A year or so ago I was telling clients NOT to invest in mobile websites.  Why?  Because there was no ROI in ecommerce from mobile development.  Sure, everyone’s been talking about mobile commerce as the greatest thing since sliced bread…for about 5 years now!  That’s great and all, but the money just wasn’t there for anyone but the top 50 brands.

That’s all changing…

The fact is that 87 percent of the world’s population now has mobile phone subscriptions. This brings the total to right around 5.9 billion people worldwide. This figure will only go higher in the foreseeable future considering that mobile phone sales are still on the rise. Android is growing at a rate of a staggering 886 percent per year, and activates 160,000 new mobile devices per day. In the US, with 9 out of 10 people owning mobile phones, individuals are more likely to own mobile phones than books! With these statistics alone, why wouldn’t e-commerce enthusiasts consider in investing in good quality mobile apps, or upgrading their website to be mobile-friendly? Well, the fact of the matter is that mobile ownership doesn’t necessarily mean that much if it doesn’t entail mobile internet usage.

According to The ITU, there are currently 1.2 billion mobile web users all throughout the world. In other words, 17 percent of humanity is accessing the internet through their mobile device! In relation to this study, Starcounter claims that these mobile web users account for 8.49 percent of website hits. In addition, most of these mobile web capable devices are smartphones.

Ok, let’s look more practically at the phones that will be widely used to make purchases: the smartphone.  At the current rate of growth, eMarketer estimates that smartphones in the US will number more than 115 million units by the end of 2012. Several studies agree that more than 50 percent of these smartphone users will use the devices to make actual purchases, and a similar, albeit smaller, percentage will use these devices to help them make an informed decision while considering the purchase of an item.

To add some real world experience, we’re seeing some of our clients hitting 10% and up to almost 20% of their traffic from mobile devices.  This is a drastic change from a year ago.

E-commerce on mobile devices most commonly takes two forms. The first, mobile applications, apps for short, are typically very company controlled. The developer often uses the app to create memorable customer reactions like games. Applications however, also typically have a shorter lifespan when compared to the alternative form of m-commerce, the mobile website. Mobile websites basically make the developer’s traditional website mobile friendly. This form of m-commerce is mostly used by e-commerce retailers, since this form offers more transactional abilities than mobile apps. To make the deal of investing in m-commerce opportunities even more appealing, a study by Mobile Commerce Daily claims that 41 percent of e-commerce merchants using the mobile platform have seen positive returns on their investment. Moreover, this number is even likelier to grow, considering that 32 percent of the percent measured didn’t even look into the return of their investment.

Entrepreneurs interested in utilizing m-commerce for their businesses, should consider a few things to insure a return on their investment in mobile devices.

M-commerce and e-commerce are similar in a very fundamental way. A good measuring point for the effectiveness of both approaches is to measure the traffic and time spent on a website. Even if the customers are not making actual purchases on their mobile devices, this doesn’t mean that the company doesn’t get any benefits from their visiting the website. Getting attention is also a part of effective marketing. The fact that the market knows a company even exists is already a relatively positive step in terms of marketing. However, if you are utilizing m-commerce and want to improve your interface to make the customer’s experience all the more pleasant to improve his retention and opinion of the company, simplicity is still the key. Studies show that m-commerce shoppers are more directed and have little patience for complexity. How much is the product? Does the company offer free shipping? Are there any product bundle deals? When they go online to check on a product or service m-commerce shoppers want to know the prime considerations for their purchase as quickly as possible.

Every merchant should consider all their options for marketing and distribution. M-commerce is simply one of them. However, according to the statistics, m-commerce will also be one marketing and distribution outlet that will definitely show massive growth in future markets. Take advantage of all marketing options available, be they digital or physical!

The Internet has long been held as one of the most innovative and influential modes of communication in history. Throughout the years of its existence, it has grown exponentially as a mode of communication, entertainment, and marketplace exchange. In fact, it now connects millions of people every minute of every day in a web of amusement, information, and commercial trade. However, this rapid growth has been accompanied not only by privacy and security concerns, but also those involved with the quality and actual delivery of goods involved in these e-commerce transactions.

