Cross Loader Blog

How many times have you told your friends “hey, that burger place is great!”, “that clothes shop is awesome” or “this new album is the best” and most of them have taken your recommendation? Probably lots of times, but it doesn’t quite seem to work out so well when you do it on the web for a product that you are trying to sell.Quite simply, the problem here is trust. Who are you? You aren’t well known and people who know you well will not make purchases every day. Even if they did, they probably don’t number in the hundreds to make a difference. So how do you become well known enough, like Steve Jobs for instance, to sell your product by simply saying “this is the stuff, go buy it and all its accessories now”? You don’t. You don’t need to. Why waste time becoming a guru when there is a simpler way to achieve your objective?This is where you use a simple tactic that takes advantage of the customer’s mindset when they are ready to buy. It is a tactic that is used brilliantly well by any place that sells burgers and it is called the “do you want fries with that” tactic.How many times have you said no to that question? Probably a few times, but more often than not you would have said “yes”. This is what you need to do, every time a customer puts something in their shopping cart. If they buy a camera, ask them if they would like a camera bag with that; it is as simple as that. Try this tactic out on your website and you will definitely see a vast improvement in your sales.

The following are some simple things you can do to boost your conversion rates.

1. Harness 404’s – 404 error pages are part of online life. You have to have them because visitors to your site are going to see them at some point or the other. This is because of typo’s, mistakes in linking etc. So why should you let this page go to waste? It represents an opportunity to grab a customer. Offer a discount on a product, give them a freebie; this will not only make the page look good, more often than not you will get yourself an instant sale. Besides this, it won’t make your customer run for the hills because they think your site is error prone.

2. Show your rates – Shipping rates can be a big turnoff for a customer. Although you may not be able to offer lower rates, you can display the rates upfront so that the customer knows what they are up against. You can argue that this could turn customers away, but they would do that anyway when they get to the checkout point. So why not save them the hassle? That way they will always come back to you as a first choice for products because they know that the shipping rate is displayed upfront.

3. Arrival dates – Customers are always on pins until they get their product. Instead of saying “product ships in 8-16 days”, tell the customer when the product will leave your warehouse. The give them a zip code based calculator so that they can figure out when it will reach the shipping address.

1. Research – Running an online business is not a spur of the moment idea. With that kind of approach your business will die as fast it appeared. Give your venture a lot of thought. Identify what you want to sell, to whom you want to sell it to and at how much you want to sell it. Have a sound reasoning behind all these factors.

2. Budget – Plan your expenditure and set goals for your income. Obviously your business will not have money flowing in overnight, but you need to set yourself some goals or else you will be waiting forever and going bankrupt slowly.

3. Sales plan – You need to plan out what you are going to dangle in front of the customer and what you are going casually mention. The first product maybe small and inexpensive, but the second is probably where the big profit is.

4. Feed the need – Always ensure that you solve a customer’s problem, because when you do – you make a sale. From the customer’s point of view, you become a go to person and a trusted place to purchase from. Give them as much value as you can in your solution and you will stand out ahead of your competitors.

5. Follow up – Get your visitors and customers to join in an opt-in mailing list. Use this list to send informative material only. Do not waste their time and clog up their inbox’s. Build up your reputation as someone who does not spam.

6. Strategy – Plan out your marketing strategy and stick to it. Do not stray from it no matter how tempting it is. Once you have made decent amount of money, you can start looking at more expensive types of marketing strategies (like paid advertising).

An online business, done properly, can do wonders for an existing bricks-and-mortar business. Getting it started can be a daunting task, especially if you have very little or no knowledge of implementing an online store. But the difficult part really is only in the beginning. Once you get past this stage, you will need to spend far less time on it than you would on an offline business.

Once you set up the store you will quickly realize that you are suddenly on a level playing field. You may have been running your business from a small corner store, but on the internet that does not show. What does show is how well you have designed the site, how user friendly it is and how good your services are.

An online store allows you to reach a global audience. All at once, you will find yourself exposed to a vast customer base which you are free to plunder. The different time zones are never a factor, because your store is open 24/7/365. The tools that come along with any online site, help you analyze customer trends as well. This will give you enough feedback to know the profiles of your customer groups. This in turn will help you fine tune your website in order to focus more on those groups.

It is never too late to start your online venture. Even if there are a hundred different websites that sell the same product that you do, you can still be successful. All that is required to do so, is to find that unique selling point that sets you apart.

Optimize – Search Engine Optimization is a key factor in getting visibility on search engines. There is a lot you can do with your website as well as other methods you can employ to maximize your SEO. Some of the other methods include article marketing, social bookmarking, forum marketing, etc. In other words, you have to try to get your website mentioned in as many different online environments as possible. The more links a search engine finds pointing back you, the better your ranking will be on a search result page.

Affiliate Marketing- Connections are as important in the virtual world as they are in the real world. In ecommerce getting traffic to flow to your website is very, very important. One of the ways you can do this is by working out deals with other websites. Generally this is known as affiliate marketing. This involves you compensating the person who sends traffic your way. Usually this remuneration is based on a percentage value. For example, if a person buys something from you for $20 and you have agreed to give 5 percent of the sale value to you affiliate, then all you have to do is give 50 cents to that person. Where this becomes lucrative for both of you is when there is a large volume of traffic that is sent from your affiliate of which a large amount makes purchases. For example, 100,000 visitors sent of which 20,000 make a $20 purchase each. This works out to $400,000 in total sales and $20,000 to your affiliate.

In ecommerce, your business can be at three levels.

1. Ahead of the game.
2. On par.
3. Not even on the radar.

While your final goal should be to get to the first level, your immediate goal should be to get to the second level as fast as possible. Doing this is not as hard as you think.

