No one likes to receive negative reviews. This is especially true for merchants and business owners who are doing everything possible to provide quality customer service. However, a few negative reviews are inevitable, and how companies handle them is what really matters to customers. Not so long ago, negative reviews took the form of a customer complaint that was maybe tracked privately within the company. Today, reviews are posted online for the world to see. This makes it even more important to properly address negative reviews whenever it happens.

Three Ways to Handle Negative Reviews Online:

1. Respond Quickly

The most important step when handling negative reviews is to respond quickly. To do this, merchants need to know when and where they are happening. Make it a part of the customer service team’s daily tasks to monitor all new comments and reviews online so that they never slip by unnoticed. There are several tools available to help with social media and brand monitoring such as HootSuite, Klout, and Google Alerts.

When forming a response, the goal is to let the customer know that their issues have been heard and apologize for their inconvenience. Do everything possible to make things right with the customer. Don’t waste time trying to justify actions with long excuses. Future and current customers can see these reviews so protect your branding and integrity with a professional response and tone of voice. Let the customer know you are taking the complaint seriously and assure them the issue will be addressed.  

Ideally, it is best to respond to customer’s negative reviews privately. Request the customer’s contact information and try to reach them offline. However, it’s not always easy. Sometimes it’s not possible to communicate in private, in which case, do so publicly. Leave a professional comment on the negative review if possible, apologizing and working to correct the mistake. Hopefully, after being contacted, the customer will change their mind and update the negative review, but if not, don’t worry about it and move on.

It’s OK to Ignore Rant Reviews

We’ve all seen reviews left by customers who seem to be dealing with other personal issues. Most people will understand what those reviews really are and will ignore them. It’s OK, and perhaps better, to simply ignore the trolling. If necessary, it’s also possible to have negative or fake reviews removed. Sometimes, it’s OK to laugh at them. In fact, there is a YouTube channel that creates dramatic videos with real actors and real negative reviews left on Yelp.

2. Address the Issue

Rarely do customers leave negative reviews for no reason. Chances are something simply went wrong and negative reviews can help to find and address internal issues. Evaluate the reasons for the negative review and look for ways in which improvements can be made. Maybe the customer received a damaged product in the mail as a result of a poor shipping or packaging process. Or, maybe a salesperson was rude to them, in which case be sure to handle that issue with that employee. If the underlying issue is never addressed, it is very likely to receive more negative reviews in the future. 

Ask for Reviews

Negative reviews are usually not a problem (and less noticeable) if they are swimming amongst dozens of positive reviews. For example, if there are currently three reviews, two positive and one negative, then 25% of the reviews are negative. However, if a company has 100 reviews and only one is negative, then just 1% of reviews are negative and is simply less noticeable. Reviews matter to customers.

Data from the BrightLocal consumer review survey notes just how important they are to conversions:

• 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
• 54% of people visit a company’s website after reading positive reviews.
• 74% of people trust local businesses more after reading positive reviews.
• 58% of people believe the “star rating” is the most important metric for them.

It should be a business goal to get as many good reviews as possible from happy customers.

There are several ways to get more reviews online and one of the easiest ways is to simply invite each and every customer to leave a review. Merchants can do this by including a link to leave feedback in confirmation emails. Another way could be to include a note on the package slip with information on how to contact customer service and where to leave a review. It’s also a good idea to send out a follow-up email a week or so after a package has been delivered inviting the customer to help other customers by leaving feedback on products. Sometimes simple reminders can go a long way towards generating more positive reviews.

3. Make Handling Negative Reviews a Priority

Customer service is important for any business. With the prominence of online review sites like Google and Yelp and individual product review features for eCommerce, it’s more important than ever before to address negative reviews in a timely and effective manner. Doing so not only gives the opportunity to turn a bad review into a good one (and perhaps save a lost customer), but it improves branding and awareness to future customers as well.

To learn more about the importance of online feedback, and how to handle negative reviews, please contact us for more information.

Why Are Product Page Meta Descriptions Important?

