James Cope » ecommerce

Room for another one? – How an ecommerce site succeed

jamescope — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:42:59 +0000

Room for another one? - The challenges and rewards of breaking into a popular online retail market.

When speaking to Tamer Shaifk the MD of ShinyShack, specialising in unusual and unique gifts, I thought his story and experience would be a useful tale to tell. He explains how he broke into an already saturated market and made his site a success.

Tamer writes:

These days much is made of the massive growth in online retail. As high street shops struggle to keep their doors open in the tough economic climate, the perception is that online retail is the new ‘promised land’ for retailers, offering a low cost, low risk entry to selling to the general public.

But with all the big brands and bricks and mortar retailers jumping on the e-commerce bandwagon, is there really space on the web for a new business to compete against the big boys?

A New Online Gift Retailer

ShinyShack.com was launched in 2007 at a time when you might think that the online gift market was already well served by a myriad of retailers in every segment of the market. As the growth of the site has proved, during some truly tough economic times, if you approach your market creatively, there’s always a niche to be found.

So what are the key points to finding your niche and making your mark?

Finding Your Place in the Online Market

So how do you ensure there’s space for you out there? Well, if people are going to buy from you, they’ve got to find you first. Unless you’ve got some amazing new product that’s exclusive to you, then your fresh new site isn’t going to be rated by the search engines the way that those older sites with years of history are, so you need to be creative.

Pay Per Click – advertising we love to hate!

Pay Per Click is a sure-fire way to get traffic to your site and a great way of testing the market without investing the time and money into developing natural search rankings. Work on targeting your ads, refining the ad text and tweaking your landing pages. Pay per click will tell you whether people want what you’ve got, if they like how you look and if your website as a whole is working for you.

Don’t Make Me Think!

Getting people to your site is one thing, converting these visits to sales is quite another. How easy is it to place an order on your site. Is it something your mum or gran could cope with? How many clicks does it take to place an order?

When you’re competing online, it’s not just the other shops on your street or in your town that you’ve got to think about. Don’t give people a reason to go elsewhere by trying to collect extra information about them or asking them unnecessary questions. You may be dying to know your customer’s star sign and favourite colour, but try and control the urge to ask.

Getting To Know Your Customers

You can’t stand behind a till and watch your customers wander around your shop, they’re all sitting at home in front of their computers, so what do you know about the way they’re using your site?

Monitoring how people arrive and leave your site will tell you a lot about how they’re using it. You might even want to go a step further and gather data on how the site is navigated and most popular colours and images. Split testing your changes gives you real data on what makes a difference to conversion rates.

Trust Me, I’m an e-tailer!

Giving people the confidence to trust their credit card details to your site is vital. Security logos and secure SSL encryption are a must. Make sure all data is secure, and make sure your customers know it. It should go without saying, but full contact details, including physical address and phone number are a must.

If you wish to visit the site to see how I have put those into practice have a look at http://www.shinyshack.com

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eCommerce Sites Ready for Postal Strike

jamescope — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:41:58 +0000

With the latest industrial action causing issues in some parts of the UK and more potential disruption to follow, ecommerce website owners should be getting ready for the postal strike. My advice would be:

Make new customers aware – place a notice on your site if this is likely to effect delivery
Keep existing customers informed – if current orders placed are effected let them know
Consider alternative couriers – remember to keep an eye on your calculated postage fees

There is more information on the Business Link site on how the strike could impact on your business

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Website Conversion Problems – Solved!

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:31:09 +0000

Website owners often invest a lot of time and money into optimisation of their ecommerce or business website, but find that it fails to generate sales, leads or enquiries. This usually hints that either the optimisation is being targeted incorrectly so the wrong traffic is coming to the site, or the site is not convincing enough to convert visitors to customers.

My previous post looked at how small business owners can improve their content with to put the basic building blocks in place, if you thought that topic was useful then I bring news of a new free Business Link seminar! This session will cover conversion, taking the basic ideas from our previous Google Analytics session, getting more involved in measuring visitor behaviour on the site, giving tips on how you can use tools to assess which version of a page is more powerful, watch where visitors click on your site and the path they take.

This Business Link seminar on website conversions is a must attend for anyone who is serious about their site generating sales leads and increasing enquiries. We are joined by Adrian Durow an experienced conversion specialist from Refreshed Media, I’ve seen the run through of the presentation and think it will be a really good session. To book your free place at one of our sessions in the South East visit the Business Link events page at http://www.innovationevents.co.uk

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Links from Gosport SEO & eCommerce Seminar

admin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:17:57 +0000

Good to see you all at the seminar last night in Gosport, thanks to Charles of ICG who gave a cracking presentation. It is available online at http://www.internetconsultantsgroup.co.uk/

Below are the links that I mentioned that you may also find useful.

Search Engine Optimisation
There is a great tool that checks to see if you have the basic onsite elements at http://tools.summitmedia.co.uk/spider/

Business Link has a couple of guides as well http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/layer?topicId=1081852287

The Google Keyword Tool that can help you determine which phrases to optimise against is at https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal

From the eCommerce session
The payment gateway comparison which can help you decide which is the most cost effective can be found at http://www.electronic-payments.co.uk/

The shopping basket software comparison which is a sister site to the above is at http://www.ecommerce-comparison.com/

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