It is sad to say that although the internet has established itself as a legitimate remote purchasing method along with such mediums as telephone and mail-order shopping, there is still a large amount of consumer perceived risk whenever they shop online.

Traditionally, these risks have often been managed by employing risk relievers. These include such concepts as payment security, cheaper price, and exchange options. However, there are other newer and better ways to manage consumer perceived risk in the online market place.

What is a Google Trusted Store?

The Internet giant, Google, announced its take on how to lessen consumer perceived risk in online shopping by introducing its new program – Google Trusted Stores. The program is designed to assist in the growth and development of e-commerce by endorsing exemplary online merchants that offer the most reliable online shopping experience, and best customer service.

The program was introduced back in October of 2011, and has since then admitted numerous e-commerce merchants into its ranks. The participating merchants are required to not only comply with Google’s strict standards on shipping, and customer service, but are also compelled to share data regarding these two factors with the internet giant.

These select merchants will be allowed to show off Google’s badge of trust on their website in order to take advantage of the positive reputation the company has long developed. The badge will serve as a testament to the company’s commendable ability to serve its customers well.

How it helps consumers

Aside from the obvious advantages to having a badge on a website the customer can trust, Google is also backing their claim on the website with a free $1000 lifetime purchase protection for selected products the merchant sells.

The purchase protection program also guarantees consumers the assistance of Google whenever a purchase goes awry, and a dispute arises between them and the merchant. Moreover, this dispute must be reported within 60 days after the purchase is made. More detailed information on the dispute resolution process can be found on their website.

How it helps e-commerce sellers

Despite the fact that internet shopping has been gaining a little more trust from consumers nowadays, the fact still remains that majority of people surfing the internet have little to no experience in the online marketplace. In fact, a recent study has even shown that past experience in online purchases does not necessarily translate into the consumer perceiving the Internet as a less risky shopping channel. Now, merchants do have the option to just wait for these people to change their opinions through social forces and word of mouth marketing, but the fact is that this natural process takes up too much time – time that translates to dollars in opportunity cost!

A more cost and time-effective approach would be to take an active stand in lowering the consumer’s perceived risk in online purchases.

E-commerce merchants can now assist consumers that are worried about shopping at unfamiliar online stores, and are nervous about the reliability of shipping and dispute resolution by applying for certification as a Google Trusted Store. Less perceived risk means that the consumer is more likely to make a purchase at the store. Consequently, more purchases means more profit and more positive consumer reviews, which in turn means less perceived risk from other potential consumers!

Moreover, studies show that the success of trust marks and confidence-boosting badges largely rely on the entity backing the given badge. Considering that Google has made Buyology’s list of Top 10 Most Desirable Brands and Forbes’ Top 100 Consumer Brands, it’s safe to say that the weight accorded by Google’s badge is more significant than most.

The future of Google Trusted Sites

It’s hard to say whether or not Google Trusted Sites will play a major role in the future of e-commerce. There isn’t really much hard evidence to support either conclusion. Nevertheless, it’s a shared belief here at Redstage that this is one very valuable trust logo to have on your site.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you have probably already heard about the new sensation that’s been spreading across the internet like wildfire – Pinterest.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a new social network whose main feature is its ability to act like a digital scrapbook, bulletin board, or wish list. While there are several other websites that offer extensive image sharing capabilities, Pinterest has developed this as its main competitive edge against other more popular social networks. In fact, it has been so successful in carving out a niche for itself that in two short years after launching its private beta, it has skyrocketed. It is now ranked among the top 10 social sites, and is estimated to be worth around 500 million USD.

The company was conceived a while back in 2009. It officially launched its invitation-only beta in 2010. Right from the start, Pinterest’s client base has always been mostly composed of women. Its first frequent visitors were mostly interested in the recipes and stylish home decors they found on the site. This core group of people then spread the word to their friends, who in turn told theirs, and so on. Pinterest owes its marketing success to the quality of its content and the power of referrals. On July 2011, only 13 months after its launch, the company had already its 1 millionth unique visitor. This rapid growth has often given it the reputation of being the fastest growing internet site in history. In truth however, it is only second to yet another internet sensation – formspring.

