Many of you who are long-time store owners probably have an address book full of customers you’ve done business with in the past. But, are you aggressively collecting email addresses of store visitors who are simply browsing your store? Capturing this audience will get you one step closer to converting visitors to paying customers. This is a top priority for both new store owners and those who’ve been doing business for quite some time.
We’ll show you a simple and effective way to start capturing email addresses of web visitors so that you can create a dialog with these potentially profitable visitors. In our example exercise, we’ll use a store launch event as the hypothetical situation. So, if you’re new to Auctiva Commerce this will be right up your alley. More experienced store owners can customize this lesson to fit their specific needs. We’ll be giving you suggestions on how to do that as we go along.
The Power of Email Lists
Email lists are a terrific selling tool. It allows you to frequently keep in touch with your customers and drive high-quality traffic to your store. There are a variety of ways to do email lists, including a guerilla-style technique where you send emails to your email list through your standard email client (e.g., Microsoft Outlook or some other email application). This is one of the least expensive ways to operate an email list, however, it can become difficult to manage and design your email campaigns. This method also does not automate opt-in or opt-out functions or provide analytical data.
A good email list managing tool will automate the most essential email managing tasks and provide insights into the success of your email campaigns. This means that when you send an email to the recipients in your email list, you’ll be able view how many of those people open the email and how many of those click on a link within the email (i.e., the click through rate). This additional information can help you decide the value of the emails you send as well as assess which types of emails drive the most valuable traffic back to your store. Let’s say you want to feature a new product on your store next month. What kind of marketing copy would compel your email recipients to buy this product? You could write a hard sale, such as “Just Added to Our Inventory-Get 10% off Now.” Or, would you do better with something softer by writing a paragraph about the product itself and why you are excited to offer it on your store? These are difficult questions to answer, but a good email list tool should be able to offer us some insights. We encourage you to take a closer look at these tools and see if they’re right for you.
Email List Setup Summary
Here’s what we’re going to do:
- Plan our Email Signup Workflow
- Create a MailChimp account. We’ll tell you more about these monkeys later.
- Create a new email list.
- Create a Sign-Up form.
- Create a new WebPage in Auctiva Commerce.
- Create a link to the New WebPage from the Home Page.
We won’t discuss how to do an email campaign in this exercise. We’ll talk about email campaigns at a later date. This exercise is simply for creating the “net” that will capture web visitors so that we can sell to them, later. Let’s dig in.
Read more…
Social networking is exploding—and with it, the technique of viral marketing, or using social networks and word-of-mouth advertising to create buzz about new products or brands.
To read the complete article, check out our Auctiva Education Section.
DID YOU KNOW?
Nielson Online reports that YouTube is the No. 1 entertainment site for consumer product advertising. Videos provide great advertising—and they can be very entertaining.
Micro-blogging site Twitter can also be a great tool for promoting specials and discounts. Many businesses are already using “tweets” to promote their enterprises. According to one survey, 66 percent of respondents said Twitter was “somewhat” or “extremely” important to their business.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
- FaceBook: Connect with Groups that could be interested in your products; if you sell dog-care products, find an animal-lovers group.
- YouTube: Create a fun “how-to” using your products. Become an expert within your line of products.
- Twitter: Tweet about Sales and Specials. Provide a special discount to your followers.
Now go start connecting with others. Your Auctiva Commerce Store will greatly benefit from the exposure. Post links to your store in your social-network accounts, and link to any videos you make in your store’s “About Us” page. Remember, when it comes to spreading the word about your store, it’s all about going viral.
Remember, Auctiva Commerce has a complete Help Section, replete with step-by-step tutorials and video guides.
If you have questions or comments, please visit our Community Forums.
And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter!
Store branding is the next big subject that we’ll be tackling over the next several weeks. Every page of your store is an opportunity to communicate your values to potential customers. Visitors to your website may not have any familiarity with you or how you operate your eCommerce business. Let’s focus today’s discussion around two important branding opportunities on your website: the store logo and description.
The Myth of the Perfect Store Logo
Auctiva Commerce store owners are a diverse group of online sellers that sell everything from vintage collectables to personalized doormats. Each store owner will have their own unique online identity (or brand). In this way there is no wrong way to create a store logo. But, we’d like to throw out a few pointers that will help create a shopping experience that inspires buyer confidence and ultimately generates more sales.
Rule #1. Keep It Simple, Keep It Tasteful
A store logo needs to be recognizable and unique, but it also needs to be readable and digestible. That means the logo itself shouldn’t be so eye-catching that it distracts the buyer from their main goal of making a purchase. And it should not take more than a split second for a buyer to decode its meaning. Designs that make you scratch your head are distracting for the wrong reasons. Ornate store logos are fine as long as it’s readable and fits in with the theme of the store. But often times, less is more.