Product Page Meta Descriptions, and general meta descriptions must be contained in 160 characters or less, are the short, descriptive blurbs that searchers find listed in search engines when trying to decide which site to visit. These descriptions are the information that will encourage searchers to click on your site instead of a competitor. A good meta description will fulfill the following:

• Establish that the content on the page will answer the searcher’s query.
• Show customers that you’re an authority on their chosen topic.
• Showcase professional nature and reliability
• Display how a specific product can answer customers’ pain points
• Encourage customers to check out more about the products

Poor product page meta descriptions, on the other hand, can discourage readers from visiting before they even click on the first link. For this reason, it’s critical to create clear, compelling, and complete product page meta descriptions that will entice customers to click and encourage them to learn more about the products offered.

1. Answer Pain Points

When customers search for products, think about what is it that they’re hoping to accomplish. What are their questions? What are their concerns? Are there specific terms or phrases associated with this specific product that set it apart from others of its kind? Be sure to include those keywords and phrases in the meta description.

For example, a party supply merchant selling plastic dinnerware may fulfill concern by writing “Stylish and durable plastic dinnerware sets available in multiple colors, designs, and package options. 10 – 75 Piece Dinnerware Sets available” This description answers concerns party-throwing customers have about selections available.

Another example of an apparel merchant selling men’s work pants: “Legendary toughness that works. These work pants are heroically durable and come in all shapes and sizes. Shop cargo pants, carpenter pants and more.”  When merchants fully understand their customer pain points and write product descriptions to answer them, they’re much more likely to successfully attract a new and organic audience.

2. Use Sensory Description

Customers are used to being able to touch feel, try on, or hold products in their hands at a brick and mortar shop. Great product page meta descriptions will try to fulfill these behaviors and engage the senses. Use meta descriptions to describe texture, smell, and, if relevant, taste. Discuss what customers will see. Evoke the senses to help customers learn to know more about how much a product will fulfill a specific need.

3. Write Unique Descriptions

While it is possible to copy and paste meta descriptions from the manufacturer, it’s best to create unique and compelling content. Original descriptions will ensure that Google and other search engines do not register content as duplicative. Merchants should also look at competitor product page meta descriptions for ideas, keywords, and verbiage to help generate unique descriptions.  

4. Share Unique Selling Points

When customers are frantically researching products online, use this search opportunity to set yourself apart from the competition. Merchants can add in what makes their businesses different from all the others offering the same or similar product.

For example, add terms like free shipping, fast shipping, free returns, quick customer service, or high-quality goods to differentiate yourself from the market. In reality, when prices and products are similar, customers will choose the merchant with reliable shipping and customer service. By including selling points in the product page meta descriptions for products, customers will get a better idea of what they can expect, and what sets your business apart from the competition. Write meta descriptions that will make customers love your brand.

Product page meta descriptions can make a big difference in the way customers (and search engines) first see your brand and website. Create solid meta descriptions that transform customers’ interest into a sale.

There are several ways to get started on optimizing meta descriptions, sometimes it’s updating category at a time or creating a full overhaul strategy. Struggling to get started? Contact us today to learn more about how we can help create meta descriptions that convert.

If you think that creating product descriptions to increase conversions doesn’t really matter, think again. Several recent studies show that consumers care about product descriptions. They particularly care that those descriptions are complete and accurate and that they provide the critical information they need to make a buying decision. That’s the assessment of Practical eCommerce based on one recent consumer survey:

“…Shotfarm, a provider of product images, surveyed 1,500 consumers in 2015 and 2016 and found that 95 percent of respondents believed that online product descriptions were important (17 percent) or very important (78 percent) to their buying decisions. The same survey found that complete product information, including a good product description, and a high-resolution image had the potential to also build customer loyalty, reduce shopping cart abandonment rates, and stave off returns.”

Make Products Real for eCommerce Consumers

That makes sense. After all, when people go to a brick and mortar store, they can carefully examine and compare products. They can pick them up and turn them around. They can’t do that online, which is why the content you use, both words and images, to demonstrate what your products do is so critically important.  It’s also one of the reasons the average eCommerce conversion rate is 4.2%, while brick and mortar stores see somewhere between 14% and 20% (Forrester).

The Best Product Descriptions Do More Than Describe Products

One key takeaway from the Shotfarm survey is it’s not enough simply to tell prospective buyers what a product does. Another is, if you’re simply copying and pasting manufacturer copy, you’re making a potentially costly mistake. Those manufacturers are not necessarily marketers, and they’re not trying to sell your products.

