications: Talk with your webmaster and ask him to setup a script that notifies him every time a 404 (page not found) or 500 (internal server error) occurs on your site. You might be surprised how often errors occur. When we set this up for one of my clients, they received over 1,000 errors in one day. These errors can be costly, especially at Christmas time.
21. Stocking Stuffers: Be sure to highlight low cost products that would make good stocking stuffers. These can be a great way to increase your average order total.
22. Shipping and Return Info on Product Pages: Shipping and return issues will be top of mind for your customers at this time. Assure them your policies are convenient and fair by linking to your shipping and returns page from your product pages.
23. Offer Gift Wrapping: Many don’t like the idea of sending gifts to friends or family wrapped in nothing but bubble wrap or Styrofoam popcorn. If you can, offer gift wrapping services to your online customers. Be sure to charge enough to cover the labor and material costs for this additional service.
24. Emphasize Urgency: Let your customers know it’s not safe to wait until the last minute. To prevent shipping issues or product stock outs, encourage your customers to shop early.
25. Bundle Products: Gift selection is much easier when related items are grouped together in some sort of gift basket or bundle.

Hopefully you’ve found something here useful for your site. Be sure to leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions.  

When you consider the competitive advantages of an online retailer, customer service is usually not the first thing that comes to mind. Many e-commerce sites, even the large well-known ones, are known for impersonal, mediocre customer service practices. And yet, the few e-tailors that differentiate themselves on serving their customers such as Zappos become well-known case studies in client care. In this post, I’ll share some of the unique best practices I’ve seen over the last few years that serve to differentiate companies in customer service.