Fast-forward 7 months later to February 2012. The company now has 17.8 million unique visitors in the US alone! This means that during these 7 months, more than 16 million people have visited the website at least once – an absolutely amazing feat. What’s more, Pinterest is still growing – fast. In the last month alone, the website has attracted roughly 52% more unique visitors than the month before that. This was been confirmed by the findings of comScore in its most recent report.

Why should you consider marketing at Pinterest?
Two words: referral traffic – lots of it. In fact, by February 2012 Pinterest surpassed Google+, Youtube, and Linkedln’s combined referral traffic. In the next month, Shareaholic, an online sharing tool, discovered that Pinterest now drives more referral traffic than Twitter. Yes, that’s right. Pinterest now brings in more traffic that Twitter – the very popular online sharing network that internet-aficionados rely on to get an accurate real-time flow of information.

Moreover, a very recent study by RJ Metrics has suggested that Pinterest users are starting to develop a more mass-market orientation.
When it started, Pinterest users were mostly composed of homemakers, and fashion and style enthusiasts. However, there are only so many people in these niche markets. As the site ascends into the ranks of the internet’s most prominent sites, its users’ interests will get more and more diverse. Topics everyone can relate to are starting to become more and more popular on Pinterest boards. Food, the 4th most popular category at the moment, is steadily gaining more and more interest from the users. In fact, food is the most re-pinned category on Pinterest to date. It generates roughly 50% more re-pins than the fashion and style category, the second most re-pinned category.

First, we need some SEO basics to set the stage.  SEO is broken into two parts:

1. On-Page SEO – all the stuff that you can do to your actual website (title tags, h1 tags, urls, content, site speed, etc etc)

2. Off-Page SEO – all the stuff you can do that is NOT part of your site (link building, link wheel, etc)

Here’s an important distinction to kick us off.  On-Page SEO can only make you ABLE to rank while, but does not mean you WILL rank well.  Off-Page SEO is what actually gives you more Google Juice.  Keep in mind, that if you’re sending the Juice to an un-optimized page, you won’t gain any traction either, since those pages aren’t able to rank well.

Now, to the myths!

Let’s start with a big one…

SEO is a one-time activity that happens during site development.

No no no!  This one really makes me pull my hair out.  On-Page SEO starts during site development.  Real SEO is done as an ongoing campaign for both on-page and off-page.  An SEO campaign actually starts with target keyword analysis.

Good Content / More Content leads to better rankings

Nope. It’s on-page SEO.  It just makes you better ABLE to rank for keywords.  It also helps allow you to rank more organically for long tail and natural keywords.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a hugely important part of your strategy, but it can’t do much alone.

Duplicate Content Penalty

There’s no “Penalty”.  It’s really just that Dupe content pages get dropped.  So, it kind of looks like a penalty.  But especially in e-commerce, stop being so scared of dupe content created by your filters.  You CAN get more value if google knows that they’re all the same page, so use Google appropriate tagging (pagination and canonical).

Meta keywords / meta description

Useless (almost).  No search engines use them anymore for rankings.  Power Tip: some SEs will pick up the Meta Description (sometimes!) as their description for the page, so you can use meta description to possibly help click through rate.  But definitely not rankings.

Tiny links at bottom of page

Google knows that links that are tiny or the same color as backgrounds are trying to fake them out.  Don’t use them.  I have successfully used footer links to boost pages on other sites and internal pages, but make sure it’s part of the actual site, not hidden at the bottom.

Hyphenated domains are better

Nope.  Google can read words inside the url.  Google also thinks that too many dashes in your url is an indication of a spam domain

Adwords campaigns improve SEO

Most are convinced that this isn’t the case.  When you create an Adwords campaign, you usually do tweaks to improve your quality score.  Those tweaks are probably what is helping SEO, not the campaign itself.

