WDTalk

With shopping cart abandonment hovering - between 50-70%, understanding WHY could help you refine your checkout process and improve conversions.

Whereas getting from Point Query to - Point Buy (complicated checkout process) used to dominate shopping cart abandonment, today’s shoppers cite high shipping costs high on their list, followed by a desire to shop around. About 1/4 of prospects leave simply because the price is too high.

So, what makes your site unique - and sellable? How does it differ from sites your prospects just came from or are going to? If your strategy relies on lowering prices alone, you’re not necessarily missing the boat, but it’ s never venturing far from the dock.  If your product or service doesn’t require shipping and handling charges, offering a special coupon code helps.

Again, trust remains high - on everyone’s list. Do you have a return policy? Do you provide contact information on your site, like a brick and mortar mailing address and phone number? Do you reassure your shoppers by providing privacy and and trust language? Do you offer PayPal or Google Checkout – and why is that important? Some prospects aren’t comfortable entering their financial information on a site they just found that day, even if you’ve got the best deal.

I read an interesting approach to tackling shopping cart abandonment this morning – and that was to offer a discount in return for a customer review, outlining why they decided to purchase from you. Would that work? Maybe. I’d be thinking, “Did they write up a nice review just to get the discount, or was this really the best deal?” On the other hand, reviews do help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)  and Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS), especially on Google Places.

Performance Marketing Insider ran an article earlier this month - about the launch of WordAds by WordPress, wondering whether it could compete with Google’s AdSense.

While I don’t think that’s going to happen overnight - the article did make a couple of great points about the explosive growth of WordPress.

WordPress estimates almost 50,000 new WordPress sites start online every 24 hours. Alexa.com estimates that almost 15 percent of the top 1 million websites are WordPress configurations. The platform has morphed into the most popular full-fledged content management system on the web.

That’s over 18 million NEW WordPress sites each year! Even more significant is the Alexa estimate, based on traffic. Increasing numbers of businesses are upgrading their hosting platforms to WordPress because it has morphed from its early days as a blogging platform to a full fledged dynamic CMS.

Will WordAds succeed? Only time will tell, but my money is on YES.

Update: September 23, 2011

CALIFORNIA REPEALS THE AFFILIATE NEXUS TAX LAW

See this Press Release by the Performance Marketing Association.

PMA executive director, Rebecca Madigan stated, “The signing of this legislation means these 25,000 web-based entrepreneurs will be able to get back in business. For the PMA, this issue has always been about keeping the vibrant Affiliate Marketing sector of the economy strong and growing.”

Original article written July 19, 2011

Thousands of entrepreneurs market other vendors wares as affiliates - but it seems an increasing number of states are defining virtual stores as an in-state entity for the purpose of collecting sales tax, even though the affiliate may not have a physical presence in their state.

I can’t confirm the list below - but they have all reportedly terminated their affiliate memberships in California.

6pm.com   1-800-PetMeds   Amazon.com   Amerimark   Backcountry   Bag.com   BagsBuy.com   Barware.com   BedBathStore B&H Photo   Boden   BrickHouse Electronics   BuildDirect.com   Cabela’s   Calvin Klein Jeans   Candelabras.com   CD Universe CKU   Collections Etc.   Compact Appliance   Costume Craze   CreateForLess.com   CSN Stores   Cymax   Dermadoctor   Dr. Leonard’s   Endless.com   Eurosport   Fabric.com   Fingerhut   FootSmart   GAIAM   Garden.com   Gardeners Supply Gettington   GiftBaskets.com   Hayneedle Stores   Herroom   K. Jordan   Luggage Online   Maryland Square   MetroKitchen Overstock.com   Overstock International   PC Connection   Potpourri Group   Shindigz   Shoe.com   ShoeBuy.com ShopBop.com   ShoppersChoice.com   Silkpalms.com   SmartBargains.com   Spiritline   StumpParty   TABcom theWineEnthusiast   ThinkGeek   TimeForMeCatalog   Total Gym   Woot.com   Zappos.com

Understandably, these states desperately need to increase revenues - but I wonder with so many vendors terminating their affiliate memberships there, will California’s anticipated increase in sales revenue ever come to fruition?

Your thoughts?

Have you ever heard the term - “Sell the Sizzle, not the Steak”? Buying means making a decision, and that decision making process begins with a need to ease some pain, then logically progresses (in person) through stages of talking, thinking and actions toward closing the sale.

Online though, there are no body clues – no sales representative to nod their head up and down, looking for a yes response, cueing the prospect to follow suit. Online, compelling landing & checkout pages are vital to your success.

Buying anything is an emotional process – for some much more so than others, like me. Using the five senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell to evoke an emotion (tied to your offer) helps reinforce your solution in the eyes of your prospect.

Closing the sale – isn’t simply a yes or a no. It’s a logical progression from a search query to the point “Add to Cart. “ The term, “Always Be Closing,” applies to each and every page the prospect touches until the order is completed, and really should continue beyond that, with either a survey or recommendations for other products and services based on what they just purchased.

