Free Webinar Weekend: How to Bring New Life to Your Website

August 20, 2009 | In Getting Started | No Comments

Beginning Friday, August 21, through Sunday, August 23, 1 Choice 4 Your Store will be hosting New Life Event, a webinar weekend consisting of 20 free, live webinars that explore ways to bring new life to your website. Be sure to catch tomorrow night’s webinar event, "Back to Basics: E-Commerce Best Practices," with Mike Ober from Yahoo! Small Business. Mike’s webinar begins at 6 p.m. EDT, and will show you how to take a step back for an objective look at your website, to ensure that you’re following the basic principles of ecommerce while reinforcing best practices.

New Life Event webinars will cover search marketing, SEO, analytics, online marketing, social media, and other topics. The full schedule is available on the New Life Event website.

Register for New Life Event now.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business

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The Danger of Relying on Price Promotions to Boost Conversion Rates

June 17, 2009 | In Getting Started | No Comments

Today’s Y! Store Blog post comes from Scott Smigler, president of Exclusive Concepts, a Yahoo! Merchant Solutions developer partner that specializes in conversion optimization and advanced SEO. Scott is one of the first visionaries to specialize in online retail marketing and has dedicated over half his life to the study and practice of converting online shoppers into loyal buyers.

As online retailers, I’m sure that few things frustrate you more than the matter of conversion rates. Most online retailers experience conversion rates below 2%, meaning that less than 2 out of every 100 shoppers actually make a purchase. While many dream of a magic bullet that will get that conversion rate number up, I’m here to tell you that no such "easy button" exists – except for one. It’s a two-word phrase that should send shivers down your spine: price promotions.

In the context of retail marketing, price promotions, typically in the form of coupons, have proven to be highly effective marketing tools for retailers hoping to attract new and existing customers to their store. That, after all, is the role of a promotion – to stimulate activity by making special offers to your target customer base.

The problem occurs, however, when these "special" offers become the status quo such that customers expect them 100% of the time. Thus they become "expected" offerings, rather than "special" offerings. Not only does this impact future conversion rates negatively as promotions lose their luster, it can also impact your branding as customers begin to think of you as "the place people go to when they want the cheapest price." For those of you snickering, "That would be a good thing!," I implore you to think about the long-term consequences of holding such a position in the minds of your customers.

There are many ways to boost your conversion rates. For example, you could spend your time optimizing the usability of your site, personalizing its content to users using segmentation strategies, or make long-term investments in branding. These are marketing strategies that complement and enhance your existing business strategy.

Quick Tip: Merchant Solutions Standard, Professional, and Yahoo! Store merchants can use Yahoo! Web Analytics to start improving conversion rates today. Using YWA, you can identify the most popular pages on your site that have poor bounce rates and look at the keywords and navigation paths that bring people to those pages. Then, you can use this information to improve the content and messaging on the pages in question to improve conversion rates and quickly increase revenue. See below for several screen shots from Yahoo! Web Analytics.

When you rely on price promotions to boost conversion rates, however, there are implications not just to your marketing strategy, but to your overall business strategy as well. The harsh reality from a business strategy point-of-view is that most retailers cannot consistently offer price promotions without eroding their margins and jeopardizing their long-term viability.

Yes, Wal-Mart mastered the art of always offering their customers the best deal by making the low-cost promise and keeping it, but unless you can become the Wal-Mart of your category, you’ll soon learn the perils of price competition. Wal-Mart, in fact, put thousands of retailers who relied on price as their sole differentiator out of business, and online retailers who do not learn from those lessons may face a similar fate.

Looking forward, if you put all or most of your eggs in the price promotions basket, a time will probably come when you will have to raise your prices in order to stay in business and make a healthy profit (unless your business strategy changes such that you can consistently undercut your competitors on price – which few companies can pull off). When that time comes, your customers will have been trained to look for special promotions. Failing to offer these promotions will in fact alienate a portion of your customer base that enjoyed shopping your site for deals.

In response, you may use another tactic that has become far too common in the world of retail: the fake promotion. For example, you may list the sale price for an item on your site as being 5% higher than it normally would be, only to allow customers to bring that inflated price down 5% by using one of your price promotions. These tactics worked very well 20 years ago, but given that you’ve built a business by catering to "deal shoppers," you can count on them to do their homework and find that your bottom-line prices are no longer the most attractive.

Then, your customers will abandon you – not because the only thing they value in a merchant is price, but because the only thing you’ve taught them to value about you is price.