XML Sitemaps boost rankings

Not true.  Again, on-page SEO only.  Yeah, they’ll help some of your pages get indexed faster, but will do nothing for rankings.

Title attributes are useful in img and href tags

They’re not, as far as we know.  Don’t waste your time.

Google can’t grab external CSS files

Yes, it can, and it’s looking through those too for hidden tricks.

Flash elements ruin SEO

I’m not really a fan of flash, and, as long as your site isn’t entirely flash, some flash elements are fine.  Google can even read text in flash nowadays if done properly.

H1 tags are the holy grail of on-page SEO

SEOMoz says differently (through an actual study).  But they can’t hurt, so use them both for your readers and for Google.  Just don’t rely on them.  Regular bold/larger text works just as well.

Validating your HTML will make Google read it better.

Google reads it just fine…

Buying Links

Google figures this out quickly now.  It’s a huge waste of money.

Inclusion of meta robots tag (index,follow)

Not useful.  Unless you tell an SE NOT to follow you, it will.

Google doesn’t follow JavaScript links

It’s not perfect at it, but it’s pretty good.  That’s not a good way to keep from bleeding Google Juice.

Your urls need to end in .html (or similar) to be friendly

I don’t think that’s ever mattered.  Keywords in urls are good.  End of url doesn’t matter.

Google can’t search or see search results

Not sure when it started, but it sure can see them now.  If you’re a Magento user, you’ll probably notice that the SE spiders have totally screwed up your “top searches.”

Using your keyword as anchor text for your “Home” links

Meaning, if you’re trying to rank your homepage for “cheapest widgets” then you would change all of your “Home” links to read “cheapest widgets.” I used to do this all the time, actually, especially in the footer.  That is until SEOMoz did a study and debunked it.

Today we’re going to look at Customer Behavior Based Cross Selling (I’ve also seen it called algorithmic cross-selling).  In a nutshell, these cross selling modules comb through actual shopping data (e.g. product view patterns or order history) to display cross sells that are the most relevant to your customer segments, automatically.

Here are the 4 most common custom behavior based cross sell implementations:

• Who Viewed This Also Viewed
• Who Bought This Also Bought
• Frequently Bought Together
• People Who Viewed This Ultimately Bought

The titles of them are fairly self explanatory, so I won’t put you to sleep explaining each one.  If you have questions, just drop us a comment.

Why is this type of cross selling so successful?

1. Social Proof.  Briefly, social proof is the concept that if it’s good enough for others, it’s good enough for me.  Customer behavior based upsells resonate with customers better because they feel like the product recommendations are coming from fellow customers.  To quote my freshman year Small Business Administration professor, ”It’s not about what you say about your products, but what your customers say.”  Same idea.

2. Automation. Especially if you have a large catalog, it would be relatively impossible to keep up with manually assigning cross sells for each of your products.

3. You’re not a customer. You know too much about your business and about your industry.  So it’s very difficult to get inside your customers’ heads about what additional products they would consider.  Actual shopping behavior is a much better metric to get the right products in front of your customer segments.

Some companies, like Prediggo, believe that if you’re blindly implementing customer behavior based cross-selling, you’re making a grave mistake!

I had the pleasure of chatting with Andrew from Prediggo (www.prediggo.com), and he gave me a few reasons why these methods might not be all they’re cracked up to be.

1. They’re a self-fulfilling prophecy.  If customers start viewing certain products in a pattern, they start dominating your cross sells (views, purchases, etc).  What happens over time is that you may be whittling your cross sells to a smaller and smaller subset of your catalog.  Not everyone can refresh their data like Amazon does: daily.

2. They favor promotional items.  If you run a promotion, a lot of your views and purchases will consist of those promotion products.  Why would you want to steer all of your customers to your lowest profit margin products?  That defeats the whole purpose of cross-selling and upselling.

Here at Redstage, our customers have had a lot of success with customer behavior based cross sells.  What’s your experience?

If you have questions about customer behavior based upsells or want to share your experience, drop us a comment!