Rule #2. Small Is Better Than Way Too Big
The ideal dimension of you store logo is 270 pixels by 100 pixels. This is the dimensions that our Store Theme Designers use to layout all the store themes. You can use bigger logos (up to 900 pixels by 400 pixels in fact), but if you go too big you may end up pushing other store content below the fold. Wait a minute, what’s “below the fold” mean? In the world of Internet browsing, any webpage content that is positioned below the viewable area on a buyer’s computer screen is called below the fold. This means that the buyer will need to scroll the browser down to see that content. Usability experts know that the odds that an average e-shopper will scroll down to see more content is not in the favor of the store owner. If your store logo is gigantic, the featured products on your home page will be less likely viewed by web visitors. That can mean fewer sales per month.
Rule #3. Be Informative and Be Yourself
Using descriptive language is a good idea to help inform buyers who you are and how you conduct business. Are you a mom and pop shop? Do you have a large sales and service staff? Do you do business worldwide? Ask yourself what kind of seller you are and how does the benefit your shoppers. This will become part of your branding narrative that tells potential customers that you can be trusted.
Examples: We Got ‘Em
Let’s take a look at some real life examples from the Auctiva Commerce network of store owners. Keep in mind that these are are hard working store owners. Any criticism is meant to be constructive.
Read more…
I am pleased to announce that Auctiva Commerce has been updated to include the following features and bug fixes:
Addition of Condition attribute to Google Base Feeds – Store Admin
In anticipation of Google’s June 30th requirement to include the Condition attribute in all Google Base feeds we have modified Auctiva Commerce to include this feature. All feeds generated from today forward will contain the Condition attribute. We have added the Condition attribute to the Product Details page of your store admin so that you may set the appropriate Condition per product. Per Google the valid values are New, Used and Refurbished.
Important Note: We have defaulted all products to New – if your products are not New you will need to set each product to the appropriate value.
Finally, since the Condition attribute will be required by Google on June 30th, you need to regenerate and resubmit a Google Base feed to ensure that Google has an accurate view of your products. When you regenerate your feed SET THE OVERWRITE EXISTING FEED FILE OPTION TO YES within the Auctiva Commerce Google Base feed page. This will ensure that your Google Base feed is updated with the new attribute.
An Auctiva Commerce Help Doc that describes how to submit a feed to Google Base can be found
Here.
Shipping Calculator Fix – Public StoreFront
In a previous release a defect was introduced that prevented the Shipping Estimator from showing up when a product was added to the Shopping Cart from the Product Detail page. This has been corrected – now immediately after adding an item to the Shopping Cart from the Product Detail page the Shipping Estimator will appear on the right rail of your storefront.
SiteMap Creation Fix – Store Admin
In Internet Explorer an error message was being thrown when users attempted to use the Create and Submit Sitemap function on the Meta Data and Google Integration page. This has been corrected.
These fixes have been deployed live and where applicable Help and/or FAQ documentation has been updated on the
Auctiva Commerce Help Site.
Injecting keywords into your product descriptions, titles and meta tags can help your products rank higher in search results. Today’s tip focuses on a unique technique for finding new or more valuable keywords so that your products will be found.
The Key to Keywords
The Google Keyword Tool is a great way to look at the words and phrases that are searched on Google. This can give you new ideas as to what words you’d like to emphasize in your product descriptions and titles or inject into your meta tags for a product. But, it’s relatively useless to you without qualifying the keyword results. In the end, we’re not looking for just any old keywords, but ones that bring in valuable buyer traffic. Let’s run through an example to learn how to use this tool and our 3-point Keyword Check to find the best keywords the Internet can provide.
Keywords Galore
Go ahead and point your browser to the Google Keyword Tool.
In this example we’re going to assume that we want to improve my search result performance for my Apple iPod Touch 8GB MP3 player. So far I’ve identified the basic keywords for my product and here they are: apple ipod, ipod touch, ipod, 8 gb, mp3 player. Basically, I’ve just broken down my product title into small bits of words and phrases that I assume people will be entering as search terms. In reality, that’s pretty effective, but we can use Google Keyword Tool to discover more popular keywords. Let’s do that now.
Read more…
Google Base is a web tool that allows you to upload your inventory data to Google. This is a quick and easy way to start generating buyer traffic. Inventory data that is uploaded to Google Base will return in Google product search results.
Google Base Setup
Follow the Google Base Setup tutorial for step-by-step instructions. Once you have completed the setup, continue reading this post to learn more about how Google Base works.
When you submit your Google Base feed from your Auctiva Commerce store, you’re sending product information to Google. There are certain fields pertaining to the product information that you should focus on improving to help your products perform well in search results. In all cases, the more details you can provide the better.
Google Base Summaries
Make sure the Product Summary field for each product has relevant, accurate information about the product. This field is specifically for your Google Base feed. The Product Summary will appear in search results, so make sure your product copy is well written. Try to be concise and add the important details in the first two lines, as that is what’s most likely to display in the search results.
Product Titles
As go through your products and update the Product Summaries, you should also consider updating the Name field in the Product Details page. This field is what Google Base will use as the Product Title that displays in search results. Provide as much details as you can about the product. Google Base limits titles to 70 characters. A Product Title over 70 characters will automatically truncate to fit 70 characters.
