5 Tips for Ecommerce Websites

With more and more ecommerce websites popping up every day it can be difficult for businesses (old and new) to keep up with best practices when it comes to selling online.

So this week we have 5 tips to share with you.

1) Add attention grabbing deals and bestsellers to your homepage

Give your visitors (and Google) something new to look at each time they visit your website. Keep it fresh. This can include displaying special offers, best sellers, sale items and what’s new etc on your homepage.

2) Display delivery and returns information prominently

It's important to clearly display delivery costs and any free delivery threshold on every page of your ecommerce website. Information on how to return items must also be easily accessible as this will instil confidence and encourage people to purchase knowing they can easily return easily if they need to.

3) Make use of onsite product reviews

Displaying star ratings for products (like Amazon does) will allow your visitors to see which products have been voted the best by other customers. Products that have reviews that customers have written are an excellent way of making use of user generated content (Google will love you for this too).

4) Let visitors know your website is secure

It's important to show your customers that it’s safe to buy from your website, especially when they're adding debit or credit card information. This must be clearly displayed for any visitor (repeat customer or new prospects) to see.

5) Optimise your Thank You page

Make your Thank You page work hard for you. Here's a few examples of what you can include...  social sharing buttons to encourage customers to share what they've just ordered, also include social follow buttons. Ask for feedback about whether the order process was easy. And you can provide examples of similar items to those they've just purchased.

Thank you for reading.

Effective & brilliant homepage examples - Part 2

Today we’re following on from Effective & brilliant Homepage Examples - Part 1 blog post with 5 more examples of household brands with brilliant home pages.

Your homepage is the starting point for most of your customers. So what can we learn from these examples of great homepages that will get more of your customers from your homepage and on to their buying journey...

Example 1: mySupermarket

This website helps you find the best deals on your grocery shopping by comparing your basket across different stores.

What’s good about it?

1.This website clearly describes how it’s going to help you and why you should use it at the very top of the page. (And in fewer words than this bullet point!)

2.There is one stand out call to action - ‘Start shopping’- and it follows straight after the above reasons to use mySupermarket. It’s obvious where to click. This is so important because if a visitor doesn’t navigate to a second page on your website it will count as a ‘bounce’ and Google doesn’t like websites with high numbers of bounces.

3.The navigation menu is pictorial. Since 65% of people are visual learners, this makes site navigation instantly intuitive.

4.The search bar is prominently positioned. This is a must for ecommerce websites.

5.For mobile visitors there are links to download the app front and centre of the homepage. This shows that they’ve really put a lot of thought into caring for their mobile customers.

6.There is a ‘real’ up to date example of the kind of deals mySupermarket can offer. Today’s was kiwis, 50% off.

7.The stores that are compared to give you your bargain basket are displayed across the screen so that you can see exactly what your options are.

Example 2: Dyson

This household brand almost doesn’t need an introduction – Dyson make vacuums that don’t lose suction. And this is clearly conveyed by their homepage.

What’s good about it?

1. Front and centre there is a compelling reason to buy from dyson.co.uk and not a competitor – you save up to £110.

2. The imagery is truly stunning. It’s obvious straight away that the products are beautiful engineered and built.

3. We really like the help me choose button, it’s customer focused and helpful.

4. Navigation is clean and simple.

5. Social media icons are displayed at the top and in the footer.

Example 3: Thomas Cook

Package holidays, hotels and flights.

What’s good about it?

1. The search form on the homepage is clean and simple to use, and it auto fills the airport based on your location. It’s little details like this that make an online experience more enjoyable, which is very important when booking a holiday.

2. Above the fold, you’re shown beautiful sun soaked beaches. When you hover over these images you’re given more information about that particular deal. This is a nice feature for the user and it provides extra information to Google.

3. Below the fold you are given detailed information on why you should choose Thomas Cook as well as pros for a few example resorts. For example ‘family beach resorts’, ‘late breakfast’ and ‘free Wi-Fi’. Exactly the kind of information you need.

4. At the bottom of the page there is detailed information on the website’s security. This is well considered since customer peace of mind is so important when it comes to large purchases such as holidays. There’s also information on the payment options available.

5. There are links to 6 different language versions of the website.

Example 4: Barker & Stonehouse

The ecommerce website for the stylish, modern home furniture company Barker & Stonehouse.

What’s good about it?

1. The above the fold slider shows beautiful furniture in a home setting, and right below, the individual products are displayed. This makes it’s easy to see where to go next if you like what you see.

