What is 4G?

4G is the next generation to 3G or the 4th Generation in mobile communication standards – a faster more effective internet connection.

With promises of it being five times faster than 3G it should mean easier access to the internet, being able to watch videos without it freezing, downloading webpages quickly and having smooth video calls with no problems.

What could it mean for your business?

An ability to have business meetings whilst out of the office, receive your emails on the go and be available on your social networking accounts even when not at your desktop – all very inviting!

But primarily, the main advantage could be an increase of online shopping by your customers.

Your customers want to be able to get on your site quickly, they want to navigate easily and buy in a short space of time.  Especially this time of year, they want to be sure their Christmas shopping can be done during a tea break, on a bus or even walking in between high street shops.

What they need from you is attractive looking sites which are easy to use and an all round good quality shopping experience.

Most of all they want speed, 4G speed.  Can you keep up?

Check your website, app or mobile site, ensure it works for you and your customers.  Let’s make certain your ecommerce is a pleasant experience for those who want to use it!

The internet is a massive collection of networks and it plays such a large part of life, you can do so much on it. You are going on a journey – quick use the internet for directions! You need the phone number for the local takeaway – quick use the internet to get it!

It is where we get our information from, we shop on it, play on it and can even socialise through it!

We access the internet using the World Wide Web (www), which is basically a whole load of documents connected to each other around the world. It is almost like a jar of sweets, the internet is the jar itself, and the WWW is the tasty sweetie goodness that we are all there for!

So who invented the World Wide Web?

Photo Credit: W3

Tim Berners-Lee is the man we can thank!

Tim was born in London and graduated from Oxford university he became a computer scientist.  In 1989 whilst working at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research), Tim Berners-Lee proposed a global hypertext project (which would later be know as the World Wide Web).

In 1990 with the help of a student Robert Cailliau he produced a revision and he went on to implement the first successful communication between a HTTP Client and a server via the internet.

The very first website was put up online on 6 August 1991 telling the world what the World Wide Web was and how to use it and the rest, as they say, is history!!

The whole idea of sharing information in this way was once one man’s dream, a picture on a piece of paper – now it is available worldwide to anyone with a computer, internet connection and a browser and in March 2009 the world celebrated 20 years of ‘The Web’.

What is E-Commerce?

Real name Electronic Commerce is what we now know as ‘online shopping’, it was actually invented in 1979 by Michael Aldrich and in 1982 Mrs Snowball (72 years old) became the very first online home shopper!  But no-one could of imagined the development from there and when ‘The Web’ opened for commercial business in 1991 online shopping really found its momentum!

In our last post, we covered some tips for well designed mobile sites. We conclude this two part series with some additional tips for mobile eCommerce sites.

1. Design for hands, not a trackpad or mouse – People are going to be turned off very quickly when they are clicking buttons and links unintentionally because the design is not conducive to browsing with the thumbs.

2. Make sure it is fast – Load times are the most critical factor in determining whether or not a user sticks around. Google places a lot of emphasis on load times for search engine results. If your main site has large graphics, video, flash — make sure it is not part of the mobile experience. In addition, test load times on different mobile devices with different browsers.

3. Provide an easy check-out process – Just as with your main site, the check-out process on your mobile site must be fast and easy to get through. If customers have difficulty, they can easily leave before they commit to making the purchase. Progress indicators, guest checkout functionality and zip code lookup tools all enhance the mobile checkout process.

4. Check your analytics – People may not think this is related to design but it is. How is the user interaction? What are the exit pages? What is the bounce rate? This data can be very helpful in helping you to determine where there are issues and what needs to be done to change them.

5. Make sure your best stands out – You don’t want users to just have a good browsing experience. You want them to have a transactional experience. Visits are great, but closing the deal is what you want. Be sure to highlight the best of what you have to offer your customers in order to turn visitors into customers.

The mobile web has become nearly as important as the traditional. It is not longer enough just to have a “mobile site.” You need to build a mobile experience for your customers. Allocate resources and time to your mobile site just as you would your regular site.

With more and more people owning smartphones and tablets, it is critical for those in eCommerce to have websites that are mobile friendly. More and more people will shop with their phones and if their experience on your site is poor, they will look elsewhere.

So what will you need to do to make sure you have a great functioning mobile website? Here are five critical factors:

1. Make sure the design is responsive – There are phones and tablets with varying sizes and your site should be able to adapt to the screen sizes of the various devices.

