Have you found your ecommerce business stalling?

Maybe it’s time to look at all aspects of your business with new eyes. Seek improvement across the board.

Perhaps you'll find the skill sets and competitive advantages that got you to this point need to evolve. It’s no longer enough to be really good a just a few things.

Evaluate your business in these four areas:

1) How well are you dealing with the technical     side of your business?

a. As you grow, are you using technology to improve the efficiency of your processes (shipping, inventory, CRM, warehouse management etc.) or are you throwing more bodies at the problem?

b. Are you using custom tools to make your site more valuable to customers, improve search results and create competitive barriers to entry?

c. Are you doing big-boy hosting or are you still trying to do it on the cheap?

2) Are you making yourself visible to all potential customers?

a. How good is your SEO?

                                 i. Are you doing the basics for In-site SEO? How about beyond the basics?

                                 ii. Off site - are you getting quality links? Do you have a strategy?

b. Are you using the shopping engines and are you optimized for them?

c. Are you optimizing your Google Product Feeds?

d. How well is your PPC performing? Did you try it and give up on it?

e. Are you in marketplaces like eBay or Amazon?

                                 i. Should you be on them? (it’s not as simple as you might think)

                                 ii. How much can you really sell there? (a ton)

f. Are you using RSS product feeds?

g. Are you using trigger-based emails?

h. Are you doing things like “deal-a-day” promotions?

i. Are you blogging?

j. What’s the health of your affiliate programs?

k. Have you looked into creating micro sites that appeal to different segments of you marketplace? Would you like to become you own competition?

l. Are you working at increasing international business?

3) How well are you converting traffic and maximizing your profit?

a. How can you increase your Conversions?

                                 i. Trust – Are you doing all the basics to show you are trustworthy?

                                 ii. Is the checkout process easy and re-assuring? Do you have a way to re-engage abandoned carts?

b. Analytics - What's the score?

                                 i. What are you tracking?

                                ii. How are you making it actionable?

c. Optimization – Are you doing multivariate testing for your important/profitable pages (i.e. home, product & checkout)

d. How can you improve the User Experience?

                                 i. Information Architecture

1. Is your navigation simple and clear? Where are people getting confused?

2. Do you offer multiple filtering capabilities?

                                 ii. Does on site search work really well?

                                 iii. Are you merchandizing your products in an appealing way?

                                 iv. Are you using ratings & reviews?

                                v. Are you providing educational guides, product recommendations and customization tools?

                                 vi. Do you have multi-media? How-To Video’s?

                                 vii. What are you doing to increase your average order size

1. Up Selling

2. Cross Selling

3. Promotions

a. Are you testing which are most profitable?

b. Are you getting your vendors to support you?

4) Repeat Customers are the cornerstone of a successful ecommerce business.

a. Are you finding ways other than price to compete?

                                 i. Can you customize products?

                                 ii. How can you improve customer service and self-service?

                                 iii. What can you do to be seen more as a trusted resource than just a store?

                                 iv. Have you created custom tools?

b. Word of Mouth works for you or against you. Are you doing reputation management?

c. Are you using sophisticated email methods or just a “mailing list”?

d. Are you finding creative ways to build community?

Can you do better in these areas?

Have you outgrown your impersonal, one-size-fits-all ecommerce solution?

Volusion has a popular ecommerce platform that I've recommended many times. Like monstercommerce, it's perfect for people starting an Internet business with limited resources.

If you are successful, however, you will quickly out grow its capabilities.

• It really isn't suited for companies doing $100k+/month who want to go to $1,000,000/month and beyond.

• If you have thousands of products, conversion rates are lower then they need be because limited navigation and onsite filtering capabilities makes it hard for customers to find what they want to buy.

• There is no way to used sophisticated personalization techniques to encourage impulse sales, improve margins and increase average order sizes.

• Emailing for up-selling and repeat business is hard to do without trigger based emails.

• Inventory is a mess without a clean way to do backorders and negative inventory items.

• Purchasing, receiving and shipping take way more time than they should.

• Efficiency benefits from systems integration go unrealized.

• Competitive advantages from custom development can't be achieved

Bottom-line, if you are on Volusion, there are untapped ways to grow your business and increase margins while lowering your costs of doing business.

Let me prove it to you.

Small thinking and Ecommerce

The internet acts as your mirror. It reflects what you project.

If you don't allow yourself to see much when you look for opportunity online, you will likely be disappointed in your results.