2. There’s a phone number to call right at the top in bold for those who want to place an order over the phone.

3. Order tracking options are also prominently positioned, right where you’d expect it to be.

4. Click & collect, stock check and finance options are clearly displayed and explained on the homepage. All of these make it easier for the customer to get their hands on the product faster.

5. There’s a link to their blog. And I want to click through to their blog because it tells me what to expect. Tips and inspiration.

Example 5: British Gas

Gas and electricity supplier.

What’s good about it?

1. The copy on this homepage is very customer focused. ‘How can we help you?’ … ‘services most suited to your needs’.

2. Actions are clearly laid out for the visitor to choose from according to what type of homeowner they are – making something which could be quite complicated, simple.

3. This website is responsive – it adapts to the size of your screen – so it is just as easy to navigate on a mobile device.

4. It’s also super easy to download the British Gas app for mobile visitors.

That's it's for now. Thank you for reading, hope you've come away with some useful ideas to improve your own homepage. 

If you've not read part 1, you can find it here.

Business owner or marketing manager? 5 tips to save money when hiring an SEO agency

Hiring an experienced professional SEO agency will set you back thousands of pounds every single year. But it's a necessity if you a) have limited or no knowledge of search engine optimisation yourself and b) you want to rank highly in search engines like Google.

So what can you do to save money if you have a set online marketing budget and time on your hands?

We've listed 5 things that you can do yourself that will not only save you money but also support the work that a professional SEO agency will do for you.

1. Blog regularly

Creating regular (at least weekly) high quality blog or news content yourself (or within your organisation) is an absolute must. If you don't write your own content your SEO agency will do it for you (and charge you for it). Creating an 'editorial calendar' will help you to organise your time and identify any seasonal trends that you should be preparing for.

Earlier this year we advised a household brand name on how to encourage and empower their 3,000+ employee's to create content for the brand. You can do it too.

Here's 18 stats to help you write the perfect blog post but remember that a great blog/news article should sell without selling.

Coca-Cola are a great example of a brand that blogs well with a nice balance of different article types. Here's their blog.

Mint.com blog also do this well with a mixture of articles and infographics.

And the official Sharpie Markers blog is fun and innovative.

2. Automate your social network posting

Your social media platforms (Twitter, Google+, Facebook etc) should all be linked & setup from your blog to post automatically every-time a new blog article/news story is published. This will save you time manually publishing to each network.

3. Manage your own social media marketing

One of the factors Google looks for when determining how well a website should rank is 'social signals' (re-tweets, Facebook likes/shares, Google+'s etc). So make sure you provide your followers with information that adds value as this will encourage them to like and share your posts.

And remember to be well mannered... thank people who have interacted with you.

4. Encourage user reviews

Encourage your customers to leave a review of your company and/or products. You can encourage company reviews to be left on your Google+ page as well as on external websites such TrustPilot and TripAdvisor etc (depending on your market).

Product reviews should be encouraged within your e-commerce website as well as externally on websites such as reevoo and CNET. Use positive feedback as testimonials on your website homepage as this will help to lower the bounce rate (which is another thing Google looks at).

Here's a recent blog post we did on 11 ways to encourage customers to leave a review.

Amazon do a great job of this.

5. Write really good product descriptions

One of the most difficult things e-commerce website owners face is making sure that their product descriptions are well written, informative and unique. This is especially true if the very same product with the manufacturers description is being sold online elsewhere (DVD's for example). Google doesn't like duplicate content so take the time to make your product descriptions different. Encouraging user generated reviews of your products (as mentioned in point 4) can help with this.

Not sure what makes a good product page? Here's some great examples for you:

Naked Wines - Great way to display content saving space and the use of user generated content to make the page unique.

Firebox Chilli Chocolate - Quirky and well written content with a lovely tone.

Mr & Mrs Smith Hotels -  Very informative page with information about the hotel, facilities and the surroundings.

If you've enjoyed reading this post why not share it?

How to get more customers to complete your website checkout – Part 2

Today, we’re continuing on with more practical advice on what you can do to see more customers complete checkout.

A lot of effort goes into actually getting a customer to a website. Just think about everything you’ve done as a business owner to get your name and product out there. This only makes it more frustrating when a significant proportion of these visitors start the checkout process but then never complete it.

In this blog post we’ll guide you through another 6 tips that will make your checkout process easier, more user friendly and streamlined.

Have a persistent shopping cart

This is top of the list of our recommendations today. A persistent shopping cart is one where the items will still be there if the shopper goes away or is in active for a while. It means that they can come back and easily make the purchase later on.

