Breakthrough Ecommerce

What Tiger Wood’s Apology Can Teach You

Tell the truth, damn it!

photo credit: Chester Zoo

Tiger Wood’s lame apology was universally panned for being phoney.

Hey, even us guys could tell he was just blowing smoke up our collective fairways.  Not to mention some of his die hard fans who felt queasy about the whole thing.

So, if nearly everybody could see through this heavily choreographed charade, what does that have to do with increasing your website conversion rate? Read the rest of this entry »

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Make Your Images Bigger

Welcome to a new and ongoing series of tips on how to improve your online conversion rates.

Every week (roughly) I’ll be giving you one technique that you can use straightaway to improve your online results.

Tip number one is to make your images bigger, your thumbnails, your normal images and even your expanded images.

Images of less than 100 pixels square are pretty much ignored according to recent research.

Size Matters

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Conversion rates can be 400% higher or more when running a marketing campaign. This means there is more to website conversion rate improvement than conventional conversion rate practices such as landing page optimisation, and tweaking website design factors.

Offline and offsite marketing factors such as better advertising, better offers, better products etc are equally as effective.

The fact that marketing/ advertising campaigns can increase conversion rates by four or even eight fold seems obvious in hindsight. It’s really just marketing 101: If you’re marketing is any good it should be driving more highly qualified customers to your website who are more likely to convert at a higher rate. (If that isn’t happening then review your marketing and your landing pages.)

But the effect of good marketing brings up a number of key points that aren’t usually part of the current conversion rate improvement conversation.

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photo credit: kimberlyfaye

More than 90 percent of all online marketers and businesses are leaving vast amounts of money and business on the table by ignoring conversion rate optimisation.

A recent survey by Alterian found that less than half of the marketers they surveyed use any sort of analytics.

Of those that do, many find it hard to interpret the data, and less than 10% regard analytics as a vital tool in improving their business results.

Alarming as the results are, they are not surprising. Optimising conversion rates and using analytics go hand in hand. Read the rest of this entry »

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photo credit: saguayo

I could have easily come up with a 1001 tips, but that might have been too much to digest in one sitting. As I say on my main site, most online businesses are suffering from”The Death of a Thousand Cuts“. With conversion rates till stuck at around 2.0 percent, for the vast majority of online businesses, there is still plenty of work to do. So, in no particular order here are are the first 101 tips to boost your online results: Read the rest of this entry »

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To put it simply - validating your site (making it standards compliant) will increase your conversions, sales and profits.

It will also prevent you from getting sued.

If ever anyone ever tells you that your site’s validation and compliance doesn’t matter be afraid, very afraid. This is a warning bell that says they don’t understand the requirements and responsibilities of business. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Popcorn Factory does. Or at 29.5% it’s close enough. Recent figures from Nielsen Net Ratings continue to show that a handful of sites are way ahead of the rest of the ecommerce world in terms of conversion rates.
The Popcorn Factory - 29.50%
L.L. Bean - 23.60%
Abebooks - 20.60%
Amazon - 17.60%
Hollister Co - 17.60%
Lands End - 17.20%
Coldwater Creek - 17.10%
Gymboree - 16.00%

Some of these sites such as Land’s End, LL Bean, QVC have consistently been among the leaders for a long time. What’s interesting is that they were all leaders in the field of direct catalogue marketing long before they went online.

Obviously they know something about how to sell, and how to transfer that expertise to the online world. Yes Virginia, the old rules still apply.

What’s more these results are now starting to get close to the bricks and mortar average of 50%, so it shows that great sales results can be achieved online

How Does The Popcorn Factory Do It?

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