2. Replace image based buttons with CSS – Speed is an important factor with mobile sites and by using CSS as opposed to images, your mobile site load times will greatly improve.

3. Make the homepage a clear roadmap for the rest of the site – People want simpler navigation when they are using a mobile device. So be sure to make it easy and very clear where customers can go and how to get there.

4. Keep the home page clean – While the home page has to be a roadmap for the site, don’t clutter it up. Too much information is not what you want people looking at on your website using an iPhone or Android device, particular if they are potentially new customers. Keep it simple. Remember, when it comes to mobile, less is more.

5. Set different text sizes for portrait and landscape - There are debates in eCommerce world about disabling the zoom feature on mobile sites and coding it so that the text size changes automatically. The less work a customer has to do on your eCommerce site, the better. You want them to make purchases, not have to fumble about with the size of the screen.

Design of mobile eCommerce sites is just as important as the main website. Customers want to be able to get on a site, find the product they are looking for and check out without issue. In the second part of this two part series, we’ll discuss the important factors with regard to platforms and security.

If you want to boost sales on your site, you must map out, define and implement a successful social media strategy. Note that just because you build it, does not mean people will come. You must use social media tools effectively. Here are 5 tips that can get you going:

1. Share articles, pieces and blog posts relative to your business. It does not have to be your own articles or blog entries (though that helps!). You can share other information that relates to your business. Sharing interesting content will get people to visit your site.

2. Run a contest on your brand site and promote it all over social media. Get people to your site. When you become a household name, you’ll be able to run contests on Facebook or Twitter exclusively. But for now, do something that gets potential customers to your main site. The goal is to increase sales, not popularity.

3. Allow users to share your stuff with social media tools – Facebook and Twitter are a given. But also include Stumbleupon, email links and the newest and fastest growing network on the block, Pinterest.

4. Offer deals and use social media to promote them. – Offering buy one get on free promotion or coupons is a great way to drive sales. But if people don’t know about it, you won’t make those sales. Use social media to promote those deals and take care to notice which customers are your biggest fans. Reward them down the road not only for their business, but also their passion for helping to promote your business.

5. You customers are out there. Find them. Use Twitter apps such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to create custom searches related to your business. Monitor those tweets. See when potential customers are tweeting not just about you, but about the business you are in. For example, if somebody is frustrated with a competitor, reach out to the person and offer to help. They will appreciate you noticing and that information will get passed on.

Implementing a social media strategy is not difficult to do. Gaining success is more about consistency than anything else. If you go strong at first and taper off, people will not engage. Success on this front does not happen overnight. It will take time and consistency.

Nobody likes it when a customer is not happy. But it will happen. The only question is, where does it happen and how do you prepare so that you limit the chances of it happening to you?

It is always better to be proactive than to be reactive. So if you’re getting ready to launch and eCommerce site or have just recently launched one, take a look at the following complaints and be sure to address them before you have to deal with them.

1. Not being called back when promised. An unacceptable customer service failure. If your site promises a phone call within a specified time, particularly as part of an email message, then you have to make sure that happens. People are always on the lookout for how long it will take to hear from customer service and the last thing you want is a person telling a friend or colleague, “They don’t call you back.”

2. Billing errors and/or incorrect charges to a credit card. This is very frustrating. Be particularly careful of this when running specials and sales. The last thing somebody wants is to see they paid full price for an item they were sure was on sale. Be sure shipping fees and any discount codes are correct.

3. Having to go through multiple people to get a problem resolved. People like simplicity. The first good step is to make it easy for a customer to get a real, live person on the phone. Secondly, it is critical (aside from a major issue) that the person they speak to, can handle the issue they are having without being routed to another person who then routes them somewhere else. Having to jump through all sorts of hoops to get an issue resolved will result in an unhappy customer who may not return.

4. Website is hard to navigate. A difficult user interface is a big problem for shoppers. They are getting ready to spend money and want a good shopping experience. If your site is difficult to get around and confusing, potential customers will give up before they even get to where they want to be. The navigation extends to the checkout area. If your site is easy to navigate on the shopping side, but difficult on the checkout side, people may give up before they submit that order.

