As much as customer service is all the rage, and heralded as the new marketing, it’s still viewed as a cost-center by most online businesses. This I believe, is entirely due to a defensive approach to customer care. Defensive customer service can be defined as any type of reactive customer servicing such as answering calls, [...]

It’s staggering to consider how many marketing failures are the result of broken promises. We rarely think of it this way, but every button, every subject line, every headline on our website is a promise. Whether or not that promise is kept determines whether we win the trust of our visitors, or lose them for [...]

If you have any experience working in eCommerce, I’m going to bet you can list 10 mistakes you’ve made, or have seen others make while running their online store. Or maybe you’re currently setting up shop online, and need some advice on what pitfalls to avoid. Below are 10 eCommerce startup mistakes I’ve encountered while [...]

There’s a very good chance you won’t finish reading this blog post. Why? Because you’re constantly bombarded with distractions and options. You have plenty of other blog posts to read or emails in your inbox beckoning for your attention. Even if you commit to reading this you may be distracted by a ringing cellphone or [...]

Stop for a moment and consider the goals of your website. Regardless of whether it’s a purchase through a shopping cart, a lead generation, white paper download, or a email opt, I’m going to bet every one of these actions requires a customer to use a web form. With web forms playing such an important [...]

What’s one thing that all successful e-commerce sites have in common, regardless of their industry, technology, or experience? Their customers trust them. E-commerce in particular lends itself to a low trust environment. After all, when you make a purchase online, you’re giving money to someone you can’t see, for a products that you can’t touch. [...]

I recall a memorable staff meeting in company I worked for when the following question was directed to me, “What percent of visitors to our website actually by make a purchase?” Upon responding that our website converted about 3% percent of traffic, a panic went off in the room. “What’s happening to the other 97%!?” [...]

In 10 Costly Assumptions, point #10 touched on a topic I’d like to explore in more depth: attracting repeat traffic. First of all, why do we like repeat visitors? They convert better They spend more They’re more likely to tell others They’re free (you already paid to acquire them) Here’s 10 ideas for creating loyal [...]

“Never assume.” – These 2 words represent the greatest advice ever given to me on the topic of website optimization. Here’s a list of 10 assumptions site owners make (myself included) that could cost you a ton of business. Assumption #1: People will know how to find your website We often assume that people have [...]

Building customer confidence in your brand is vital to converting first time visitors to your website. This post will highlight 3 customer confidence building tactics I recently discovered. Who Just Ordered Feature We all know testimonials are a proven way to boost confidence in your products. Email marketing company Aweber has found another way to [...]