To create product descriptions that sell your products, you need to follow best practice strategies, including the following 5:

1.  Aim Your Copy at Buyer Personas

A buyer persona is a fictionalized representation of one of your market segments. It’s based on key demographic, attitudinal and behavioral characteristics members of that market segment share. When you create buyer personas and aim your product descriptions at them, you move from product-centric copy to customer-centric copy. Said differently, using buyer personas to create product descriptions ensures you’re meeting specific customer needs, not simply saying your product does this or that for some generic customer.

2.  Push Benefits over Features

Product features are things that products do. Product benefits are ways those features help customers or improve their lives. For example, a feature of a cleaning product might be that it kills germs. The corresponding benefit is that your family will stay healthy.

It’s a critical distinction because consumers care about benefits (the ways that products will help them solve their problems or live their lives better) much more than they do about features. To ensure your descriptions are focused squarely on your customers, list all of a product’s features, and then translate each into a specific benefit.

3.  Define Your Tone of Voice, and Stick to It

Your business is, well, a business, but as far as prospective customers are concerned, it’s also a person, one who has individual traits, values, and attitudes. Those aspects of your company’s personality need to come across, clearly and unequivocally, in the tone of voice you adopt in your product descriptions. Are you, for example, caring and customer-service oriented? Do you have a sense of humor, or do you come across as cold and corporate?

To increase conversions, you need to connect with buyers on an emotional level, showing them who you are and what you care about. Make sure that the tone you adopt for your product descriptions is consistent with both your brand and the buyer persona at which that description is aimed.

4.  Don’t Forget to Edit

Once you’ve settled on a buyer persona, a tone of voice and product features, it should be relatively easy to pen your first draft, but your first draft should never be your last. That’s where editing comes in. You don’t edit just to make your copy grammatical, you edit to make it more persuasive and engaging.

To make your descriptions more compelling, make sure they’re clearly focused on the customer and their needs, not on you or your company. Keep copy simple and easy to read. If necessary, replace any insider jargon with more common language. Avoid generic phrases, always strive for specificity. Finally, it can be helpful to read your copy out loud—this sometimes helps identify confusing or stilted constructions.

5.  Don’t Forget about SEO

You’re not going to sell many products if prospective customers can’t find them online—that’s why optimizing product descriptions for search engines is so important. Do your research to find out what words and phrases buyers are using to search for products like yours. After you’ve settled on a list of keywords, weave them organically into your copy (you want your descriptions to sound natural), especially in your headlines and subheadings.

Quality Can Make or Break Your eCommerce Business

The quality of your product descriptions can make or break your eCommerce business. To increase conversions and sales, make sure you understand who your customers are and your descriptions speak to their needs and problems. One way to do that is to partner with designers who have deep experience with eCommerce sales.

To learn more about product descriptions to increase conversions, or about the ways our Magento eCommerce site design, development and maintenance services can help you provide your customers with the kind of UX that will optimize your online sales, contact us today.

When we think of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), we automatically think of companies with physical storefronts. Is the store wheelchair accessible? Is there adequate parking for the disabled? Are service animals welcome?

However, barriers can also exist in the digital world. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, one in five Americans live with some type of disability. That ratio represents the buying power of about 56.7 million people, including 8.1 million that have difficulty seeing and 7.6 million that have a hearing disability. Are you losing business by not making your website or mobile app accessible to people with disabilities? Are you at risk of receiving an ADA penalty?

What you need to know about ADA Compliance for eCommerce and how to ensure your website is compliant.

What does the ADA actually say?

The National Law Review issued a warning that “website accessibility lawsuits under ADA are on the rise.” The first step in getting compliant is to understand exactly what the ADA is. Below are the five main areas the legislation covers.

• Title I applies to employers. They must provide “reasonable accommodations” for applicants and employees with disabilities, and are prohibited from discriminating based on a person’s disability in all aspects of employment.
• Title II protects the rights of disabled persons to participate and use any government services, both state and local. For example, public transit buses must be accessible.
• Title III requires businesses that serve the public to make “reasonable modifications” to policies, procedures and infrastructure in order to accommodate persons with disabilities. For the majority of lawsuits involving eCommerce, Title III is the provision in question.  
• Title IV applies specifically to telecommunications companies. They must provide telephone relay services and applicable devices for deaf persons.
• Title V prevents a person from threatening or retaliating against someone asserting their ADA rights.