5. Poorly updated order status pages. eCommerce sites often tell customers in an email, “Click here to track your order!” However, there are many dissatisfied customers who go to check their order and see no change or they see changes way too late. Ever order something and have it arrive before the site was updated to show it was delivered? That’s not good. People are always nervous about their online orders. The thinking is, “They have my money, but I don’t have a product, yet.” That is not an issue in a brick and mortar store where a person pays, and walks out with their item. Keep your customers relaxed by making sure your site provides accurate and timely updates on orders.

None of these solutions require any major investment. It is all a matter of proper planning and execution with your site. Attack the potential problem before it becomes a real problem.

Differentiation with your eCommerce site can make the difference between you getting that business or a person going somewhere else.

Often however, that differentiation doesn’t necessarily have to be something that is very obvious. The brain often picks up on subtle additions, differences and innovations that aren’t obvious at first glance. It’s only upon closer inspection that we see the subtlety.

An example of this from one of the big players is Amazon’s ‘One Click’ purchasing button. Some might say this is not a subtle addition to their eCommerce strategy but if you ask around, many people don’t even remember they have it. It’s become burned into the shopping experience that it’s not something people discuss when recommending Amazon to a friend. That being said, it provides return shoppers with the convenience of not having to go through a checkout process when making a purchase.

Here are some subtle ways you can add to your product descriptions to make them stand out.

1. Show a featured product – Whether it is in your sidebar, header or in a menu, feature a product once a week or once a month. This will give more emphasis to something you are trying to sell without it appearing to be too “in your face.”

2. Display some kind of rating system for products – People have a tendency to believe actual consumers over professional reviewers when it comes to a product. This is the case because trends mean something. If a professional critic gives a rating of 5 stars to a product but consumers give it an average rating of 3 stars, a customer is going to want to know why and do more work investigating that product. Providing that information will give customers more reason to return to your site to make purchases.

3. Make text stand out with a different color – Say for example you have a product you are selling and willing to offer free shipping or are selling this week at a discount of 30%. If the text is the same color as the product description. However, if you use a color that contrasts with your main text color, it will stand out and people will take notice. Again, the contrast will be subtle as it is still just text, but the brain picks up on those differences and it could make the difference between getting the sale or not.

4. Sort, sort, sort – Allow your customers to sort based on different criteria. If you implement point 2, you can allow customers to sort by best ratings. Allow sorting by popularity (in terms of sales) as well as having the ability to sort by low to high and high to low pricing.

eCommerce sites don’t necessarily need huge facelifts to in order to effect change to increase sales. Sometimes small changes or additions are needed. See if you’ve taken the steps above. If not, try them out and see what it does for your sales!

Starting that new eCommerce site is exciting, fun and terrifying all at the same time. Are people going to buy? Are we going to make enough money to cover our overhead and expenses? Will people like the site enough to tell friends?

It is always a challenge.

We’ve already covered areas of design, site construction and the all important aspect of customer service. But what can be done to help drive sales?

Here are 4 tips that will be assist in getting those sales up:

1. Start a blog – People want to know you take a personal interest in your business. By blogging even just once a week, you can gain more of a personal connection with clients. Feature a particular product from time to time. Highlight an upcoming sales. Use the blog to promote a coupon or discount code. Also, use the blog to write about the challenges of the business and also what’s coming down the road. You don’t need to blog every day. Once a week will suffice, but be sure to keep it consistent. Doing that will guarantee people will come back.

2. Have unique copy – This is a tactic that may require you spend some money but the ROI would be worth it. Writing great copy is an art, particularly for an eCommerce site. However, that really good copy in which a product is described with some flair instead of your typical mundane way, could make the difference for that one sale. In addition, customers will tell their friends about your site because it stands out from other sites selling similar products.

3. Reward customers for their loyalty – Do you have that customer that always keeps coming back? If so, make them feel special. After they have made 10 purchases, surprise with a discount code for their next purchase. Don’t advertise it as a sales gimmick. Make it personal. Doing that will make that customer think, “They care about my patronage.” And they’ll tell people. Getting a lead from a referral is the best way to make a sale.

4. Integrate social media – Yes, it is an eCommerce site but make it so that people can share the link to an item. This could be critical to more sales. People are busy. They don’t necessarily want to copy a link, and then go to Twitter and/or Facebook and post it. They want to stay on your site so add some sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest. When people see a great deal, they want to tell others.

No eCommerce site succeeds without sales. We live in an age where people most likely have access to several different eCommerce sites selling the same product. Make yours stand apart from the rest. It will require that much more work to do it, but the rewards are worth it.