Frequency Makes a Difference
You should keep your Google Base feed “fresh” by creating and uploading the feed through your Auctiva Commerce store with some level of frequency. This is different for each store owner and is dependent upon how often your inventory changes. Consider uploading the feed when you make a significant change to one or multiple products, add new inventory, remove inventory and/or have a significant change in inventory levels. Make a note to be more diligent with this task during popular shopping seasons.
By default your feed will expire 30 days from the latest post date. Try to make a habit of refreshing your feed at least once a month. If you’re a busy store owner, you may need to upload your feed several times a week.
As a follow-up to this article we will blog about optimizing your Google Base feed in the near future. There are a lot of little tricks that can help your data feed perform better in the search results. Stay tuned.
Auctiva: S.W.A.G. will donate the proceeds from its sales to the Little Red Hen plant nursery in Chico, CA. The non-profit organization has been a part of the community for more than 10 years and serves children and adults with developmental disabilities. To learn more about this great cause, please go to http://www.littleredhennursery.com/index.htm. Thanks for helping us make a difference!
You’ll find super cute Auctiva t-shirts and hats, Chico State gear, a few tasty treats local to Chico and our famous Auctiva eBay LIVE Collector’s Pin! Find some SWAG and support a very worthy cause!
Visit the Auctiva S.W.A.G. Store today!
Submitting a SiteMap and your store domain to Google will get you one step closer to being indexed in Google search results. It will only take a few minutes to complete this task. Once you’ve submitted your SiteMap and Domain, Google will eventually send its search bot to crawl your store for keywords.
When Should I Let Google Know About My Store?
It’s up to you when you decide to tell Google about your new store. Once you have submitted your domain and sitemap, Google will periodically check the site for new information. It’s plausible that you could start receiving traffic soon after Google indexes your site. So, are you ready for buyers? If not, you might consider holding off on this task until you’re ready to make that first sale.
On the flip side, if you do submit your SiteMap and domain to Google before your store is live, you can start to get a sense of what kind of traffic to expect. Furthermore, you can use Google Analytics to monitor the traffic more closely. If you choose this route, consider disabling the purchasing feature in the Store Settings (Store >Configure> Store Settings) until your store is ready to go live. To avoid frustrating potential customers, add copy to your Home page telling visitors that your store is under construction. If you have a launch date, let them know when they can come back and make a purchase.
Next week we’ll show you how to take this idea one step further by creating a method that will allow potential customers to join a mailing list. This will enable you to capture potential customers and notify them when your store goes live.
Have you made up your mind? If you’re ready to get indexed by Google, follow these two tutorials:
Google Webmasters Tool is another great “behind the scenes” integration that gives you insight on how Google “views” your store for search results.
Just like the Google Analytics Setup in this Boot Camp Series, what’s important is that you get this account started. Over the course of several weeks, we’ll return to Webmaster Tools to identify certain areas of your store that are good opportunities for optimization.
So, we’re going to keep this post short and sweet. All you need to do for today is set up your Google Webmaster Tools account.
Start the Webmaster Tools tutorial to properly set up your account. Questions? Just leave us a comment.
Enable Google Analytics to track eCommerce metrics
One of the most important Google integrations you need to immediately start is Google Analytics. The sooner you implement Google Analytics with your Auctiva Commerce store, the sooner you will capture valuable data about your store visitors. This information will be crucial in increasing the profitability of your store.
Let’s Get This Profitability Party Started
If you have not yet integrated Google Analytics with your Auctiva Commerce store, do so now!
Here’s the step-by-step tutorial for integrating Google Analytics. Take the next five to ten minutes to complete the tutorial. We recommend that you also enable the E-Commerce tracking feature when you go through the tutorial. E-Commerce tracking will allow you to track purchases made on your storefront. When you complete the Google Analytics setup, come back and finish reading this post. We’ve got some house-cleaning to do.
Patience is a Virtue in eCommerce Analysis
It takes awhile for your Google Analytics account to acquire enough data about your store visitors before you can find key insights that can boost the performance of your store. This period of time varies from store to store, but if you have a modest amount of traffic, you should feel comfortable with about 3 months of data to review. And, that’s just a start, although, a lot of good information about how users are browsing your store will come in withing the first couple of weeks. We can use this information to continually improve the shopping experience for your customers.
Monitoring trends on your store can give you key insights into customer behavior.
Trends on the Internet are constantly changing. Once you have Google Analytics integrated with your Auctiva Commerce store, you’ll be able to monitor these trends more closely.
We’re going to help you to do that. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be showing you how to look at the data and make actionable decisions that will improve the performance of your store. While we wait for your data to collect, we’re also going to help you learn how to drive more traffic to your store. Tomorrow, we will continue with the Google Integration Boot Camp theme with Google Webmaster Tools Setup. Make sure to check back in with us then.