When you allow yourself to look deeper and discover what is possible, you can accomplish even more than you thought.

I've found that one of the downsides of being passionate is that you run the risk of killing your credibility when someone doesn't see the same opportunities you see.

I recently had a frustrating meeting where this was the case.

My prospective client opened with the statement that he wasn't looking to really sell more online, didn't think they could do much better and just wanted a way to cut their expenses.

It quickly became obvious, there were a million ways they do do and sell more online.

I started to get pumped.

They were well positioned and success was not that far out of reach. There were weak, niche competitors doing way more online. They could crush them if they acted swiftly.

But as I got more excited, my prospective client got more skeptical.

Our mirrors reflected different images.

He saw smoke blowing in the wind. I saw real, tangible value.

Ultimately, however, we were able to come to an agreement. That we weren't a good fit.

But I felt like I let him down but not helping him see what I saw

What do you see when you look in the mirrort?

Ideas for dynamic transactional or trigger-based emails.

1) Ask for reviews and testimonials 21 days after the purchase. People love to talk about the benefits of a new purchase while is still fresh & new. Ask me for a review when I am most excited and mostly likely to share. If you add in a contest or promotion for additional motivation, you will have tons of reviews. This will put you well on your way to making your site incredibly valuable for new shoppers. Also, after I have given a review, I will be bonded more closely with your site.

2) Remind people to re-order. Items ranging from running shoes to ink cartridges to batteries to supplements are purchased over and over again on a predictable schedule. It pays to send out reminders for re-orders. For example, if you sold me a 90 days supply of a vitamin, remind me at day 75 that it might be time to re-order. If I have been missing some days, give me the opportunity to request a reminder in another 7 or 14 or 21 days. If you have the actual product page in your email with a strong call to action, your sales will sky rocket.

3) Include personalized product recommendations in your everyday emails. When you send me an order confirmation, show me what other items that I might want to buy. We’ve found if you tie those recommendations to your global purchase history (like how Amazon or MaxEXP does it) your conversion rate can increase by as much as 500%

4) Mine the gold in abandoned shopping carts. If I added an item to my shopping cart and didn’t buy, remind me. Offering a promotion works but be careful not to train your customers to abandon their carts. A better way to increase conversions is to include reviews and testimonials for the exact product(s) they were considering.

5) Use your web site to generate leads. Would you like to do a better job closing big orders? What about that that long-term customer who just quoted out $25k worth of products? Is it worth a phone call? Is it worth an email? Do both. Send a email to your sales rep and another to your customer. San Diego Media has a customer who closes well over 6 figures a month from leads generated off his ecommerce web site. It's easy to use your ecommerce site to generate leads.

6) When you are running low on stock for a particular item, send an email to everyone who has that item in their cart or wish list. Let them know you are running out and give them some urgency to buy now. This is a great email idea that I found out about on PalmerWebMarketing.

7) For items that are out of stock, put an “email me when back in stock” button on the product page. When you get the item, the sales will roll in immediately and automatically.

8) Make personalized, automatic recommendations to customers who have ordered an item that is on back-order. Don’t have black? Offer brown. Offer a similar item. Offer an item other people purchased with that item. Find a way to make the sale now and satisfy the customer.

9) Promote new items. When you have a new item, send an email out to people who previously purchased a similar or discontinued item

What other ideas do you have? I would love to hear them.

Focus on building your ecommerce business, not Amazon's

A couple of years ago, I worked with a merchant with a love/hate relationship with eBay. He used the analogy of being “addicted to eBay like a crack addict”.

He did a ton of business on eBay but that takes a ton of effort. His staff was constantly overwhelmed and worked on little else. They relied so heavily on eBay for sales, they were, in effect, addicted. He was afraid he couldn’t afford (or so it seemed) change.

Most importantly, he wasn’t able to focus on other, more profitable, ways to grow his business.

I covered some of the negative aspects of eBay on my personal blog a couple weeks ago.  

But how about selling on Amazon’s seller central? That’s totally different, right?

I mean, how could it be anything but positive? You get to sell to Amazon’s vast customer base, don’t have to pay a penny until something sells and don’t have to deal with eBay’s demanding and cheap users.

Well, just like your mother once told you, there is no such thing as a free lunch. And selling on Amazon’s seller central is no different.

To understand why, I need to explain my simplistic view of ecommerce. I believe there are three things to worry about:

1)      Exposure - Getting in front of as many of the right prospects as possible as cheaply as possible.