Some confusion over rules

The ADA does not specifically mention eCommerce businesses. However, most courts agree that websites are accountable under Title III. The confusion occurs, though, because no clear rules have been established that outline exactly how websites can avoid violations. For example, there is some debate over whether the ADA applies to only companies that have brick and mortar stores as well as eCommerce websites, and not to eCommerce only companies. Further clarification on these rules is expected to come later this year, according to National Law Review.

What to do now

With 260 website accessibility lawsuits filed in 2016 alone, eCommerce businesses should be anxiously awaiting further clarification. In the mean time, the best plan of action is to get busy now. As we discussed at the outset, it’s not just about compliance. It’s also about the buying power of millions of Americans. Here are just two areas you should consider.

Accommodate the blind

Visually impaired individuals are able to navigate websites through the use of a screen reader, software that reads the text and converts it to audio for the visitor. However, websites must use code that is understood by screen readers. Alternative text must be embedded behind images and proper headers must be used. The alternative text should clearly describe the image. Otherwise, the screen reader will interpret it as “blank” or simply “image.” Ensure labels on forms are clearly identified. Imagine how difficult check-out would be if you didn’t know what to fill in where. As a customer, you would most likely move on to a site that was easier to navigate.

Additionally, make sure the site supports the latest browser versions since most issues with screen readers occur because of browser compatibility issues. Lastly, take simple steps like using high-contrast color schemes. Low-contrast colors make it hard for visually impaired customers to identify critical buttons or even differentiate between the foreground and the background.

Reach the deaf

Think about including sign-language videos for key parts of your site. Many deaf persons that have been hearing impaired since birth cannot read written words. They “read” only sign language. If sign-language videos are not possible, consider including captions or subtitles with videos on your site for those that can read.

There are numerous areas to think about when discussing ADA Compliance for eCommerce. Can the elderly easily navigate the site? What if customers lack fine motor skills? Can a colorblind customer find a product and make a purchase without hindrance?

To learn more about ADA Compliance for eCommerce, talk to the eCommerce experts at InteractOne about creative design that works for all potential customers.

We often are sought out for eCommerce advice from small to medium-sized eCommerce businesses. Many merchants are overwhelmed with workloads and creative ideas they seem to never get to. Many ask us where their time and efforts should be best spent. There’s not enough time in the day (or budget hours) for these types of businesses to do it all.

So, what matters most for success and growth? Where should these businesses start? We advise that an effective strategy for small to medium-sized merchants is comprised of three key eCommerce fundamentals, which are mastering customer experience, channel visibility, and focused marketing efforts.

Customer Experience

Creating a seamless shopping experience for your customers should always be at the top of your priority list. If there are hang-ups at any point in the customer’s path to purchase experience, such as poor search results or limited shipping options, money is being left on the table. Customer expectations continue to grow at a rapid rate due to eCommerce giants providing top-notch eCommerce experiences.

Customer Experience and The Amazon Effect

Amazon is changing the eCommerce landscape while continuing to increase the expectations of the customer.

An article from Forbes on this topic reinforces this statement, “Merely meeting expectations is a myth. No one just ‘meets expectations’ anymore. You either exceed expectations, or you fall short.” It’s no secret that Amazon has always put a strong focus on what the customer wants and will do what it takes to exceed those expectations.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon says, “We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer obsessed. We start with the customer and we work backward…We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.”

In order to be competitive in the eCommerce space, merchants of all size need to shift their focus on the customer experience while exceeding expectations.

Customer Experience and the Path-to-Purchase

The full customer experience, or the path-to-purchase, from search to shipment needs to rival that of the big players. As customers spend more time shopping online, they will continue to expect more and more from merchants. The graph below from GetElastic shows some notable trends about customer expectations:

Unsurprisingly, 95% of customers say that shipping plays a significant role in conversions.  Shipping can add several dollars to a purchase. When customers are hit with unexpected shipping costs, it can send them looking at competitors.

Trust is also a key component with 76% of customers saying that trustworthiness plays a key role in their purchases. There is some uncertainty when it comes to online shopping. We live in a day and age when customers worry about the information being taken. If a website seems outdated or is lacking trust-building measures such as reviews or familiar payment options, it can send customers away.