What are the limitations of Magento?

You didn’t think you were going to get all of this awesome functionality and endless extensibility without a few catches did you?

1) Speed

We’re just going to tackle the big one right off the bat.  Yeah, Magento is slow, really slow.  I’m sure that’s what you’ve heard anyway.  The truth is, that it’s only really slow in the wrong hands.  Let’s start from the beginning.

Magento was designed to be the most extenisble system ever made.  And the original developers definitely made it happen.  To accomplish this, the system had to be architected by isolating each feature so that changing (extending) that feature wouldn’t affect the rest of the system.  The result is a whooole lot of files.  Magento is reading hundreds if not thousands of different files in hundreds of folders for every single visitor that’s on your site.

So with Magento’s biggest strength, it also inherited its biggest weakness.  I’m pretty sure that if Magento hadn’t gotten so popular so rapidly with tens of thousands of feature requests piling up on their site, then they would’ve gotten around to this speed problem.

What is one to do?  Based on our extensive experience on the subject, there’s actually a lot you can do.  First and foremost, GET A GOOD HOST.  And by good, I also mean that specializing in Magento.  If you throw just default magento onto a Godaddy dedicated server, it’s going to be very slow.  We’ve worked with at least a dozen different hosts, and have had our biggest success with a company called MageMojo — top notch hardware, Magento knowledge, and service.

Next you’re going to want to check out 101 Ways to Speed up your Magento.  It’s a very comprehensive guide.

The hosting is probably 80% of the problem, then the tweaks in the guide should make up the other 20%.  If you have a custom theme, and you’re site’s still really slow after both of those suggestions have been explored, then your problem most likely lies in one of two areas: 1. Your Extensions or 2. A custom Query.

Often times an extension developer will release something that works on a demo store, but is crippling when throwing traffic at it or a DB or more than 10 products.  A great example is a shop by brand extension that we once used that queried every single brand to see if it had products in it just to build a dropdown menu of the active brands.  It added a full second or more to the site’s load time.  That’s one of the reasons that we built our own Shop by Brand Extension.

Similarly, a query written by your site’s development team, may be seemlingly innocent, but under load it kills you.  Usually it’s a very small, simple query that ends up being repeated hundreds of times to build a menu or find bestsellers.

2) Documentation

Well, there really is none.  The code isn’t really documented at all, and the manual that Magento has for sale isn’t really that useful.  To be honest, most open source platforms have been very poorly documented, but Magento hasn’t really even given it a shot.

For administration of your magento site, you’re best bet is to get your staff some Magento training, whether by webinar or 1 on 1.  The system has its fair share of quirks and unique terminology that take getting used to.  On the development front, it’s incredibly important to use a firm or developer that has extensive Magento experience.  More on that in #4.

3) Upgrades

Again, one of the main benefits of Magento, regular updates, is also a bit of a curse.  Magento’s never really had a good upgrade path, meaning a documented and well thought out process to go from one version to another.  And it doesn’t seem like that’s ever going to be a priority.  The result is that, when upgrading, things tend to break.  Most of the time it’s because a site wasn’t developed using Magento best practices.  But often it’s actually because Magento changed the name of something that was even being properly extended.  I remember one upgrade that Magento removed like 18 DB tables and added 30 new ones.  That was annoying…

There’s no real great way to overcome this limitation other than just ensuring that your site is always properly extended and properly developed with Magento best practices. That’s definitely a great start and will avoid most of your problems.  Anytime you upgrade, though, do it on a separate development environment with some Magento experts on hand.  There’s a great chance that something will break and need to be patched up before you can go live with the new version.

4) Complexity of theming and development, Cost of development

Developing a Magento takes about 5 times as long as your old OSCommerce, Zen Cart, CRE Loaded, or similar.  The theming system is, well, tedious.  However, the extra time put in in the beginning is well worth it.  Since Magento is a modern system built to modern standards, you won’t end up with the crazy hack job that you used to get customizing an older shopping cart.  This means that the total cost of the site over time will actually be much cheaper.