One of the keys to success for an eCommerce site is good Search Engine Optimization. Gone are the days when somebody could put hundreds of key words in white text on search crawlers would push them to the top of search engine results. SEO has to be carefully measured.

Here are several ways to make sure that happens:

1. Focus

If you do not establish measurable goals and a purpose then you are going to have SEO failure. This is simple business planning. In order to get people visiting your site, you have to be completely clear about what your site is about.

Create a site map and know it. Focus on in on the strong points of your company. Strongly identify your products and services. Put a laser like focus on what makes your products and your services better than that of the competition. Educate yourself on the practical do’s and don’ts of search engine optimization.

2. Too Much Data

Don’t fill things up. Keep your content brief and focused. Keep the website as clean and neat as possible. Do not use the home page as a site map. Great content that includes focused keywords will enhance your results. Be sure that each page, each product, and each service speaks for itself. Take the time and the effort to work on each page (title, content, meta tags) so that it remains consistent with what you want to do and also within the expectations of your customers.

Do not stuff key words. That will just work against you and customers will recognize what it is. Make sure the content is easy to navigate and use headers, sub-headers and lists when you can and be as concise as possible. All of this will improve SEO over time.

3. Not Changing

Adapt or die. It’s a common refrain. The intricacies of SEO are hard at times to keep a handle on. Google makes changes at times to their algorithms that can often negatively affect your site. If you find what you are doing is not working as well as you had expected, try to focus keywords on some niche products you may have as it could be worth it to have a big share of a smaller market than a very small share of a very large market. Always be willing to look at your content and change it up.

4. Not Knowing Your Customer

Great content is always going to match the interest of the end user. Your goal is to get into the mind of your customer and tailor the content around them and what they want. Your key words should match that content. The content should not have to be forced to fit with the key words. Always seek feedback from your customers. Seek out the regulars and inquire with them as to their thoughts. Listen to their concerns or ideas and see if you can implement that into your content.

SEO can often be very complicated, but for the most part, the basic foundations are easy to implement. Stick with the fundamentals and the rest will work out over time.

However, without great customer service, your site will not have the success you hoped it would.

Author and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuck, wrote the book, ‘The Thank You Economy.’ Here’s a central tenet to the book:

Gone are the days when a blizzard of marketing dollars could be used to overwhelm the airwaves, shut out the competition, and grab customer awareness. Now customers’ demands for authenticity, originality, creativity, honesty, and good intent have made it necessary for companies and brands to revert to a level of customer service rarely seen since our great-grandparents’ day, when business owners often knew their customers personally, and gave them individual attention.

He’s right. If you have an eCommerce site you must seek ways to get more personal with your customers, even if they live hundreds of kilometers away. Here are several tips about critical customer service functions for eCommerce that many often overlook:

1. An ‘About Us’ Page – It sounds simple doesn’t it? Yet, a lot of eCommerce sites are filled with boring generic information about the business. Customers want to feel like they are dealing with human beings. It provides a behind the scenes look into the company and provides some measure of trust that a customer is going to have a great shopping experience.

2. Emails – How many times have you made a purchase, inquired about a product, or tried to contact customer service only to get a generic email back without any follow up or even worse, a poorly worded email that is impersonal and is grammatical nightmare?

Auto reply emails are fine. It gives comfort to a customer that their email inquiry was received. However, a personal follow up email should be sent as soon as possible. In fact, the time you to take to reply personally to emails should be noted somewhere specifically on your website.

3. Out Of Stock items – One of the more frustrating experiences a customer will have is to purchase an item and find out later it is out of stock. This can happen with eCommerce websites. The difference is how it is handled. Many sites will send, generic (impersonal) email messages that inform the customer the item is out of stock and that they can cancel their order. They will cancel the order. And most likely take their business elsewhere.

Craft a personal email recommending another product that is in stock that is similar to what they ordered. This is your shop, so you should be able to do this without a problem. Offer a discount code or a gift certificate/coupon for their next purchase because of the inconvenience. Make sure in the email there is direct contact information for the customer service representative. Finally, let them know exactly when the item will be back in stock. It may only be a few days and the customer will be fine with waiting.

The success of Zappos was culled directly from CEO Tony Hsieh’s insistence on providing top notch customer service. People shop there not because they have the best prices. They shop there because they know they are going to be treated better there, than anywhere else.

Set your eCommerce business apart from the rest. Focus on your customer service.