eCommerce – Keep Up With The Web

Keeping Your Online Business Secure

Running an online business can be a very rewarding opportunity. Due to the potential savings for the business owner from not paying for a physical storefront, online businesses can often offer services and products for a better price to their customers or, at the very least, afford to offer free shipping. Both can drive a lot of business to their websites from those looking for a deal or those who simply do not have the time to shop at their local stores.

The main problem lies in the fact that running an online business can bring about security risks, not only to your customers, but also to yourself. No one online is immune to cyberattacks, and many aren’t even aware of how to protect themselves online to begin with. Though data breaches could still happen when you’re well protected, it’s very rare, and by following some simple security tips, you may never have to deal with the devastating effects of a security breach at all.

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Do You Sell Online? Want To?

Building an eCommerce website or simply adding an online shopping cart to an existing site can seem like an overwhelming task. There are so many options available including: selling on popular online marketplaces (like eBay, Etsy or Amazon’s Handmade Marketplace), adding WordPress plugins to an existing site, using services such as PayPal, or creating an online store using eCommerce software. Many of the eCommerce solutions available today will handle many (if not all) of the components you need.

In addition to an online storefront (or simple shopping cart), you need: payment processing, website building & hosting, inventory management, marketing and even CRM (customer relationship marketing) tools. Given the wide variety of options, you should be able to find a solutions that requires either zero technical skills or build-it-yourself options. With the right solution, you can get a store up quickly and easily.

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How Convincing Content Can Get Your Customers to Buy

Any digital marketer will tell you that the average conversion rates they get from websites hovers between 2 to 6% across the board. Of course there are outliers at both ends of the spectrum, however, that’s the ballpark in which most websites operate. So what do the high performing outliers do that sets them apart from the average Joes?

In two words, inbound marketing. A sound inbound marketing strategy can double average conversion rates for websites from 6% to 12%, according to research from HubSpot.

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Self-Serve: How the Mobile Age is Impacting Customer Service

Prior to the days of the Internet, businesses were very limited by the number of options they had for communicating with their customers, making it difficult to build brand loyalty on a broad scale. But thanks to the ever-evolving technology, the ways in which businesses are able to connect with the customers has changed and improved drastically. Today, in the digital age, small and large companies alike are leveraging mobile technology and social media together, interacting with their most loyal customers in ways that are convenient for both parties involved.

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67% of Shopping Carts are Abandoned – Stop your Customers from Leaving

In 2013 a staggering $1.7 trillion dollars will be left in shopping carts. With 2 in 3 desktop users abandoning their carts, there’s a staggering amount of revenue left on the table. If you’re looking to boost your site’s conversion rate, it’s best to focus on optimizations as close to the purchase as possible. Here are a few tips to help streamline your checkout process (or any conversion funnel):

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Speed Up Holiday Shopping With Mobile Point of Sale

The holiday season is here and shoppers want modern point-of-sale technology to speed them through the showroom and the checkout lines. Are retailers and small businesses living up to customer expectations?

Showroom Shoppers Whip Out Mobile Devices to Complete Sales

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Are You Ready for Business Black Friday Weekend and Cyber Monday?

The holiday season is a great time to sell products and services. According to a survey conducted by the National Retail Federation, the average person will complete about 39.5% of their holiday shopping online. (up from 38.8% last year). Additionally, Shop.org, (the digital division of NRF), is forecasting that online holiday sales will increase between 13% and 15% to as much as $82 billion during the months of November and December. So what does that mean to online marketers? How can we make the most of our websites to gain a piece of this eCommerce?

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4 eCommerce Marketing Channels You Should Use – Part 1

I can’t tell you how frequently I hear things like “I can’t afford pay-per-click” or “Social media doesn’t work.” These business owners have done some light experimentation with the channel and formed an opinion that is now used as a blanket for all forms of pay-per-click or social media. What I wanted to cover in this article is not just that each of these channels have viable marketing merit to them, but a little bit of how to make that channel work for you.

More important than the list of tips I give throughout the article is the thought process I’ll try to describe for each channel. Marketing is not following a list of tips, it is learning a thought process that allows you to analyze and adapt. So, without further adieu, let’s analyze and adapt!
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