About 30% of our projects that come into our office are recoveries from other developers or other firms that have screwed it up.  About 70% of the sites that we have touched, that weren’t built by us, were not built with Magento best practices.  Although, to be fair, that’s usually why the end up in our lap in the first place.

5) Search

The out of the box search is, well, awful.  It’s pretty much as basic as it gets, and is totally useless in this age of e-commerce.  It does have some built in tweaks that you can play with, but still, useless.  You do have some options though.  Firstly, there’s Better Store Search, a well established Magento Extension that’s pretty popular.  Then there’s Blast Search Lucene, which upgrades your search to use the Lucene library.  If you want to get really fancy and compete with the big boys, you’ll need a Semantic Search like Celebros for Magento.  (Shameless plug: Redstage is the first certified solutions provider of Celebros for Magento).

————————————

I think that about covers it.  Hopefully I haven’t scared you all off!

In my opinion, Magento’s strengths far outweigh its weaknesses.  Magento is really one of the most powerful and extensible e-commerce platforms that I’ve ever worked with.  It’s important, though, to at least know what you’re getting yourself into.

Related articles

• Benefits of Magento (redstage.com)

Magento has pretty much taken over the ecommerce technology space, and we get that question more than any other.  So for everyone that stumbles on this article in your search for your ecommerce technology, I hope this provides a little help on your journey.

Is this real insight? Or just more marketing babble?  Well, Redstage been in the ecommerce business for 7 years now, and we’ve worked on over 150 Magento sites over the past 3 years.  So this list is a personal account of our experiences.  Let’s start with the feature set…

#1) Out-of-the-box Features

Of all the e-commerce systems that I’ve worked with, Magento really has the most impressive set of features right out of the box.  I was actually planning on spending a few paragraphs discussing them, but I ended up stumbling on Magento’s new features page: http://www.magentocommerce.com/product/features.  It’s a pretty comprehensive listing, so go check it out before moving on to #2.

#2) Open Source

OK this is an obvious one, but I felt like I couldn’t write a benefits list without including it.  The platform is not only free to download but you are free to build upon it for your specific business needs.

#3) Extensions

Magento Extensions and the Extension Community have really set the platform apart from the rest of the pack.  One of the main goals of the Magento core development team was to create the most extensible ecommerce system on the planet.  And they succeeded, in a big way.

It’s a little bit of a blessing and a curse, actually.  Because developing a Magento site is actually much harder than other platforms before it.  To properly develop any custom functionality for Magento, you must basically create an extension so you’re not touching any of Magento’s core.  It’s a whole lot more complicated than just creating a custom hack.  But with that extra initial investment, comes HUGE savings in the long run.

Back in the OSCommerce, Zen Cart, and CRE Loaded days, an ecommerce site was a big hack job of custom code and “addons” that were basically just instructions for additional hacks.  The more complex your site got, the more of a hack job it would become.  Random errors and stability problems were a frequent result.  Many times, complex additions would mean a full redevelopment of the whole site.

Magento, on the other hand, is properly architected to be able to extend its functionality in an elegant and stable way.  And it’s really a huge advantage for your business.  For instance, I wonder how much it cost Amazon to develop their Frequently Bought Together or Who Viewed This Also Viewed up-selling interfaces?  Well, with Magento, you can have either one of those for about 50 bucks as extensions, and about 3 minutes of installation.  Shameless plug… you can actually pick up both of those extensions at our extension store: http://store.redstage.com.

Also, I think it’s safe to say that Magento now has the largest and fastest growing community of developers of any ecommerce system.  Thanks to the community, Magento’s feature set is growing at the speed of light.  Perfect example: When Google +1 came out, I think it was less than 24 hours before a Magento extension came out to place +1 buttons on all of your product pages.

#4) Admin Interface

Magento really has the best admin interface of any that we’ve ever seen in an open source system that came before it.  It’s more of what you would expect from a hosted SaaS platform.  Hosted solutions aren’t usually appropriate for anything other than very small business, though, since they are almost impossible to customize to your needs.  So with Magento, you get the benefit of a much more customer friendly interface but the power of having your own flexible solution.

