Searchfairies - Internet Marketing, eCommerce, SEM, SEO

2008 Top 100 Online Retail Sites

Internet Retailer announced their 2008 Top 100 Online Retail Sites today.  What's great about this list, is you will find all kinds on eCommerce sites, including large well-known offline brands , online only brands, catalogers, and more.

Tips for Converting Shopping Cart Abandoners

Great article today on ECommerce-guide.com with helpful hints for rescuing and converting shopping cart abandoners on your website.  See if these strategies can work for you and test and measure each one accordingly. Hopefully you will learn from these tests and perhaps they will impact your sales while reducing your shopping cart abandonment rate. 

Some of the tips include*:

1. Educate shoppers with established procedures. Start the process in the cart by letting customers know exactly what your policy is, like this straight-forward example from Nordstrom that states: "The items in your shopping bag will be saved for 14 days, but merchandise availability is not guaranteed."  
2. Then use e-mail designed to get attention and remind shoppers of what was left behind. Eighty-nine percent of the e-mails the e-taling group received were HTML; 11 percent text; 44 percent had personalized salutations and 11 percent of the e-mails contained an image of the product left in the cart. On average the e-mails received arrived 5.67 days after leaving merchandise in the cart. Of the nine merchants who sent an initial abandonment e-mail, three sent a second reminder e-mail. A stand-out example is Cooking.com, which sends a weekly e-mail with a conditional free shipping offer to those who abandoned carts the prior week, according to the report. It includes convenient links to access the cart, site search, menus and top-selling features. Open rates typically average 55 percent with 15 percent click-through and 3.6 percent conversion, according to company sources.  
3. Use incentives to close the sale. Twenty-two percent of e-mails contained incentives such as free shipping offers, a discount on the abandoned item, a discount on the next purchase or a gift-with-purchase. "For example, drugstore.com's subject line tells the whole story: 'Check your shopping bag - there's $5 in it for you.' The offer, from their Director of Customer Care, is for a limited time and may be eligible for conditional free shipping. The e-mail wisely closes with five reasons to shop at drugstore.com," cites the report. Another incentive strategy recommended is to follow up with reminders, then offer incentives. "Zale's initial e-mail, sent two days after we left merchandise in their cart is a gentle reminder; the second, sent four days later, adds an incentive of $50 off your purchase of $200 to get the business. Both include a toll-free customer service number and state that: 'Your satisfaction is VERY important to us,'" according to the report.  
4. Deploy a mix of merchandising tactics. The report states that 1-800-flowers uses a colorful presentation that "features an array of tactics from what's new to a corporate account tout to a free reminder service, all to engage customers who have left items behind with out completing their purchases."  
5. Consider branding as a secondary objective for each email sent to abandoners. The survey advises e-tailers to entice recipients of their follow-up e-mails to become further vested in the site. A stellar example of this is the strategy used by SmartBargains. "It followed up with this personalized e-mail entitled, 'Don't lose the bargains in your shopping cart' to remind shoppers: 'We typically sell out of over 1000 of items every week….Our personal shoppers find stellar brands for up to 70 percent off retail but only in limited quantities.' Of note, the initial e-mail was sent two days after we abandoned their cart and resent 16 days later."

*source:  "Rescuing Sales from Abandoned Shopping Carts", Michelle Megna, managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com

Making Your Content Easy to Find for Your Users

Yesterday my co-worker and I were having a discussion on recycling her old computer. We did a Google search, like most people do these days, and found a great website listed in 1st position in organic, Earth911, that helps you find locations to recycle everything from cell phones to computers. We found that Staples, which is right around the corner from her house, was listed as a provider of this service and so we went to the Staples site to learn more about the program. This is where our annoying user experience began.

The Earth911 site, linked directly to the Staples homepage leaving me the user to search and find this content about the recycling program. Annoying point #1: It would have been great if the link took me directly to the content, but it didn't, so we had to find it ourselves. After perusing the homepage for links or graphics to this content, we then did a simple search on Staples.com for "computer recycling".  Since this is an eCommerce site, computers to purchase were listed in our results and no content to be found. Argh, annoying point #2!

Since we are web savvy people and eCommerce folks, we knew there had to be a link for this program somewhere on the bottom of the page. That is where we found the following links:

Still, no link for Computer Recylcing, but we did find a link for Corporate Responsibility. Now, since I have been working in eCommerce and corporate for years, I knew to click on this link, but how many every day users would have known this? 