1. Assign a Personal Customer Service Rep: Along with the order confirmation receipt that you send to your customers, also automatically assign each customer a personal representative that will field their questions. Send the email from this representative’s name, and include their contact info. Customers will be impressed that they have a “personal” representative assign specifically to them. For more info on this tactic, checkout this post on DermaTechRX.
2. Human Touch: Many online shoppers struggle with trusting an online merchant due to the lack of face to face interaction. Mitigate this weakness by showing pictures of your customer service staff. Christian retailer C28 shows the picture of their customer service manager on the Help page as well as on every order confirmation email. In addition, below the picture is the manager’s direct contact info. Something like this can go a long way to instill trust in your company.
3. Call Customers Who Abandon Orders: When a customer starts an order but doesn’t finish it, follow up with a phone call to find out if there were any problems. Customers appreciate the gesture, and you will likely save many sales in the process.
4. Free Upgraded Shipping: Surprise select customers by upgrading their shipping to 1 or 2 express. If you do this, be sure to send them an email letting them know they have been upgraded. This strategy was pioneered by Zappos.
5. Same Day Shipping: Most websites have a policy of shipping orders 1 or 2 business days after they are placed. If possible, selectively ship some orders the same day. The speedy delivery will be appreciated, though not expected by your customers.
6. Increase # of Reps: It goes without saying that if you have a higher representative to customer ratio, you will have the time to better serve your clients. While not every business can afford this, if you want to differentiate yourself with outstanding customer service, it’s a must.
7. Hand-written thank you on Packing Slip: Most packing slips are dull, impersonal, and useful only if you need to return the merchandise. On rare occasions, I’ve received orders where the packing list featured a hand-written, personalized thank you from a staff member. While this may not be practical for every order, it is a great way to impress select customers. Another idea might be to include the business card with contact info for a manager.
8. Follow Up Surveys: Consider sending a survey email out with every order confirmation. While not every customer will complete it, your customers will know you care enough to ask their opinion.
9. Extensive FAQ Knowledge Base: Surprisingly, one of the easiest ways to improve your customer satisfaction may be to prevent needless customer interactions in the first place. No matter how friendly your call center representative, no customer will be pleased if they have to call you in order to answer a simple question like “how do I return a product?” Prevent situations like this by maintaining a searchable FAQ knowledge base that answers every reasonable question.
10. Live Chat: Many customers dislike the thought of sitting on hold for even a few minutes. Offering a live chat option can be an inexpensive way of answering questions for your visitors, and reducing the call volume for your call center.
11. Improve After Hour Call Center: If your business employs a 3rd party after hour call center that is off-site, make sure you frequently monitor the quality of care they are rendering. Make sure they are empowered to serve your customers as effectively as possible. If your primary call center is 3rd party, seriously consider bringing it in house. While this is not always the most affordable option, it’s necessary if you desire to give your clients your absolute best.
12. Prominent Customer Testimonials: Place customer testimonials on more than just the “testimonial” page. Zappos features them right on their main customer service page. A word of caution applies here though. If you’re going to “brag” so to speak about your service, make sure you follow through!
13. Detailed Product Pages: Answer questions before they are asked by always having thoroughly detailed product pages. Include all the relevant info a customer would want to know about your products. For more ideas on this topic, checkout my previous post on 25 ways to improve your product page.