Giving your prospect too many choices – or making the navigation from Point “Search” to Point “Buy’ difficult, is just as bad.

Revised Oct 13, 2011

As a rule of thumb – broad markets invite fierce competiton. Search queries that return in the tens of millions of results are going to be hard to rank on page one of any search engine. Why is that important even if you actually are selling to a broad market?

Online buyers are spending billions of dollars annually – and if not with you, certainly with your competition. The good news is that broad markets can be broken down into niches, with each niche targeted to draw buyers to your site. The key here is to do keyword research to determine the exact niche prospects are (currently) searching for, then optimize your site (using those keyword phrases) to increase your conversions.

Tweaking your site – to take advantage of current trends can be as simple as adding a URL and title description to exactly match the extended keyword phrases that are ranking highest (today).

As an example, I just this morning did keyword research  – on fitness equipment, which is a fairly broad market. Apparently, fitness equipment is searched for 82,000 times per month on Google. Drilling down, I saw that the extended keyword phrase of home fitness equipment drew 4,400 queries. If my site targeted fitness equipment, I could create a page with the URL of www.(yourdomain).com/home_fitness_equipment/  and include “home fitness equipment” in its title tag. Time and time again, I’ve seen this SEO strategy help sites with low (or ZERO) PageRank and minimal backlinks outrank sites with high PR and thousands of backlinks.

If you’re running a WordPress site – beware. The default for creating URLs looks something like ?p=1237. Sure your site may be indexed, but how many buyers are searching for 1237? By simply changing the default to Month/Name, the URL could look like /2010/08/home-fitness-equipment. If you’re searching for a custom title tag plug-in for WordPress, read the comments first and check it’s compatibility with the current WordPress version.

Increasing traffic is key – but great content and compelling calls-to-action take the reigns once your site is found. To optimize your conversions, you need all three ingredients.

Exposing Pain
What are some of the fundamentals that drive higher conversion ratios? The first, I think, is to reinforce your prospect’s existing pain. Here’s the catch. When you’re designing an online campaign, how would you know your prospect’s specific pain?

In one-on-one meetings, it’s relatively easy – you ask questions, lots of them. Here, I recommend the POCCAD approach, asking questions related to personnel, their organization, their current system, their current vendors, what applications they’re using, and who their decision makers are. Find their hot buttons and drill deeper.

Online, these tactics don’t convert well. Here, pain is relative to industry trends, and measuring that pain requires some research. I start with the search engines, typically Bing, Google and Yahoo, followed by industry specific forums. Pain can cover everything from slow Internet connections to issues related to their current provider.

Showing Value
Value is perceived. You may not have the best product or service, but the perception of those can be vastly improved with effective copywriting. Here, professional presentation is key. You need to capture your prospect’s attention, then emotionally motivate them to action.

Minimize their Risk
Trust is key to minimizing their risk. There are a number of ways to convey trust. One of those is via testimonials, while another is a guarantee. Testimonials lend considerable credence, especially if that business or organization is well known. Guarantees won’t completely ease the pain of making a bad decision, but it does give the prospect a way out, should the relationship sour.

Cap the Offer
By that, I mean make your offer limited in some fashion, either by time, event or availability. We see these tactics everyday in retail – when they’re gone, they’re gone. Don’t miss this chance to own this once in a lifetime deal.

Have an Exit Strategy
Either offer other related products (I see this all the time on sites like Amazon), offer a discounted price or offer some consolation for visiting your site – either a discount on future purchases or possibly a free report.

Designing your site for e-commerce – begins with keyword research, matching keywords and phrases that most closely match today’s search queries. Why? Because designing a site with keywords or phrases that no one searches for makes conversions very very difficult (lack of traffic). Of course you can still advertise via article, blog and forum posting, or micro-sites, which should provide some very targeted leads, but you lose the viral power of organic search results.

I’ve seen sites that dominate –  SERPS (search engine results pages) for their particular niche, but can’t convert a prospect. Frequently, keyword research reveals that NO ONE is searching for that niche. In simple terms, if you’re getting 6 pageviews/month, it doesn’t matter if you have the best design, intuitive navigation and a kick a** shopping cart, your ROI (return on investment) will suffer.

Taking keywords one step further - selling anything is about the perception of providing value & solutions, and this applies to everything from selling toothpaste to cloud hosting – which leads us to Landing Pages and relevancy, and on to compelling calls-to-action. The words you use cross-site and intra-site need to be relevant to the search query. Getting traffic from a search query that leads to a product or service that’s either in conflict with the search, unreadable (poor theme or contrast), not compelling or out of alignment with the rest of the industry won’t convert well.

My recommendation - absolutely use keyword research tools to match the products and services you want to sell – with the keywords and keyword phrases currently entered into search queries – that will produce sufficient traffic to sustain and grow your business.