A brand is all about the promises you make to your customers and the consistency with which you keep those promises. Thus, if you make the decision to use price promotions as the dominant tactic through which you improve conversion rates, you will undoubtedly begin to brand your company in a way that relates to low prices. That low price position becomes your promise, and when you fail to keep that promise, your customers will have no other reason to be loyal to you.

At the end of the day, yes, price promotions are powerful tools to stimulate revenue. Used appropriately, they could be a boon for your business, but if used hastily, they could lead your business to bust. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a trend among small business retailers of becoming over-reliant on price promotions to boost conversion rates when so many other techniques are just as effective, or more effective, and are certainly more friendly to the bottom line.

Quick Tip: One way to be smarter about your price promotions is to utilize single-use coupons, a feature that is offered through your Yahoo! Store. Single-use coupons allow you to target your promotions to specific users or groups of users more precisely than "all time discounting."

Also, be careful about using coupon codes in ways similar to the example below where the coupon can be distributed throughout the Internet such that you don’t know which promotion is responsible for which sale. Single-use coupon codes solve this problem.

If, as a small business, you have an opportunity to compete by offering some value other than low prices in a way that allows you to grow profitably, I suggest turning that opportunity into a reality. You can start by improving your site’s usability; the fastest, most sustainable approach to improving conversion rates that I’ve found in 12 years of optimizing online retail stores.

My Recommended Approach: A Roadmap

Hopefully by now I’ve convinced you that indiscriminately using price promotions as a conversion lever is not the right approach. Here’s the approach that I do recommend.

Step 1: If you haven’t already done proper business planning, now is a good time.

Analysis and Strategy

Analysis is critical to planning your business and marketing strategy. I recommend that you start by asking yourself questions like:

• Who are my most profitable customers?
• What is the opportunity to grow sales by focusing more on these customers?
• Why would one of these customers choose me over one of my competitors?
• Who are my least profitable customers?
• Should I continue targeting them?

It’s also valuable to conduct a "SWOT" analysis whereby you assess your business’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

It’s critical that you have concrete business goals and a specific strategy for growing your business. After you’ve identified your most significant opportunities for growth, you can focus your attention accordingly. Over the long-term this is critical to boosting your conversion rates.

Step 2: Focus on tactics that will further your strategy while boosting conversion rates.

Now that you know your target customers and what benefits you can offer them that differentiate you from your competitors, you can focus on implementation and execution.

If you’re an established online retailer, a good place to start is multivariate testing.

Through multivariate testing, you will be able to systematically improve aspects of your store inclusive of, but not exclusive to:

• Messaging
• Usability
• Merchandising

If your store caters to multiple customer segments, you can cater to each segment with the optimal combination of messaging, usability, and merchandising techniques for that particular segment.

If you’re just starting out, you will want to adopt best practices in conversion optimization.

Multivariate testing is only a viable option if your site generates enough traffic to test multiple aspects of the user-experience and get "statistically valid" results. If you’re just starting out, you won’t have enough traffic to run these tests. In this case, you’ll want to rely on best practices or advice from consultants.

Here are some quick tips:

• Keywords are not just for SEO: If a shopper performs a search on Yahoo! for "wheeled luggage" and they visit your website, they are more likely to stay and shop if your site mentions "wheeled luggage" high up on the page. Make sure that the keywords sending the most traffic to your site are mentioned prominently on your site, and that you offer valuable content to shoppers who find you using those keywords.

  

• Take advantage of conventions: Customers expect to find the "view cart" button on the top right of the page, and they expect the "add to cart" button to stand out. They expect to find your phone number either in the header or the footer, and they expect the site to load quickly. Make sure that your site is not breaking conventions like these, unless it’s for a very good reason. For a deeper look at conventions and why they exist, you may want to check out Mike Ober’s blog article, "Don’t Dare to Be Different in Ecommerce Basics."

  

• Use the tools that Yahoo! gives you: Yahoo! merchants have access to tools such as Cross-Sell’s Auto-Suggest feature, which utilizes Yahoo!’s behavioral targeting technology to make product recommendations based on your store’s sales and navigation histories. This tool keeps track of what shoppers tend to view and/or buy in combination, taking the work out of creating relevant product suggestions. Installing tools like this takes only a few minutes, and can have a big impact on conversion rates.

Whether you’re an established merchant or you’re just getting started, investing the time to devise a strategic approach to improving your conversion rates will pay significant long-term dividends.