Products displayed on the homepage comes in as the third most influential for making an online purchase with 70% noting its importance. People shop online quickly. When a customer lands on your homepage, they want to see what they’re looking for immediately. That’s why excellent site search functionality has become increasingly important.

Creating a seamless customer experience is one of the most basic fundamentals of eCommerce. Without a solid path-to-purchase focus in place, merchants are losing customers and money.

Customer Experience and The Right eCommerce Platform

A key part of your customer experience is, or will be, choosing the right eCommerce platform to support your business needs. Merchants must maximize the benefit of features vs cost. Your eCommerce platform and what you can and can’t do with it will have an impact on your online store.

Smaller merchants typically lack the budget to overspend on technology or hosting. Therefore, they must choose wisely between open source flexibility and features (Magento Open Source, WooCommerce) vs. lower cost and efficient SAAS (BigCommerce, Shopify).

Merchants must decide when it comes to features and performance on what will help fuel growth and conversions. For the right size merchant, features and performance may be best served by a powerful, scalable, and flexible platform like Magento. For smaller merchants, power and scalability may not be as important as price and ease of management. And a platform like Shopify would be the better choice.

Channel Visibility

Merchants must be proactive about new ways to get in front of customers. It’s no longer good enough to rely on being found organically via a Google search or even from a PPC ad. Data from 2017 shows that 72% of shoppers start their initial search on Amazon – not Google. What does this mean for small to medium-sized merchants?  It’s now time to think of Amazon more like how we used to think of Google. And that may mean selling products on Amazon even though margins will suffer. And if a merchant can maintain control of the shipping functionality, the remarketing opportunities are many.

Customers are also utilizing social media platforms for research also. As shown in the graph above, 27% of shoppers noted that they would use Facebook as a tool for their buying decision. And merchants are experimenting with extending their brand by offering shopping options on Instagram and Pinterest.

All this tells us that merchants need more than just a well-run website to be successful. Merchants must consider 3rd party marketplaces as a way to get more views and increase sales. Merchants can sell through top marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and Rakuten.

While there has been a shift to Amazon for researching products, Google and Bing are still key players. It could also benefit merchants to consider other key social and shopping engines like Facebook, Instagram, and Ebates.

Focused Digital Marketing Efforts

Merchants need to ensure their digital marketing dollars are focused on the right channels and efforts that will convert. Typically, small to medium-sized businesses lack the financial capabilities to invest in all forms of digital marketing. Knowing what efforts work best for your business is key to success.

Learning what works, and what won’t, will be different for each business. But, it’s key to focus and spend wisely between PPC, SEO, eMail and social. Not all marketing channels will provide each business with equal ROI. PPC can be a quick fix, to drive immediate traffic, but it can also be too costly, long-term for smaller merchants.  SEO can be a powerful tool if done well, but SEO success takes patience, sometimes a difficult “ask” given the costs involved.

The standard approach in eCommerce used to be some PPC mixed with SEO followed up with eMail. While that method still works for some, for others based on industry or available marketing budget, it could make perfect sense for a merchant such as a fashion retailer to surgically increase ROI via social media channels such as Facebook and/or Instagram.

And speaking of email, merchants who aren’t utilizing their customer email database to engage, build their brand and yes, provide offers are likely missing out on the lowest hanging marketing-to-revenue fruit of all.

Choose a partner to help you succeed

In order to survive and grow in today’s eCommerce ecosystem, small to medium-sized merchants must be savvy in the way they prioritize investment in the customer experience, channel visibility, and digital marketing.

It’s also important to note that without an in-house team, many of these efforts will be too much to handle, both from a complexity and bandwidth perspective. Choosing an eCommerce partner experienced in these key areas can have a huge benefit on business. InteractOne has the experience and expertise to help merchants of all sizes understand where best to prioritize their efforts. Notably, a great partner will have the resources to help merchants execute these priorities.

Contact us to learn more about optimizing path-to-purchase journey for your customers or more information on the right digital marketing efforts for your business.

When leveraged correctly, eMail is one of the most powerful marketing tools for eCommerce businesses. Personalized, timely eMails move leads through the sales funnel at the right time. eMail doesn’t have to be a chore, but it does require a well-thought strategy that is executed seamlessly.

Here are five tips to help merchants with mastering eCommerce eMail for better sales and ROI.