When I first started working with the platform, I was especially surprised by how complete the order and customer management sections were.  The promotions manager is also very cool, but I guess that’s more of a core feature than just the interface.  Oh, and category management is also great too.

#5) Regular Updates

For the incredible burst in popularity that Magento’s received over the past 3 years, I have to applaud the company for keeping up as well as they have.  I’m sure that they’ve gotten 10′s of thousands of bug reports and feature requests in that time.  With Magento, you can confidently expect a new release,  packed with bug fixes and probably a few new features, every few months.

Alright, I think that about sums it up.  I’m also putting together an article on the limitations of Magento, that I’ll link to as soon as its complete.

Related articles

• Limitations of Magento (redstage.com)

Magentique.com

http://magentique.com/

ArsMagentoGallery.com

http://www.arsmagentogallery.com/

MagentoMix.com

http://magentomix.com/category/stores/

ShowMagento.com
http://www.showmagento.com/showcase

Magento Showcase Website

http://themes.magentocommerce.ca/

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on Magento Design Showcases

Also you need to plan out your MARKETING! The last thing that you want to do is stay up all night on November, 23 trying to write email copy and change your AdWords ads to holiday specific text.  Start planning now, and you'll definitely have a more profitable season with much less stress. 

So that's the overview about why, but let's go over the direction as well as the specific things you can do to make your holiday season more successful.  We'll go over checklists, specific ideas and tactics to make your store ready for the 2010 holidays.

Design Changes
You might want to change some of the main site graphics to seasonal, relevant images.  If you have pictures of people within the design, make sure they're wearing coats, and you can throw some snowflakes in the header to make it feel like winter.

Sales
Of course you're going to have a holiday sale.  But which works better, 10% off your order over $X or Free Shipping?  Start testing now! Something as simple as the wording of a deal can effect your conversion rate drastically.

Gift Wrapping
You can offer gift wrapping as an upsell during checkout.  If you're going to offer this option though, it's important to plan ahead and get this process worked out within your current procedures.

Delivery Schedules / Deadlines
You can create a sense of urgency if you put the proper messaging on your site.  For instance, "Order before December 20th for Guaranteed Arrival before Christmas!" This short message, repeated throughout the website, could be the push that someone needs to get through the checkout.

Updated Returns Policy
When it comes to gifts, one of the main concerns that people have when buying online is possibly having to return the item.  They might be afraid that the clothing won't fit properly or the item will arrive defective.  Make sure that your return policy is easy to find and easy to understand.

Add Video to Product Descriptions
One of the main reasons that customers abandon product pages is because they didn't get a good enough "look" at the product.  If you have a short video of someone reviewing the item or simply demonstrating it, it builds confidence with the potential customer and differentiates you from your competitors.  Anything that you can do that will get someone to push "Add To Cart" is crucial.

Beef Up Customer Support
Make sure that you have enough staff to take calls, answer questions, and train them to sell!  You should have multiple ways for visitors to contact you online via toll-free number, email, chat, twitter or even fax.  It can't hurt to have the pathways to contact you because if someone wants to call you, they are very close to purchasing.  On the other hand, you also want to have support for current/past customers because that is what sparks people to talk about their experiences.  Think about how Zappos.com because so popular from having incredible customer service.

New Banner Ads
If you advertise with Banner Ads, you should start brainstorming some new designs.  Also start thinking of new places to advertise, and new media buying strategies that can drive tons of traffic to your site. 

New Adwords  (PPC) Keywords / Ads
Don't wait until the last minute to add new keywords into your campaigns that are seasonally specific.  Also, try testing out new Ad Copy that has holiday style to it. Add in a coupon code, mention a shipping deadline or another offer. 

Gift Categories / Gift Guide
Organized your items into gift categories by person or price (Great Gifts for Mom, Dad, etc…). If you give visitors useful search options and filters, it lets them find what they want faster; speed is key during the holidays.