2)      Profitable Conversion - Maximizing the profit and revenue generated from those prospects

3)      Ownership - Maybe the most important - is getting them to buy from you again and again and again.

Well, how does Amazon match up?

1)      Exposure? A+ There is nothing like Amazon’s installed base.

2)      Profitable Conversion? Hmmm…. A little more mixed. There are tons of ways to be creative on Seller’s Central, but at the end of the day, you are competing on price. After including your commission, you aren’t making a ton and what worse, most of the cross-selling and up selling opportunities all belong to Amazon.

3)      Ownership? F- Basically, you are paying a 15% commission to build Amazon’s business. You do a great job of customer service and offer a product at a great deal? Great! Amazon’s relationship with that customer just got deeper.

The problem is that it all looks easy. It all seems so predictable.  You list products; you ship products and you collect the money from Amazon.

But you aren’t building your own business. Think about it – in essence, you are an interchangeable fulfillment house for Amazon.  They can (and will) replace you in a blink of an eye.

I have a friend who had some temporary issues with his warehouse outside his control. Despite a couple years of stellar service, Amazon shut him down overnight.

He ended up not just laying off his employees but declaring bankruptcy.

If he had been building his web business, the warehouse issue still would have been painful. He would have lost some customers, but he would still be in business today.

So sure, keep selling on Amazon, but don’t forget to build the rest of your business.

And my friend addicted to eBay? I just talked with him. He is doing great. He’s broken his eBay addiction and business is better (and more solid) than ever.

Isn’t ecommerce architecture monitoring as simple as making sure your site is up?

Here’s why:

Imagine going your site is up and running fine, but your payment gateway is down. Customers are adding items to their cart but can’t check out. It’s costing you sales and what’s worse, nobody knows.

Or

Imagine being frustrated and angry on a Tuesday morning. You just found out that your $5 shipping promotion was fat-fingered in as a $500 shipping promotion. It’s cost you thousands of dollars in sales over a long holiday weekend that are gone forever.

Or

Imagine your new PPC campaign is humming along and orders are pouring in but your fulfillment house isn’t keeping up. Products aren’t being shipped. Customers are getting frustrated. You are paying tons of money to acquire customers who will never want to do business with you again. And what’s worse, again, you don’t know….yet.

Those scenarios illustrate why we provide four levels of monitoring in our MaxEXP ecommerce infrastructure.

1.  We use KeyNote to make sure the site is up and performing within established performance metrics. KeyNote, which is also used by Cisco and eBay, checks your site from multiple servers around the US. If your site is down or being sluggish, KeyNote will alert us so we can fix the problem.
2. We perform tests to make sure that system and integration points are up and running. Is Verisign’s payment gateway working? Yup. Is your integration with your ERP system working? Yes. Is FedEx working? No? That’s ok we set up a contingency to use flat rate shipping (or whatever you want) instead.
3. We check to make sure that sales are happening at expected levels. If sales dip below what is normal, we fire off an alert and take action. Normal is defined by historical sales volume over the past year and takes into consideration your growth rates and personal threshold levels.
4. We make sure you logistic processes are working. Are orders sent to fulfillment shipping? Are you getting confirmation numbers? Are all order status’s what they are expected to be? We run checks that find orders that have fallen through the cracks. Repeat & referral business is the life blood of ecommerce and we make sure your standards are being met.
   

So you can see, there really is more to ecommerce architecture monitoring than just checking to see the site is still up.

Facebook’s ad system serves Social Ads that combine social actions from your friends – such as a purchase of a product or review of a restaurant – with an advertiser’s message. This enables advertisers to deliver more tailored and relevant ads to Facebook users that now include information from their friends so they can make more informed decisions. No personally identifiable information is shared with an advertiser in creating a Social Ad.

Social Ads can appear either within a user’s News Feed as sponsored content or in the ad space along the left side of the site.

Can bad reviews actually be a good thing?

Yes, according to a study done by Adweek. Customers considerably prefer eCommerce sites with ratings and reviews over eCommerce sites without them, however this is only true if there is negative feedback among the reviews. 

Without negative reviews consumers begin to doubt their validity, as well as their overall trust in the company.  Negative reviews are also necessary for consumers during the purchasing process so that they can work through concerns they may have before purchasing. 

If they don’t find answers on your site they will find it somewhere else.  So make sure your site’s ratings and reviews are as credible as possible by minimizing the number of reviews that your site filters.