1. Send Transactional eMails

The transactional eMail is key to any eCommerce eMail campaign. It takes care of several jobs all at once, including thanking a customer for their business, confirming the order, and continuing the customer experience post-sale.

Here’s how HubSpot defines what a transactional eMail is and what it should accomplish:

“One-to-one eMails that contain information that completes a transaction or process the recipient has started with you. A common example is in eCommerce, after purchasing an item you receive an eMail receipt that has information about the item, price, and shipment. Transactional eMail is sent to individuals rather than a large list of recipients.”

The key takeaway is to make it personal. You already have a customer’s name from the sales order, so address them personally at the top of the message. It’s the eMail equivalent of thanking someone and wishing them a nice day before they leave the store.

2. Segment Your List

One of the first things to do with respect to mastering eCommerce eMail marketing is to segment your list. This will allow you to create targeted eMails for certain demographics while focusing more on qualified leads. It’s one of the easiest ways to make your eMails more targeted, relevant, and engaging.

3. Retarget leads with eMails

Re-targeting is a form of eMail marketing to entice leads who have already visited your site. You can either do this with paid displayed ads or with automated eMails. With just a single line of code, merchants can remind their customers of products they looked at on their site. According to this Forbes article, it’s strategic to sweeten the deal by offering free shipping or a limited time discount:

“Suggest to your customers that they will receive certain benefits by returning to their shopping cart, such as free shipping or limited time offers, etc. This is especially powerful when used with targeted eMail marketing campaigns and has been shown to increase engagement and sales.”

Amazon is the king of eMail retargeting, and there’s a reason why the company invested so much in it. Re-targeting is so effective because you already know that the lead is interested in a specific product. At this point, you just have to nudge them in the right direction with an eMail.

4. Automate What You Can

It’s unrealistic to think that someone will be able to send welcome eMails, transactional eMails, and retargeting eMails individually. The more leads you generate, the more you’ll stand to benefit from automation. Magento offers basic automated eMails from the admin. Learn how to set them up here. eMail automation doesn’t just save you time, it makes sure you get in touch with leads at the right moment. You can set certain triggers to make sure they get the right eMail based on their position in the customer journey.

5. Send Quality Content that Establishes Brand Awareness

Finally, content is what separates the good eCommerce campaigns from the great ones. This is your chance to drop the promotional talk and just inform leads about relevant topics to grow your customer following.

For example, a clothing retailer could write about upcoming seasonal fashion trends. The key is to create content that provides relatable value to the reader. The better the content, the more reason customers will go to your site. And it’s not even just about immediate sales, either. Creating quality content is one of the best ways to build brand awareness. It’s a positive thing to be known as the company that creates helpful guides, tips, and lists.

With the right strategy, eMail can dominate in eCommerce

eMail is the perfect marketing tool for eCommerce merchants. With the right strategy, merchants can advance leads in the sales funnel and bring them straight to relevant product pages and on to a purchase.

To learn more about mastering eCommerce eMail for better sales, contact us today.

If you think your eCommerce products sell themselves because they have great features, or because lots of people buy them in your brick and mortar store, think again.  But first, keep in mind that there’s a big difference between what you offer consumers in a physical store and what you offer them online.

In your physical store, people can pick up your product, check it out from every angle, and see if it looks like it’s worth whatever you’re charging for it.   They can’t do that on your eCommerce site, and that means product content, including product images and descriptions, need to do the heavy lifting for you.

How important is strong product content?  Consider this assessment from OneSpace:

“…in addition to its numerous SEO benefits, high-quality product content also plays a critical role in the purchasing decisions of today’s online consumers. According to Salsify’s 2017 “Cracking the Consumer Code” report, 87% of shoppers rate product content extremely or very important when deciding to buy, and 50% have returned an item they bought online because it didn’t match the product description.”

7 Ways to Create Killer Product Images

A great product image (one that showcases your product in the best possible light) can mean the difference between that product taking off, and that product gathering dust on your shelves.  The question for eCommerce marketers isn’t whether they need strong, consumer-friendly product images, but how best to create them.  Here are 7 tips to create the strongest possible product images:

1. Invest in strong photography

First, unless you have the in-house talent, work with a professional photographer, one who will use the best lighting and a tripod to steady the camera, this to produce the best possible focus and highest resolution.  A pro will also take multiple shots of the same image, this so he has a pool sufficiently large to pull the image which best sells your product.