Social Media – Facebook and twitter are a big phenomenon at the moment. One of the simple secrets in ecommerce is learning to take advantage of emerging and popular technologies. The two social networking modes mentioned above will give you access to a wide market. It even allows you to target certain demographics and concentrate on them. Use this method wisely and you can easily get some great publicity and awareness. This method is also great for driving traffic to your website and to keep an open dialog with your customers.

Video – In terms of video marketing, there is no other place than YouTube to turn to. That website has firmly established itself as the go-to place to find anything from tutorials on PC hardware installations to cross stitching to rearing freshwater fish. So it makes sense to put up information about you and your company there. The videos can include product demonstrations, walkthroughs of the office, details on the manufacturing process, etc. However, your video won’t get popular on YouTube automatically and this is not your goal at all. The idea is to create awareness and promote the product and the company by using video as an enhancement. If you have done your social media work properly this shouldn’t be a problem at all.

It is no doubt that today’s online business world is a cutthroat industry. If you can do it well, someone else will do it better. So where does the business come from? How do you make money? The answer, as it is with many successful brick-and-mortar businesses, is repeat customers.
Repeat customers do not come to a store for the pricing. They come there because they feel comfortable and because they trust the store. This is exactly what is needed for an online store to be successful. Amazon may not be the best place to shop online, but it gets unmatched numbers in direct traffic. This is due to a successful and long standing brand building system. This, along with good experiences and word of mouth, have gone along to build a loyal brand following.

Faced between an unknown website selling a Nikon DSLR camera for $375 and Amazon selling it for $425, customers will often choose the latter even though it is priced higher. This highlights the need for every online marketer to strive towards the human relationship element more than ever.
Don’t bother with the lowest of low prices tactic. This does not work anymore as many online vendors differ by only a few dollars. Focus more on the value you can add to the product. Increased security in the transaction phase is definite plus, as is a 24 hour hotline service. Although it is not an easy task to build brand loyalty, it is the most rewarding of methods in the long term and will ensure that your business does not turn into a fly by night operation.

Shopping online offers a convenience that many dreamed about until a few years ago. Staying at home, sitting comfortably and making purchases with a few mouse clicks, is a great way to make purchases. However, there are a few things you should watch out for and take precautions against.

1. Credit card scams – This is a constant threat that you should always worry about. Fraudulent websites or malware can steal your credit card details. To avoid this, always make sure you do a background check on the website and their business.

2. Credibility – Checking the credibility of the website is always important. Apart from the issue mentioned above, you also need to check on how good the quality of the product is. For example, receiving goods that are scratched or damaged in anyway represents a major hassle for any customer. If the company is known to regularly send goods this way, you will soon know about it by doing a little bit of research.

3. Don’t buy everything – Avoid items that need certain verifications by you. For example, Clothing. Buying a shirt, jeans, t-shirts etc online can be a bit of a hit and miss experience. These are things that need to be tried on so that you know they fit. You are better off purchasing them at a bricks and mortar store to avoid complications.

4. Timing – Internet purchases are liable to time delays. Therefore you should make allowance for this. Otherwise you need to be particular, and buy from website that guarantee delivery in a specified amount of time or have 24/7 live support.

Sometimes, it is easy to forget that SEO is an ongoing process. As such, certain aspects of your website tend to be neglected. Here are some things you should consider improving to keep your SEO working for you.

1. Update your site map. When you constantly update your site (adding and deleting pages), the site map can quickly get outdated. You should pay constant attention to this component as it is something that your customers will refer to.

2. Describe your products well. It is disappointing that most websites resort to displaying the standard description that comes with the product. Make an effort to write your own description or at least try to expand the description so that it has more substance. The idea is to give the customer as much information as possible. This will also make you stand out more.

3. Anchor it. Your “read more” links should be more than just the generic link to more info. Use your Anchor Text effectively here. Not only will it be more useful to your customer, it will also help you in your SEO efforts.

4. Singular and Plural. Remember that search engines look the singular and plural versions of a keyword differently. For example, to them ring” and “rings” are two different words. To use this to your advantage, use the plural on the main page (i.e.: “Our gallery of rings”) and use the singular on the product page (i.e.: “The Infinity ring”)

5. Simple URL’s. Instead of having a long URL full of numbers and signs, change it into an understandable one. For example, www.myringsite.com/Infinity_ring instead of www.myringsite.com/products/category5/productid?id=5wsh123cd&store=26blue17s&oh=bro47781nad41e169&code=91cngtd112256778

If you are thinking of getting into Ecommerce or have just gotten into it, there are few things you should know. A sale can be lost at multiple points. Form the starting point of advertising to the end point of the actual sale, you have to be vigilant and ensure that you do everything possible to close the sale. Let us focus on the final point of the sale.

The order form or shopping cart. This should be clearly visible and easy to access. Do not lose the customer after they have made the decision to buy. Make sure that it is visible on all pages. After all, what have you got to lose by putting a link on every page?

Payments. Accept everything. Don’t limit your site to only VISA or MasterCard or PayPal. Ensure that you can accept all sorts of payment methods. The customer at this point has already made up their mind to make the purchase. Why would you want to lose a sale at this point after you’ve done all the hard work?

Security. Slap on all the encryption and security features you can. This will give the customer a lot of confidence to make the purchase. Credit Card fraud is rampant and customers are often worried about making online purchases, so it is up to you assure them that it won’t happen on your site. Another thing you can do to give them confidence is to display credible testimonials. You should also have your contact information clearly displayed and easily accessible in case they need to contact you. The contractibility will also give them assurance.