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.