I left some shoes in the basket for a whole day on the Crocs website. And when I came back, they were right where I left them.

Make the primary button stand out

One key to easy checkout navigation is having a single, most prominent button on each page. This makes it clear to the user where they need to go intuitively. Where there are multiple options, the most important or desired action must be stronger. Being consistent with the design and positioning of this primary button will make your checkout navigation easy to use and intuitive.

Urban outfitters do this well. Everything on the page is monotone, except for the primary button which is bright blue. This is consistent throughout the checkout process.

Autofill address

If you’re an ecommerce store, all your customers really want is to have the right product in their hands. Anything that you can do to make that happen quicker and easier is of benefit to your business. This includes details as seemingly insignificant as whether you provide an autofill for their address after they’ve entered their post code. Equally important is allowing delivery details to be used as billing details. Time saving optimisations like this will become increasingly important as more and more users make online purchases using their mobile phones.

We like the way Firebox has kept the number of fields to a minimum, they'll find your address using your post code and they also autofill title and country. Sensible defaults like these save customers time and effort.

Provide helpful error messages

It’s more than a little frustrating when you go through the trouble of filling a form out, then you press submit but for some reason it’s not happy and wants you to fill it all out again. 

It’s really important that when there is an validation error, the correct information that the customer has typed is retained. Secondly, a useful error messages needs to be given. Often these messages are displayed at the top of the page, instead they need to be alongside the field containing the error as this makes is so much easier to spot and correct.

Schuh give concise and helpful error messages when something's not quite right.

Offer gift options

A huge proportion of our online shopping is for gifts. Just take Mother’s Day for example, 60% of gifts are bought online. With birthdays and anniversaries the need for gift wrapping options becomes obvious. 

It’s not just gift wrapping options that a customer might look for, they might want to conceal the price or include a ‘don’t open before [date]’ note. Implementing these considerations in your checkout process will make your customer feel valued because you thought about their needs.

Hotel Chocolat do this amazingly, not only do they offer you several gift options, they show you what they look like.

Display basket items

This keeps the user focused on the end goal – their shiny new thing. The Nike website displays the products being purchased throughout the checkout process, it’s nicely done with beautiful product imagery.

There are 6 more checkout optimisation tips in last week’s blog post, which you can read here. Enjoy!

Also, we’d love to know if any of you have implemented any of these recommendations and the impact it’s had on your conversion rate. Let us know by commenting further down.

Oh and if you've found this article useful please share it using the icons below.

How to get more customers to complete checkout on your ecommerce website – Part 1

Sometimes it’s hard to put your finger on what makes a website great... it just feels ‘nice’ doesn’t it? This doesn’t happen by accident or by having better designers but by deciding to put user experience (UX) first.

In this article we’ll be sharing six techniques that really successful websites use to make their checkout experiences feel ‘nice’. If you can incorporate just some of these intentional user focused decisions in your website then you’ll be well on the way to seeing more checkout completions and fewer shopping cart abandonments.

Allow customers to checkout as a guest

Did you know that 25% of shoppers abandon their cart because of forced registration? That’s 25% of sales that have been lost. Even mentioning the word ‘register’ in your checkout is a bad idea because it makes some customers feel like they’re not in control of the checkout process.

Instead of making customers register as default, try offering the option for first time buyers to checkout as a guest and once they have completed their purchase then offer the option to register.

A website which does this well is ASOS.

Include secure payment information

We all want to know that the website we’re purchasing from is secure, especially if we’re using our mobile phone to access the website and buy.

Websites should display SSL certificates and logos ensuring security throughout the checkout process, not just on the payments page. And on the payments page there should be a short piece of text reassuring visitors that the website is secure.

Something else that we’ll mention is, make sure you also provide information on what exactly a security code or expiry date is. This is something that Quicksilver have done nicely.

Show customers their progress

Much of what we've talked about so far comes down to one thing: making the customer feel in control. Informing the customer where they are in the checkout process, what step is coming next and allowing them to navigate forwards and backwards through these steps hands them the reigns and relieves any worries they might have.

This can be effectively done in a process bar showing the checkout steps. Each step should be a clickable link in case the customer wants to go back and change anything.

We like the way Lakeland has done this and even included a brief sentence to let customers know what to expect from each stage.

Make your checkout mobile friendly

Sales completed on mobile devices grew by 94% from 2012 to 2013 and now account for more than 32% of all online sales.