14. Customer Centric Slogan: Show your dedication to customer care by prominently featuring a customer centered slogan that summarizes your company’s practices. A great example of this would be Zappos’ famous slogan on their home page: “We are a service company that happens to sell shoes.”
15. Free Return Shipping: One of the greatest stumbling blocks to online ordering is the thought of having to return the product. Consider sending customers a pre-paid return shipping label in the case of a product needing to be returned. Because this is rarely done by e-commerce stores, you will certainly set yourself apart in the mind of your customer.
16. Automatic Price Protection: Always honor sale prices of items that were previously purchased by customers. They need to be able to shop with this confidence. Better yet, automatically notify customers when items they have purchased in the past go on sale. Offer to apply the price difference toward a future purchase or just refund the amount. Sound crazy? Maybe, but it’s small cost that can win a customer for life.
17. Lenient Return Policy: Make sure your return policy is not unnecessarily complicated or rigid. How many times have you shopped at a certain retailer because their lenient return policy gave you the confidence you needed to buy? (Think Costco vs. Walmart!)
18. Thank You Calls: Call select customers and thank them for ordering. This personalized gesture will blow them away.
19. Thank You Emails: Email certain customers and thank them for their business. Be sure to include something personalized in the email that will convince them it’s not just something generic sent to everyone.
20. Do More than Fix Your Mistakes: When your business makes a mistake, be sure that you exceed your customer’s expectations when fixing it. If an item was mistakenly left out of a shipment, don’t just a apologize, offer that item for free. Many businesses find their most loyal customers result from a highly satisfying resolution to a problem.
21. Fix Other’s Mistakes: If a shipment is delayed or lost due to the fault of the shipping carrier, don’t just blame UPS, offer a solution. Offer to promptly re-ship the item, or at the very least, offer to take care of the problem with the carrier so the customer doesn’t have to.
22. Guaranteed Email Response Time: Most customers expect an email inquiry to be answered within at most 24 hours. If you can, guarantee a response time faster than this. Also, acknowledge the receipt of an email inquiry by employing an auto responder.
23. Secret Shopping: Used extensively by brick-and-mortar retailers, secret shopping is a great way to identify problems and keep your customer service staff on their toes.
24. Upgrade Your CRM Tools: Proper technology can go a long way to improving customer care. At the very least, ensure that your staff has the ability to view the history of previous interactions with a customer. It’s very frustrating when you have to repeatedly explain the situation to a representative.
25. Personalize Everything: Always great customers by name on the home page, and offer them personalized product recommendations based on previous orders.

I once heard it said that “the enemy of good is not bad, it’s mediocre.” Too many online retailers struggle with mediocre customer service. Many businesses fail to realize their customer base is also powerful marketing machine. If treated right, they can become to most effective viral marketing campaign imaginable. Treated poorly, and they can become a PR disaster.

If you enjoyed this post, please also checkout 25 ways to improve your shopping cart and 25 ways to improve your checkout.

Imagine walking into a busy, high traffic grocery store. Despite the large number of customers in the store, you notice abandoned shopping carts strewn about the aisles and checkout lanes.  For many online businesses, this example illustrates perfectly the predicament many online retailers find themselves in. Why? For one, I believe many online retailers rarely actually test their own checkouts from the user’s perspective. If they had, they would have identified stumbling blocks. Below I’ve compiled a fairly comprehensive list of ideas on improving the checkout process.