We finally found the content we were looking for on this page, but I have to wonder how many people would have given up before they reached this point. We were now 10 minutes into this search, which I think was 9 minutes too long.

What's so surprising to me with this example are a few things:

1. Going green is the "it" thing right now. With so many environmentally friendly people out there, why would Staples make this content so hard to find? My co-worker wants to do a good thing by recycling her computer, yet how many people even know Staples offers this service? I think it's awesome that they do offer the service, but I wish they made it easier for us to learn about their program.
   
2. According the the Earth911 website, "Staples is a founding partner and sponsor of Earth 911’s Business Resource Web site, www.Earth911Business.com since 2003. Over the years, Staples has been successful in establishing a new, higher benchmark for how business and retailers can be positive environmental stewards." OK, I get that, I really do and it's great that Staples does that, but this just reinforces my first point that Staples should be promoting this on their site more effectively.
3. Why is Staples charging people to recycle their computers? If people are trying to do a good deed by recycling, they should not be charged for it. It's much easier and cheaper to throw out a PC in the garbage and I think it's unfair for someone to charge you to do a good thing for the environment. Yes, I read on the Staples site why they have to charge, blah, blah blah, but I'm not buying into that. Encourage people to recycle by not making them pay and perhaps more people would do so and do good for the environment. Learn from Costco on how to encourage people to recycle because they have the right idea with their program.
   

Resources for Promoting Your Blog

Thanks to Linda Bustos from Get Elastic for compiling this fantastic list of blog directories and RSS feeds to help you promote and market your blog.   

Need Help Writing Your Web Copy?

GrokDotCom posted a fantastic list of online copyrighting resources available on the web. Thanks for compiling this list and making it easier for me to write my web copy!

Love the New Amazon.com Experience

I love the new Amazon.com redesigned website. Not only did they make the homepage more inviting and a little less cluttered, they cleaned up the navigation to make it easier for the user to navigate the site and shop. I also like the new soft blue colors used in the header. 

We all know Amazon is expanding into various departments and categories now, and you had to click multiple times to find the department of your choice with the old design. Now with the navigation on the left hand side of the page, instead of on top, you can mouse over the category name and the departments within that category appear and this all happens in one click. Less clicking, means more shopping for me!

Here is a visual overview of the redesign courtesy of the Amazon website.

Looking to Outsource Your SEM Business, But Don’t Know How?

Good article today on iMedia Connection to help guide you through the the process of selecting the right SEM agency for your needs.

Happy Halloween from the Search Engines!

Here are some cute Halloween themes from the search engines, including Google, Yahoo!, and Ask.

Here’s Why SEO is Important to Online Retailers

Today on iMedia Connection, a new survey was released by Oneupweb highlighting the importance of SEO for traditional and well established offline brands.  I was not suprised by the results, and it does uncover some interesting facts on how well established offline brands need to focus more of their online efforts to SEO because the newer online brands like Amazon.com,  Zappos.com and BlueNile.com are establishing themselves as the premier players in their respective spaces.

Tips for Getting Your Website Ready for the Online Holiday Shopping Season

I found a great article today on e-commerceguide.com with tips and ideas on how to get your website ready for the 2007 holiday shopping season.

The key highlights include*:

1. Ensure that your gift center is exemplary, including gift suggestions.


2. Integrate a gift finder that allows for a quick search to facilitate finding the "right" product fast at the price you are willing to spend.


3. Dedicate substantial real estate to the ever-popular gift card.


4. Present comprehensive customer service including visible contact information, customer service hours, and FAQs with continually updated seasonal cut-off dates.


5. Organize category pages to showcase your product with gifting themes.


6. Give new products and top sellers visibility.


7. Put forth a robust product page that marries adequate text, complete visuals and category-centric tools in support of customer decision-making.


8. Review your e-mail schedule to ramp-up frequency throughout the season.


9. Leverage your post-order communication to promote gift cards and seasonal holiday promotions.


10. Be ready for post-Christmas markdowns while simultaneously introducing new product to maintain higher margins.

*source: 10 Holiday Tactics to Improve Sales in 10 Weeks, ECommerce-Guide.com