In light of this and the fact that a mobile screen is so much smaller than a desktop screen, your checkout process has to be mobile friendly. This means keeping the design simple, using radio buttons and drop down menus where possible and only asking for the most essential information.

TopShop have a great mobile checkout which is easy and quick to follow, and it ticks all of the other best practises in this article.

Remove all distractions

It’s really important that there are no unnecessary navigation or exit points in your checkout process. Since you've worked so hard to get your customer to the point of buying, everything should be focused on moving your customer along the checkout process and not away from it. There should be a limited or no menu navigation. Only information relevant to encourage completion should be included, such as: guarantees, returns policy and delivery information.

Notonthehighstreet are a shining example of how to do this:

Offer customers complimentary products

Not only is this helpful to shoppers, it’ll increase your average transaction value. But you must up-sell in the right way by offering only the most relevant products. Apple is a great example of this they've kept it simple and still kept the continue button the most prominent on the screen.

Provide multiple payment options

PayPal is fantastic. Instead of having to rummage around for your card and type out the really long card number you can just enter your email address and hey presto the payment is made.
Wiggle not only provides the option of paying by card or PayPal, it also clearly explains what to expect and when to enter your PayPal details.

That's it for Part 1 of How to get more customers to complete checkout on your ecommerce website. Part 2 to follow next Monday.

Please share this post if you found it useful.

Thank you.

6 e-commerce website best practice examples

A little while ago we wrote an article on 15 e-commerce best practices that you can’t ignore - no longer is Google only concerned with factors such as meta data and alt tags.

Google wants to see websites that are user friendly. So build your website for the user and you’ll be on the right path to seeing your Google rankings improve as visitors stay longer on your website, make more purchases and keep coming back.

The examples below are all websites that put customer experience first, and as a result have come out on top of Google too.

Great use of product images

Made.com have really put a lot of consideration into providing images of their products. Each product page contains photos of the piece of furniture from every angle, close ups of the fabrics and materials, images with the dimensions clearly labeled, and showing the relative size of the piece compared to a person. What more could you ask for without actually touching it?

In the end; the more attractive, juicy, stylish and high quality a product looks the more confident your customers will be when buying online.

Easily accessible delivery and returns information

Trust is a huge factor in online retail. Delivery and returns information must be easy to find and adhered to unfailingly by e-commerce websites. These two topics are ‘pain points’- in fact 44% of carts are abandoned because of high shipping costs. Being upfront about delivery and returns ensures that the customer doesn't feel like something's been sprung upon them.

Notonthehightstreet.com does a great job of this, giving delivery dates and prices for several UK and international delivery options as well as a simple returns policy. Both these pieces of information are available on the product page allowing customers to continue with their shopping uninterrupted.

Fast repeat purchase

Mark Cuban, an American billionaire said this: "Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you".

Speedy repeat purchases not only helps your customers, it helps you! Amazon the kings of e-commerce lead the way with this offering purchase with just one click. For websites who have many returning customers this is a must.

Attention grabbing deals and bestsellers on homepage

Deals on your homepage will grab your customers’ attention when they arrive; this is crucial if you want to stop them from hitting the back button. Bestsellers work really well on the homepage because they get customers to their favourite products even faster.

You've heard the saying, you are what you eat; well, e-commerce websites are what they sell. By having your bestsellers and deals on your homepage customers can easily see what you’re about, the price bracket you sell in and if you make use of reviews how much your customers have loved your products. B&Q do a great job of this.

Onsite product reviews put to good use

According to Reevoo, onsite reviews produce an 18% increase in sales on average. That’s huge. Just think what you could do if you had 18% more income from your website.

So who’s doing this well? The North Face have a well thought through review system tailored to each category of product. What we like about this review system is the use of tick boxes and sliders, great if you don’t want to write loads!

As well as showing star ratings on the product category pages this website actually highlights products with the most reviews and the best ratings.

Well optimised Thank You page

Thank you pages are often overlooked as they come at ‘the end’ of the customer journey, but if you can retain your customers then you've won half the battle. Thank you pages give you the perfect opportunity to leave your customers feeling appreciated and looked after.

Jezz Bezos, the CEO of amazon.com said this: “If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful”.

Here’s one thank you page that we like, masterofmalt.com, as it makes it really easy for customers to quickly leave a review and to stay in touch.

Hope these examples have given you a little inspiration to put to work on your website. Let us know if you've got any favourite examples of the these e-commerce best practices.