1. Eliminate pages, eliminate scrolling: Many usability experts decry the benefits of shortening the checkout to as few pages as possible. While in theory this works, sometimes the real world provides other factors that must be considered. For example, suppose you combine your whole checkout into 1 page. Sounds great, unless the page is a mile tall and requires excessive vertical scrolling. In my opinion, the basic rule of thumb should be to condense the checkout into as few pages as possible requiring little to no vertical scrolling.
2. Hide the Navigation: Hide both your top and side navigation once the customer has initiated the checkout in order to prevent distractions. At this point, your goal should be to finalize the order as soon as possible before the visitor loses interest.
3. Hacker Safe Logos: Services from HackerSafe or Control Scan can be a great way to boost confidence during checkout. For more info on Hacker Safe, check this post.
4. Secure Certificate Logos: Most likely, your Payment Gateway and Secure Certificate provider offer a clickable security logo that you can install in your checkout pages. This provides an external way of validating the authenticity of your site.
5. Progress Indicator Bar: Always show shoppers where they are in the process. Everyone likes to know there is light at the end of the tunnel.
6. Prominent 1-800 Number: If you offer a live help line, make sure the number is highly visible everywhere in the checkout screens.
7. Live Chat: For those not wanting to call a 1-800 and wait on hold, Live chat is an excellent customer service feature. I’ve found it to be very effective for businesses with high value items such as jewelry.
8. No Default Credit Card Type: Typically, before or after you enter your credit card you are asked to select what type of card it is. DO NOT default this option to one of credit card types as many people will not notice it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve neglected to change the default option, and tried to use a MasterCard with the Visa option selected. Customers then become confused when they received an error telling them their credit card it invalid.
9. Auto-Detect Credit Card Type: Many card processors, including Authorize.net don’t even require you to have a credit card type drop down box since the first 4 numbers of the card determine that. Paypal does a nice job of automatically detecting and showing the credit card type with AJAX.
10. Don’t Up-Sell or Cross-Sell: Resist the temptation to up sell or cross sell during checkout. Remember, this is not like a supermarket checkout aisle. Users get distracted and are free to abandon their shopping carts at any time for any reason.
11. Gift Receipt / Gift Wrap Option: Customers have begun to expect this, especially during the holidays. No one wants to send a gift with an invoice showing what they paid. At the very least, offer a gift receipt with the prices not showing. Even better, include an option for a gift message.
12. User Friendly Credit Card Errors: I rarely have seen this done, yet it can make worlds of a difference. In the complex world of online credit card processing, it’s crucial to simplify any potential problems for the end user. If their credit card is declined due to an address mismatch, give them a list of possible solutions. For example, maybe they have moved recently and the processor or bank still has the old address on file? Or maybe they don’t know where to find the 3 digit security code on the back of the card.
13. Don’t Require Phone or Email: Though most e-tailors would like to have this information, you must ask yourself if it is important enough to risk losing the sale. Many privacy sensitive customers don’t like to give out this information.
14. Email List Opt-Out: Validate Email Address: Always allow people to opt-out. Though technically this is not required since they are making a purchase, it is a best practice required by most ISPs in order to be considered for white listing.
15. Copy Billing Info to Shipping Info: Most sites have this feature, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Nothing is worse than having to type the same information twice for the billing and shipping.
16. Don’t Require Login: Again, certain people will prefer not to create an account, so don’t risk losing the sale over this. Provide a “checkout without account” option.
17. Prominent “First time signup” Link: If you’re like most businesses, you probably get a significant amount of online business from first time shoppers. For this reason, there should always be a prominent “first time signup” link in the checkout when you ask someone to sign in.
18. Offer Paypal: While I have doubts about certain online payment methods such as Google Checkout and Bill Me Later, I strongly believe adding Paypal will help conversion, especially for international customers or those without credit cards.
19. Offer E-Check Payments: Another common payment method is by an e-check. Many customers who pay this way have checking accounts, but no credit or debit cards.
20. Security Code Explanation: Always provide a clear explanation of what this credit card security code is and why you need it. While most sites provide an image of where to find it, rarely do they answer the question of why they need it. Many shoppers are wary about giving this out, so provide an explanation of why it’s necessary for an online purchase.
21. Disable “Finalize Order” button On Click: A lot is going on technically speaking when the user clicks the “Finalize Order” button. Many users are impatient, and will click this button again and again until something happens. Depending on how your checkout is programmed, this can cause serious problems such as double billing or duplicate orders. Prevent this confusion by disabling the button after it’s clicked.
22. Show Estimated Processing Time: In addition to the above, show something to the nature of ”please allow up to 60 seconds to process your order.” after the shopper clicks the finalize order button.
23. Bookmark able Receipt Page: Make sure your receipt page is not the same page that processes the order via a form post. Shoppers tend to bookmark receipt pages, but if it’s not available later they will be very confused.
24. Shipping Time Estimates: Usually, the first question on a customers mind after submitting an order is “when will I get it?” Prevent needless customer service interactions by providing an estimate of both when the order will ship and when it will arrive.
25. Eliminate Insecure Page Errors: A customer should never have to see a “this page contains insecure items” error right before they enter their credit card. Usually, this is just a case of the webmaster not using relative links properly with images (http:// vs. https://).