Scott Smigler
President, Exclusive Concepts, Inc.
Guest blogger for Yahoo! Small Business
Follow Scott on Twitter

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Feature Highlight: Customer Ratings

November 6, 2008 | In Best Practices, General, Getting Started | 4 Comments

Recently, Yahoo! merchant Bob Shirilla — owner of Keepsakes, Etc. and Simply Bags — took the time to write us about the Customer Ratings feature, and how useful he’s found it for understanding his customers and their experiences with his store. He noted, "Many people will only call us when their expectations were not met. The Customer Ratings survey encourages clients to provide comments on products, pricing, delivery, ease of purchase, and general customer service. We’ve gained valuable information and changed internal processes from the comments left by customers."

While Customer Ratings is not a new feature, Bob’s note is a good reminder for merchants not using this feature to enable it in checkout, as the information that’s collected from customers can serve your business well. For merchants who aren’t familiar with this feature, Customer Ratings provides an easy, automated way to collect feedback from your customers about shopping and post-order experiences. When this feature is enabled in checkout, customers can choose to have Yahoo! send them an email, asking them to rate the merchant. Customers who choose this option will be sent an email with a link to a ratings form several weeks after completing their transaction.

If you belong to Yahoo! Shopping, ratings will let shoppers see how customers have ranked you. Good ratings can help you gain customer confidence, can play a key part in shoppers choosing to buy from you rather than from your competition, and may improve your ranking in shopping search results.

The screen shot above comes from Yahoo! Shopping product search results. On the right, underneath the price listing and business name, Keepsakes Etc.’s rating is displayed to potential customers. I asked Bob if he could tell me a bit about how he’s used Customer Ratings feedback to improve his business and maintain a five-star rating, and to share some advice for new merchants also looking to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction and good ratings.

What’s the most valuable feedback you’ve received from customers, through their use of Customer Ratings?

Learning the importance our customer places on fast shipment of their purchase, and how much our customers appreciate us communicating the status of an order throughout the delivery process.

What changes have you made as a result of feedback from customers who provide ratings?

At first, we tried to drop-ship but found that just did not give the level of service required to retain customers. Now, we warehouse almost all of our products on-site. At Keepsakes Etc., we also implemented an order management system to ensure accuracy and timeliness of our products and service.

Can you share some examples of things your stores do that help you achieve "Excellent" ratings and repeat business?

At both Keepsakes Etc. and Simply Bags we go beyond the basics to give customers more than they expect. For example, our free gift bag and gift card make for a personalized gift and a striking presentation. Just because a client makes an Internet purchase, doesn’t mean they want a gift in a plain paper wrapper. (Good point, and one that we can’t emphasize enough. You can also read a previous post to the blog for more “beyond the basics” ideas. — Jennifer)

We also focus on exceeding the stated availability and delivery of our products. By keeping popular products (such as our throw blankets) in stock, we can ship almost all of our orders on the same day our order was placed. We’ve read numerous comments from customers stating that they can’t believe how fast they received their purchase and because of this, they plan to purchase again.

Do you have any customer service tips or advice for new merchants, that can also help them achieve good ratings?

For new merchants looking to achieve good ratings and repeat business, I recommend:

• Having a real person answer the phone every time it rings.
• Being knowledgeable about your product.
• Ensuring your website accurately represents your product.
• Finding a way to deliver more than the customer expects.

Thank you for your tips, Bob, and for taking the time to write us about your use of this feature.

If you’d like to learn how to enable Customer Ratings for your store, please see our online help. And if you have a store feature you’d like to see highlighted, please let us know!

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business

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What can you do with Yahoo! Web Analytics?

October 10, 2008 | In Getting Started, News & Announcements, Yahoo! Web Analytics | No Comments

We announced on Wednesday that Merchant Solutions Standard, Professional, and Yahoo! Store merchants will soon have access to our beta release of Yahoo! Web Analytics, and that these stores will be enabled in stages. Today, we’d like to give you a preview of what you can look forward to when the “Get Started” link appears in Store Manager. We think you’ll agree that enabling Yahoo! Web Analytics can open up a world of profit potential for your store — great news at any time, and especially so right now as we look toward the holiday shopping season.

Yahoo! Web Analytics features

To note every feature available with Yahoo! Web Analytics would take much more than a blog post — closer to a book. Luckily, Dennis Mortensen, Director of Data Insights and previous COO of IndexTools, is already busy writing that book. With over 100 standard reports, the ability to customize these or create brand new reports from scratch, options to apply cross-reference filters and visitor segments, and powerful scenario analysis and campaign tracking features, you can dig deep into your site activity to discover user trends, problem areas, and potential conversion opportunities.