16 stats that show the value of SEO, Content Marketing and Social Media

Anyone else love a good juicy statistic? We certainly do!

In this blog post we've rounded up 16 stats for you that demonstrate the value of SEO, content marketing and social media - three things which go hand-in-hand with internet marketing and e-commerce success.

SEO statistics

Outbound leads cost 61% more than inbound leads. An example of an outbound lead could be direct mail or print ads, sources of inbound leads include SEO and content marketing. HubSpot.

SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads have a 1.7% close rate. Search Engine Journal.

44% of online shoppers start their buying journey with a search engine. IPSOS.

75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results. Hubspot.

70-80% of users searching on Google and Bing ignore paid ads. Search Engine Journal.

Search is the largest traffic driver providing 41% of visitors compared to 11% coming from Social Media. Search Engine Land.

Content Marketing statistics

Companies that blog have on average 4 times more indexed pages, pages that Google has deemed valuable enough to store in its index. Social Media Today.

Companies with blogs on their websites have on average 97% more back links. Social Media Today.

90% of consumers find customer content useful and 81%  trust advice from blogs. Social Media Today.

Social Media statistics

There are 3.2 billion interactions on Facebook and over half a billion tweets published every single day. KissMetrics.

77% of B2C companies and 43% of B2B companies have acquired customers on Facebook. HubSpot.

34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter. Digital Buzz Blog.

Marketers reported that demand for social media marketing increased by over 60% in 2013. Moz.

71% of social media users are more likely to purchase from brands they follow online. Balihoo.

Interesting content is one of the top three reasons customers follow brands on social media. Social Media Today.

50% of Companies struggling with SEO aren’t integrating social media. Search Engine Land.

...

We hope you've found this collection of statistics both interesting and helpful to your online marketing efforts! Let us know if you've got any SEO stats you'd like to share by commenting below.

15 e-commerce best practices you CAN'T ignore

The purpose of this blog article is to showcase some best practices when it comes to e-commerce websites in terms of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), User Experience (UX) and Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO).

So here are just a few examples of how to make your e-commerce website not only user friendly but Google friendly too.

1. Product reviews using rich snippets

Rich snippets are any additional pieces of information included in a search result. Here's an example of a product review rich snippets as displayed on a search engine results page.

2. Advertiser and business reviews using rich snippets

Here's how advertiser and store reviews using rich snippets are displayed on a search engine results page.

Other examples of how rich snippets can be used include:

• Reviews
• People
• Products
• Businesses
• Recipes
• Events
• Music

3. Display delivery information prominently

It’s important to clearly display delivery costs, free delivery and free delivery threshold options.

4. Homepage advertising / marketing

Give your visitors (and Google) something new to look at each time they visit your website. Keep it fresh. This can include displaying special offers, sale items, what’s new and more.

5. Star ratings

Displaying product star ratings in the category view of your website will help your visitors to decide which are the best products based on customer reviews.

6. Customer product reviews

Here's an example of the use of summary scores for different aspects of a product.

And here's an example of how customer reviews can be displayed a product page.

7. Reviews of your business

Prominent placing of reviews of your business from external review engines such as Trust Pilot can help your customers to trust you more.

8. Google+ reviews

Positive Google+ reviews reassure customers searching for your brand in Google of your quality. Google+ has so many other features to take advantage of too so it shouldn't be ignored.

9. Give your customers confidence

Tell them why they should buy from you.

10. Stand out from the crowd

Tell your visitors how and why you are different from your competitors. This should be displayed prominently on your website. (And it shouldn't be that you're simply cheaper than your competitors). Your brand agency can help you with this one.

11. Compare products

The functionality to have an easy to view product comparison table is advantageous in certain retail markets such as electronics, household appliances, automotives etc.

12. Tabbed product pages

Great to keep your product pages informative yet non-cluttered.

13. How secure is your website?

Let your customers know that it’s safe to buy from your website. This must be clearly displayed for any visitor (repeat customer or new prospect) to see.

14. Validation error

Don’t make your customers re-enter information twice if they make a mistake first time round filling in a form.

15. Thank you page optimisation

Here's an example of social sharing, related items / customers also bought etc. on a thank you page after checkout is complete.

These are just some examples of what you can be doing to help make your e-commerce website as usable as possible for your prospects / customers. There are so many other things to consider including customer retention and the optimisation of your checkout process but these are for another article.

Thank you for reading and if you'd like to chat to us at angelfysh about how we can help you get the best out of your e-commerce website then please get in touch.