I hope you found something here useful for your online business. This is actually the 4th post in my “25 Ways to” series, so please checkout the other posts as well. 

I suppose this post is a good prequel to 25 Ways to Improve Your Product Pages. An extremely crucial step in the buying process occurs on the product category page. Basically, product category pages show listings for all products within a certain category, and provide a link to get more detail on the product page. Every product based e-commerce store has them, but not all of them are equally optimized. While the suggestions below vary greatly in their complexity and may not suite all businesses, I hope you’ll find something you can implement on your site.

1. More Items Per Page: In the past, it was advantageous to show only a few products per page due to slower dial up connections. With most surfers on DSL now, it makes sense to show more products per page, so users don’t have to constantly click to the next page. Also, be sure to allow them to view more than the preset amount of items.
2. AJAX Popup Feature: Many sites are now allowing you to view more product details such as more photos or the description directly on the product listing page. This is a great time saver when used with
   AJAX, because it doesn’t require the customer to leave the product category page. Checkout the “Quick Look” feature on Gap.com.
3. Add to Cart Button: Don’t underestimate the eagerness of your customers to buy. If they know what they are looking for, many won’t need to go all the way to the product page in order to click add to cart. If possible, put the “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” button directly on the product listings page. For an example, see C28’s music pages.
4. Sort by Price: Let’s face it. Price is one of the most important factors for most consumers. Give them a way to answer the ubiquitous question, “which one’s the cheapest?” by letting them sort by price.
5. Sort by Sale / Clearance: Every customer base has its bargain hunters. Highlight sale or clearance price merchandise by letting them view those items first.
6. Sort by Age: Your repeat visitors will greatly appreciate this. The first thing on the repeat customers mind when they hit your site will be “What’s new?”
7. Sort by User Ratings: Product peer reviews are becoming increasingly important to online shoppers. Many have begun the expect them. Let people easily see which products are rated the best by other buyers.
8. Sort by Best Seller: No one likes to feel they are the first one buying something. Ever heard of this psychological merchandising trick? Make a perfectly stacked pile of widgets and place them in a prime location in a store, and they won’t sell. However, take a few widgets out of the pile, and people think they are selling like hot-cakes and grab one for themselves. All that to say… let your visitors view the top selling products first.
9. Filter by Brand: For the brand conscience, let people filter down and eliminate items they don’t want to see. Remember, once they are on your product listing pages, your goal should not be to show them as many products as possible, but rather to filter down to the ones they are interested in.
10. Filter by Color/Size/etc: Have you ever shopped the clearance rack at a clothing store? Usually, items are merchandised by size. Or take shopping for paint at a hardware store. Most people walk right to the color family they desire, then decide from there. What your e-business sells will determine what type of filters you should create. View a good example of filtering here.
11. “Save These Settings” Feature: Suppose you’re browsing a certain product category on a site. After telling the website you want to see the items sorted by lowest price first with 50 products per page, you’re irritated to find that your settings have been lost when you move to a different product category. To prevent situations like this, save a user’s settings to the most recently selected ones, or allow them to click an option to save them across the whole site.
12. Breadcrumb Navigation: It’s easy for visitors to get lost in an endless trail of sub-sub-sub categories. Show them where they are and where they’ve been with cookie crumb navs.
13. View All Feature: It’s easiest to compare products when they are all displayed on one page. Give your visitors the option of to ”view all.”
14. Unique Content in Title & Meta Tags: One of the most challenging issues with product category pages from an SEO point of view is that they all appear similar and contain little content. If possible, ensure that the title and meta tag content for each page within a product category is unique.
15. Click to Any Page Navigation: I can’t stand it when a website only gives you a “previous” and “next” button to click through the product category. Allow visitors to go exactly to the page number they desire by creating hyperlinks to each page number.
16. Sorting & Filtering Options at Top and Bottom: It’s important to show your filtering options on both the top and bottom of your category pages. While most sites show them on top, many neglect to feature them for easy access at the bottom of the page as well.
17. Eliminate Parameters from URL: Here’s a rule of thumb, if your category urls are so ugly that it’s impossible to remember one, then odds are the search engines won’t remember them either. If you must use a parameter in the url (i.e. ID=123), try to use only one.
18. Create SEO Friendly URLs: Better yet, convert url’s like this: http://abc.com/?category1=widget&category2=gadgets to something like http://abc.com/widgets-and-gadgets.html. This can be accomplished by using a re-write engine.
19. Highlight New & Sale Merchandise: Include an icon or other indicator to show that an item is on sale or is brand new.
20. Show “Real Life” Photos: Showing pics of your products in real life situations brings your pages to life and is much more appealing than a dull list of names and prices.
21. Prominent Search Function: People tend to use search as the first resort or the last resort. If they are unable to find what they want from browsing your category pages, they will look for a search option. Make this feature available on every page of your site.
22. Make Product Images Clickable: I’m still surprised when I see sites that force you to click on the text of the product name to get to the product page. Make sure the product image is clickable as well.
23. Auto Following Nav: Most sites have a left or top navigation structure. However, unless the site uses frames, when the user scrolls down, this navigation will not be accessible. Create a dynamic navigation that follows them down the page. This will ensure they are able easily move to a different category.
24. Compare Checkbox: Allow customers to easily compare items by placing a checkbox next to each product listing. For an example of this, see CompUSA’s product categories.
25. Need Help Deciding? It’s a well-known fact that having to many products to choose from can be just as bad as not having enough. Help your customers make a decision by linking to a “Help Me Decide” page that compares the benefits of each product type. Again, see the bottom of CompUSA’s product listings for an example.