Unlike many reports or analytics tools, Yahoo! Web Analytics provides real-time reporting of your site activity. You can immediately see the effects of site changes and marketing campaigns, and know how your site is performing right now. And once collected, historical data is always available when generating and segmenting reports, and applying cross-reference filters.

Here are just a few of the things you can do with Yahoo! Web Analytics:

Apply cross-reference filters and visitor segments

Cross-reference filters add a new dimension to understanding site performance. By applying filters to reports, you can gain insight into the different factors that may be influencing your key metrics, individually or in combination. Instead of spending hours manually digging through different reports, Yahoo! Web Analytics can automatically remove the data you don’t want to look at, and incorporate the metrics you’d like to focus on.

For example, when viewing a conversion summary report, you may wish to filter the results by conversions that came from visitors in a certain city or country, or that were related to a certain entry page or traffic source. Or, when viewing a visits report, you may wish to show only visitors who arrived at your site using a certain search phrase, or visitors that came from a specific referrer. Filtering allows you to see patterns that may otherwise be hidden.

You can also apply visitor segments to your reports, so you can see how different visitor groups engage with your web site. For example, you may wish to segment report data by results that apply only to returning visitors, or by results that apply only to visitors in a certain geographic location. Using the segmentation selector to explore visitor behavior can help you learn how to better optimize your site, and your marketing campaigns.

Create custom reports and dashboards

Custom reporting lets you choose the key metrics most important to your business, and to design reports tailored to your reporting needs. You can use the Custom Report Wizard to modify existing standard reports, or to create brand-new reports from scratch.

While Yahoo! Web Analytics includes a default executive dashboard that displays key site metrics and performance indicators, you can also design new dashboards geared to your business needs. For example, you may wish to create a custom dashboard that includes reports geared toward SEO or SEM efforts. You can have up to 10 dashboards, and each dashboard can include up to 10 items.

Yahoo! Web Analytics dashboard

Analyze steps in an important site process

The Scenario Analysis feature allows you to pre-define and track the steps a user must go through to complete an important site process, such as a checkout or signup flow. By tracking these steps, you can learn where visitors exit a process (e.g. abandon their shopping cart), identify areas of weakness, and optimize the process to improve conversions.

Using ad-hoc scenarios, you can create and apply a scenario to historical data, allowing you to research and test possible steps in a process before implementing them on your site. Both pre-defined and ad-hoc scenario reporting let you “drill-down” into the data, revealing navigation path and exit page details for visitors who did not complete a process.

Example of a checkout scenario analysis, showing the number of visitors who began the checkout process compared to those who completed a sale, and at which steps drop-off occurred.

Set custom delivery options, and share reports

You can schedule Yahoo! Web Analytics reports for delivery by email to one or more email addresses, or have them automatically uploaded to an FTP server. You may also give other users access to your reports.

With Yahoo! Web Analytics, you can also:

• Define and track campaigns, including paid search, email, banner, and internal campaigns.
• Compare reports from different time periods, such as before, during, and after a marketing campaign, or month-to-month.
• Track internal searches on store pages built with Store Editor, to learn what visitors can and can’t find.
• Define, track, and analyze site events.
• Export reports to Excel, CSV, HTML, PDF, and .ZIP format.

The features highlighted here are just some of what’s offered by Yahoo! Web Analytics. To learn more, check out our Yahoo! Web Analytics help section.

How do I get started?

Once the “Get Started” link appears in your Store Manager, enabling Yahoo! Web Analytics is easy. Our automated installation option for checkout pages and store pages built in Store Editor means no messing around with tracking code. Simply follow the “Get Started” link in Store Manager and click the “Enable Analytics Tracking” button to start tracking your site.

Manual installation options are available for merchants who build their store pages with Web Hosting tools, or for merchants who wish to add custom tracking variables to their store pages.

Where can I learn more?

For information about enabling Yahoo! Web Analytics and using the reporting interface, please consult our extensive help section. We’ll also be offering a webinar later this month to introduce you to Yahoo! Web Analytics. Please watch the blog and our training page for webinar details.

Our training page also includes a free video from MarketMotive, showing four quick ways you can use Yahoo! Web Analytics to improve your store. The free video is one segment of a full Yahoo! Web Analytics training course developed by MarketMotive, available by subscription.

We’re excited to introduce this first phase of Yahoo! Web Analytics to our Standard, Professional, and Yahoo! Store merchants. Remember to watch your Store Manager in the days ahead for the “Get Started” link, and to check back soon for information about the webinar.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business

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