Affiliate Relations
If you have an affiliate program, get them excited about promoting your products.  Show them landing pages, new items and sales that they can promote before they start.  This allows super-affiliates to get banners made, plan media buys, start new PPC campaigns and test them out before it's too late. 

New Products
Do some research and figure out what types of products in your industry are going to be the popular items of the season.  If you're going to stock these items, remember there's significant work to do each time (ordering inventory, storage, photos, description, etc…).  So start the research soon so you're prepared to launch them in the Fall.

Shipping Deals
Shipping is the #1 type of sale that you can offer your visitors.  Having free shipping makes the ordering process seem more realistic and it makes the price seem more feasible (since there's no addition involved).  Another great tactic is to have Free Shipping on orders above $X.  You'll get a higher average order and happier clients.

Social Media
Start building your following now! Starting a Social Media campaign in November would be a waste of time; however if you have 5000 followers (on twitter for instance) by then you can turn it into a traffic generator, a communication/ support platform and more.  Also remember, 200 happy, engaged followers is much better than 10,000 random people. Get your following organically and you'll be much better off.

Cart Abandonment Recapture
You can automate the recapturing of an abandoned cart by sending an email to the user with the previous cart contents. 

Gift Receipts & Gift Messages
Have checkout options to add a note or gift receipt to the order.  This way, there's proof of purchase but the price isn't in the box.  It works especially well when offering gifts that are sent directly to the recipient.

Backup Server / Increased Bandwidth
If you're doing media buys and adding a huge budget to your AdWords account you might want to upgrade your web server to make sure that your site doesn't go down during periods of high traffic.

These are just a few of the things you can do to prepare your site for the holidays and increase your conversion rate. If you want a full report with over 50 site optimizations that you can use any time, holidays or not, opt in below and we'll send it right over!

Send me the sales optimization eBook!

First Name:

Email:

We respect your email privacy

 

• Magento Upgrades
• Plugin installation & Configuration
• Bug fixes
• Template / Theme Tweaks
• Custom features or custom plugins and
• Switching web hosts

We don’t limit the number of issues or fixes you can submit, it’s all based on how long it takes to fix everything.

Luckily, we’re (really) good at this.

If you ever paid for a legal retainer, it’s almost exactly the same. The lawyer will deduct the hourly fee from the pre-payment whenever you need them to look over a contract or advise in any legal situation.  Redstage Magento support works the same way.  If you need help with any aspect of your Magento store, you log a ticket and we get to work.

Ok, so back to the point.  Why a retainer based system?

Deducting hourly from a retainer allows us to provide the highest level of service to our support customers.  First, the retainer doesn’t expire.  You can use 2 hours one month, take one off with no issues or tickets, and then use 5 hours the next month.  It let’s us provide a level of safety and security to the a Magento user because we’re there when you need us, just by logging a ticket.  You can have 100 issues, and it doesn’t matter since it’s all based on the time it takes to complete the tasks.  If it’s easy for us, it’s cheap for you.

We time the retainer work to the second, so the client gets the most for their money.

I apologize if I sound sales-y, but as a marketer, Magento support is a fun sale… Magento users come to us all the time after having bad experiences with developers who weren’t ready for the complexity of the Magento platform and we need to step in and help out.  It took us a couple years to become Magento masters but we’re one of the best around, so it’s fun to talk about.  Our development team likes working with Magento!  If you’ve ever searched around on twitter for Magento, the average developer is frustrated but we’ve gotten over the learning curve and know the system inside and out.

Don’t just take my word for it; we have clients who tell us things like this:

“”THANK YOU!!! We all finally feel confident that we have found the right partner for our new business.“

-Sharon, Founder, Charleston Naturally

That gives us a warm fuzzy feeling… and it proves that the retainer system works!

Now, I have to ask… If you need anything Magento related, call 1-888-335-2747 and we’ll set you up w/ a retainer, or a full project if you’re just starting out (full design & development).

I hope you understand a bit more about what we’re all about and if you have any questions, leave a comment below!

Thanks!

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on Why Does Redstage have Magento Support Retainers?