I hope something here has sparked your interest. Be sure to also checkout my other posts on 25 ways to improve your shopping cart and product pages.  

Shopping cart abandonment is every online merchant’s worst fear. After all, with all that you invest in marketing your website, it’s painful to leave money on the table when would-be buyers don’t convert to sales. In this post, I’ll share some ways to improve your shopping cart that I’ve used or seen used by other savvy online retailers.

1. Add Product Thumbnail Images: It’s easy for visitors to forget what they added to their cart. Remind them by displaying a small product image next to the name. Remember, visitors don’t know the product names as well as you do, so they need a visual reminder.
2. Your Just X Dollars away from Free shipping: Most e-commerce sites offer free shipping at a certain level. Remind your customers of this by displaying a prominent message letting them know how much more they need to spend to receive the promotion.
3. Buy X Get X Free: If you offer some sort of BOGO promotion, the shopping cart is a great place to
   display a message such as “Buy 1 more, get a 3rd FREE.”
4. Show Shipping Prices: For me, the thing that frustrates me most is when websites require me to enter my shipping info in order to calculate the shipping price. Simplify this by showing the shipping prices as early as possible. If your website calculate shipping prices based on the destination zip code, allow visitors to calculate the cost without having to enter all their personal info.
5. Show Shipping Times estimate: UPS, Fedex, and USPS offer different service time commitments to different parts of the country. Show a map of these estimated to shipping times to re-assure your customers they will get their order on tine.
6. Show What Method(s) order will ship: For many, the shipping method is as important as the shipping price. Some customers may have reservations about certain shipping methods. In addition, customer with rural address may only be able to get service from UPS or Fedex. Customer with PO Boxes will only be able to get deliveries from US Mail.
7. Cross-sell Items: The shopping cart is a great place to suggest
   similar items to that which are already in the cart. Just make sure the suggestions does not get in the way of the checkout process.
8. Up-sell Items: The shopping cart is a great place to let customers know about another product that may better serve their needs. Again, remember to soft sell so as to not confuse the checkout process.
9. Link Back to the Product Page: It’s very easy to forget the features or other details about the products in your cart. Make it easy for your buyers to get back to the product page by providing a link from the shopping cart.
10. Feature Comparison: Show as much detail as possible on the cart page in order to let shoppers compare features. If you can’t fit all the relevant information, include a “compare” link that allows them to compare all the features at a glance.
11. Progress Bar: People want to know that your checkout process is fast and easy. Display a progress indicator to let them know where they are, and how much further they need to go.
12. Make Your Cart Button Highly Visible: Above anything else, the “Checkout” button should be the most prominent feature on the shopping cart page. Make it large and bold enough to reach out and grab the user’s attention.
13. Add “Checkout” to Cart Button: Most site’s have a ubiquitous “View Cart” button on every page of the site, usually located in the upper right hand of the page. Consider also including the word “Checkout”, since not everyone
    knows that “View Cart” is the first step to checking out.
14. Express Checkout: Make repeat purchases quick as easy by allowing return customers to login from the shopping cart page.
15. Email Customers with Abandoned Carts: An extremely effective way of capturing lost sales opportunities is to email those customers who abandon their shopping carts. Better yet, offer them a coupon or some other discount to come back and finish the purchase.
16. Show Stock on Hand: There’s no greater way to stress urgency than to let customers
    know how much product you have on hand. While you might not want to show the exact quantity in inventory, you should
    definitely warn them when a product is close to selling out.
17. 1 Click Ordering:
    Surprisingly, a great way to increase your conversion is to skip as much of the shopping cart/checkout process as possible. Pioneered by Amazon, 1 click ordering is a great way to speed up the checkout process.
18. See More Items Like Those In Your Cart: Give them an incentive to spend more by suggesting other items
    similar to those already in the shopping cart.
19. Live Chat Link: Don’t let customers abandon their order due to a nagging question. Provide an easy way to get an instant answer to their query.
20. Prominent Phone Support Number: Again, always provide an easy way to speak to a live person.
21. Show Payment Options Early: Customers will be curious as to what payment options you
    accept early on in the process. Let them know by displaying credit card logos, the Paypal logo, and an e-Check representation.
22. Auto-Submit Form Changes: It’s common for customers to change the quantity of an item in the cart, and then click “checkout” instead of first clicking the “update” button. You can prevent later confusion by refreshing the quantities in their cart automatically if it is changed.
23. Save for Later Button: Let’s face it, not everyone will complete the purchase the same day they add the item to their cart. Assure them that the items will remain in the cart by allowing them to save it for later. Better yet, email them after a certain amount of time to remind them.
24. Security and Privacy Reminder: Assure your visitors your website is secure and trustworthy.
    Display emblems such as the HackerSafe logo or the BBB Online logo. Also, let your visitors know their personal information will be kept private by linking to your privacy policy.
25. Link to Your Return / Exchange Policy: One of the greatest hesitations to buying is worrying about returning a product to an online retailer. Assuage the fears of your customers by linking to your “No Hassle Return Policy.”

I sincerely hope some of the ideas above will be helpful to your online business. Remember, each shopping cart feature that helps to improve or simplify the shopping process will become a competitive advantage and another memorable reason for your customers to come back.

I’m constantly astonished at how many large e-commerce sites have seriously deficient product pages. Many large companies, especially click-and-mortar retailers, seem to forget that products cannot be touched, tasted, or tested over the internet. While the internet will never perfectly mimic the in-store experience, there are dozens of tactics that can be implemented on the product page to increase customer engagement and convert visitors into buyers. Below I’ll describe 25 methods I’ve either used or seen used by other online retailers.

