Why your eCommerce Website Needs an Online Wishlist

Not all visitors to your website will automatically turn into a customer, so having an online wishlist allows people who do not make an initial purchase to quickly do so sometime in the future. It is compared to bookmarking, and in a similar way, some wishlists allow the owners to share the contents easily with family and friends, who can also purchase the item for them. This is becoming a popular way of sharing desired birthday, Christmas and wedding presents.

With modern e-commerce platforms, even small eCommerce websites can have an online wishlist. Here are some advantages of having wishlist:

1. It can drive more traffic to your website. It can transform mere visitors to buyers. More buyers can increase the site’s revenue.It builds loyalty to your customers, as it will keep your customers going back to your site and checking out more products.
2. It adds user friendliness and efficiency on your website.
3. A good way to promote your product/services through e-mail.
4. You can remind your customers who has an active wish list, especially on Christmas, birthday or when there is a huge sale of their items.
5. Cool additional features of wishlist that can increase conversions:
• Social media sharing of the wishlist items, also includes event sites, blogs.
• Public links of your wishlist items.
• Sharing of wishlist items through email.

Image source

5 Quick Tips to Help Boost Your E-Commerce Sales

E-commerce websites are one of the best ways to sell your products or services. However, not all businesses with an E-commerce site are successful in hitting their sales targets. Here are some tips of what makes an online shop successful.

Keep It Simple. I know every merchant would like their customers to see all their wares. However, too many websites are overwhelming with product information that makes it hard for a customer to find what they want.

• Try to simplify or categorize your product listings.
• Create a “Recommendations” section where you can emphasize your best or popular products.

Visible Shopping Baskets. This is one of the most important tools that an online shop should have and with that in mind it would be best to make it stand out. Below are some examples:

• Make the Shopping Cart button visually different from the rest of the site by using color or text or both.
• A cart could get visual updates when an items is added onto it.
• Make the Shopping cart fixed and visible even when scrolling down the screen.

High Quality Images. Product images are greatly important to your e-commerce website. Customers who shops online are very meticulous on what they are buying. Provide an option to look closer at your products. Investing on the best photography you can, it’ll be worth it.

Important links or buttons can all be emphasized by making them big. However, size isn’t everything. The appearance, content and the location of a link or button should also be well thought of.

Consolidated Customer Help. Customers making an online transaction may have a lot of questions:

• How much is shipping and handling?
• Do you charge taxes?
• What is your return policy?
• Is the credit card information I give you secure?
• How do I place an order?
• What payment options are available?
• What Internet browser do I need to shop?
• How will my order be packed?
• How do I send items to multiple addresses?

You can bring together all help into a single section of the site. Conveniently put the FAQ on the navigation bar to avoid users going around the site to look for different pieces of information.

Handle Site Errors Smartly. Even with a well designed site, something is bound to go wrong. When a user is prompted with an error message:

• The message should be highly visible – This is achieved either by strong visual branding or by positioning the message next to field being edited (such as context sensitive help).
• The message should tell the user what to do – It is important that messages clearly communicate how the user can overcome the problem.

A customer may encounter a problem when searching for a product. A customer will try to search for a product and will get no results. The customer might conclude that the site does not have whatever it was they searched for. In such cases, it would be best to provide some guidance when performing a search, see our recent article on suggestive search and predictive text.

Image source : squidoo.com

2012 Online Marketing Trend Predictions

Here are five 2012 marketing trend predictions according to Econsultancy.com.

1. Online marketing will begin to drive in-store retailing. Technology such as Google Wallet and near field communications will allow brands to track the impact of online activity on in-store sales. Google’s paid search for mobile enables brands to serve relevant ads to consumers while they are in the store vicinity, as well as providing directions to the store.

2. Online marketing will be driven by smart multichannel attribution. Many predicted that by 2011, brands would be able to have a complete, single view of their customers. Thanks to improved analytics technology such as Google Funnel, an evolution of Google Analytics, this will soon become a reality.

3. Google may entirely dominate the search market. The current search market share of Google is 90% plus it owns 98% of the mobile search market globally. With over 100 innovations from Google in the past year, Google continues to grow and become a dominant influence on consumers. With 90% current market share (98% for mobile), next year they could well and truly leave Bing and Yahoo! behind.

4. Brands will invest more in getting to know their customers. With the 2012 economy prediction looking gloomy, the demand for discounts is expected to increase again. Some brands will be looking for a stronger promotional strategy. Some clever brands are going beyond offering discounts by offering deeper understanding of their customers’s drive to buy in order to gain loyalty from the customer and maintain a good relationship with them.

5.Facebook won’t master social commerce. Facebook hasn’t been successful in social commerce so far, with Facebook Deals closing only four months after launch. Brands should consider Facebook as a social medium to understand and communicate with customers and to build brand reputation, not as a direct selling tool.