1. More / Better Product Photos: It’s important to remember that unlike you, your customers may have never seen nor handled your products before. Therefore, take pictures of every possible angle a customer would want to see. Also, make sure the quality is acceptable. If you’re still using a 1 megapixel camera you got for Christmas 10 years ago, it’s about time to upgrade.
2. Flash Zoom with Different Angles: Many advanced e-commerce customers have implemented flash technology to allow zooming and changing angles. If you have the expertise and the resources, this is a killer add on feature for any product page.
3. Include Info about Where the Product was made: People care immensely about this. Whether they are concerned about ethical working conditions, or just for quality reasons, be sure to tell them where your products are made. If they are made somewhere besides the US, be sure to put a link to your fair labor policy, so your customers don’t think you’re using sweatshops.
4. List benefits, not just features: Don’t rattle of an endless bullet list of technical specifications. Tell customers specifically how this product will improve their life.
5. Show product measurements or weight: Remember, they can’t actually touch and hold your product over the internet. Give them the next best thing with the measurements and weight.
6. Make “Add to Cart” Impossible to miss: The “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” button should reach out and grab your attention. Avoid tiny, vague “Add to Bag” buttons such as the one on Gap’s product page.
7. Allow customer generated product reviews: This will both increase the amount of trust your website receives and add valuable content for the search engines. Worried about negative product reviews? Don’t, the experts say it can be one of the greatest tools to show your customers you are transparent and trustworthy.
8. Ask a Question Link: Don’t leave your customers hanging with nagging questions about a products. Add a link that emails your customer service department so customers can ask a specific question about the product. This also serves as a great feedback tool so you know what information needs to be put on the product page to prevent questions. For an example of this, checkout C28’s product page.
9. Show Related (cross sell items): Having a “customer who bought this also liked…” section is a great way to cross sell. Remember, a product page can be a dead end if the customer is not interested in what they are viewing. Always give them somewhere else to go.
10. Show Related upsell items: Add to your average order by suggesting an upgrade to what they are currently viewing.
11. Show add on items: Selling shoes? Don’t let your customers checkout without socks! Customers will appreciate the suggestion, and you will increase your average order.
12. Include possible search query terms in the title and meta tags: If you sell moisturizer cream, don’t just put the product name in the title tag. Create an extra field in your product database that people will likely search for such as “Cure for Dry skin.”
13. Foreign Currency converter: Have you ever been to a site that showed currency in something other than US dollars? I have, and I usually leave because I am too lazy to convert it. Including a currency converter link near the price will help encourage your international business. If you don’t want to clutter up your product page, you can even program the link to only show if the user has a non-US IP address.
14. Add a Wishlist: Wishlist’s are a great way to create stickiness and possibly even reduce shopping cart abandonment. People tend to use shopping carts as wishlists, so giving them to real thing will allow you to more accurately track your true shopping cart abandonment.
15. Email Me When It’s Re-stocked Button: Many sites, especially apparel retailers, may sell out of a certain size or variety of a product. Rather than throwing up a “Out of Stock” notice on the product page, why not allow people to be emailed when the item is re-stocked? In my experience, this is one of those features that really surprises and delights customers who are otherwised already frustrated. Checkout an example of this on C28’s product page.
16. Email Me Before It Sells Out Button: People tend to wait to the last minute. But what if you warned them before the item sells out? There’s no greater way to create a sense of urgency then by sending an email saying “Hurry, it’s about to sell out!”
17. Email Me When Products Like this are Added: Customers are tired of generic, one size fits all email newsletters. Give them something they really care about by creating a system where they can request to be notified when product within certain categories are added to the site.
18. Social Bookmarking Links: Although its not typical to see a Digg or Delicious button on an e-commerce site, it may work well for certain buzzworthy products, such as t-shirts from Threadless.
19. Bread crumb navigation: It’s easy to get lost in a myriad of product categories, so always keep visitors informed about where they are with Bread (aka Cookie) crumb navigation. Bread crumb navs typically are located in the upper left hand of the page and look something like this: Home > Top Category > Lower Category > Product Name
20. Customer Generated Photos: Allow your customers to upload pictures of them using your products. This works great for apparel retailers, or anything where people take pride in using a product.
21. Audio Testimonials: This is becomming common as sales pages for ebooks or other informational products. A testimonial that can be listened to will probably hold more weight than simple text on a page.
22. Video Testimonials: Even better than just audio, allow for full video testimonials. If you have the videos hosted by You Tube, you can also spur a viral marketing campaign.
23. Back Button to Product Category Page: This allows customers to navigate more efficiently and return to where they just were.
24. Browser Bookmark Button: Don’t let them forget your site. With a simple javascript command, you can trigger their browser to bookmark your product.
25. RSS Product Feeds: With the integration of a feed reader into Microsoft’s IE 7, Rss feeds will likely move out of the early adopter stage and become more mainstream. With the abundance of SPAM in the inbox, receiving product updates through an RSS feed is a great alternative for keeping your customers informed. Checkout how Threadless displays the RSS icon at the bottom of their product page.

I hope some of the ideas above have given you some inspiration for your site. Be sure to leave a comment if you’ve successfully used any of these tactics. Also, you migh want to checkout my post on 25 Ways to Improve Your Shopping Cart.