2. Use multiple images of the same product

Remember that online shoppers can’t pick up and examine your products.  One way to replicate the experience shoppers have in brick and mortar stores is to post multiple images, preferably showing your product from several angles.  This also increases trust, because shoppers will conclude that you’re not trying to hide anything from them.

3. Show your product being used

Showing your product in isolation doesn’t create much of a connection with prospective buyers.  To create that connection, let consumers see your product as they would use it.  For example, if it’s an appliance, show it with a human model operating it.  If it’s a clothing item, show someone wearing it.  Consumers can’t easily identify with “things;” they can identify with people using those things.

4. Keep the background clean and simple

You don’t want anything to distract from the products you’re trying to sell—backgrounds that are cluttered or rendered in colors that conflict with the color of your product, can unnecessarily distract from your product, and that can drive down sales.

5. Test load time

Internet users are nothing if not impatient.  Even a one or two-second delay in the loading of a product image will make some portion of consumers abandon a product page or abandon your eCommerce site altogether.  One way to speed up load time is to correctly size images, ensuring the width and height are accurate (if they’re not, browsers might need to resize them, and that slows download time).  Be sure to test load times before you launch new product images.

6. Consider using video

Video is among the most effective marketing tools at your disposal, but most eCommerce marketers aren’t using it, which is unfortunate.  According to Shopify, online shoppers are as much as 85% more likely to buy your products if you use a product video vs. a static photograph.  In addition, because search engines love video, strong product videos can give you better search engine rankings.

7. Maintain consistency

Online shoppers are likely to view multiple product pages on your site.  If the aesthetic shifts from one page to another, they’ll become confused and potentially conclude you don’t know what you’re doing.  Make sure the images on all your product pages use similar lighting, sizing and spacing.

Quality and consistency matter

The quality and consistency of your product images are critical components of your eCommerce success—but they’re not the only ones.  To drive conversions and sales, every aspect of your site needs to work, guaranteeing an exceptional user experience, and inspiring the kind trust and credibility that brings online shoppers back, again and again.

To ensure your site is doing everything you want it to, you should be working with experienced eCommerce site designers who have a track record of success. To learn more about the ways our Magento eCommerce site design, development and maintenance services can help you optimize your online sales, contact us today.

How To Tell if Your eCommerce eMail Efforts are Working

You hear it everywhere: eMail marketing has the potential for immense success. Especially in eCommerce, it can make or break your efforts to engage, convince, and retain your customers. But how do you know it actually works toward these goals?

Saying that you need to evaluate your eCommerce eMail KPIs might sound simplistic. Of course, you would want to track how your individual messages and overall strategy are performing in order to prioritize and make adjustments as needed. The more you know, the more easily you can build eMails that actually build your order value and result in more online purchases.

Unfortunately, that process is often easier said than done. In fact, 55 percent of eMail marketers think that they cannot calculate the ROI of their efforts.

Put differently, the majority of marketers today have no idea whether or not their eMail strategy is actually working. General statements like the fact that this channel has a 4400 percent ROI matters little if you don’t know whether your own efforts are actually seeing the same or a similar success rate.

To turn the corner, you need to know what to measure. Because as it turns out, the statement that eMail marketing has the potential for immense success is actually true. Can you say the same for your efforts? Here are the 6 top eCommerce eMail KPIs merchants should focus on to measure true eMail success.

1. Sales Conversion Rate

Without a doubt, the single most metric any eCommerce merchant should track is the sales conversion rate of their eMails. Put simply, this KPI measures the percentage of eMail recipients who become customers as a result of reading the eMail and clicking on its link.

The formula is simple: take the number of people who purchased a product on your website as a result of reading your eMail, and divide it by the total number of recipients for that eMail. Multiply the result by 100, and you get the exact conversion rate for each message.

Use Conversion Rate to Track: eMail Impact on Sales

Tracking your conversion rate makes sense both for individual messages and your overall eMail strategy. In fact, both variants a core part in measuring your actual return on investment. Through this metric, you can determine exactly how many sales result from your eMail efforts, allowing you to prioritize your future efforts.

For example, you might find that the third eMail in a lead nurturing sequence generates the most sales. In that case, consider moving it up in priority or using similar content for other messages in the sequence, as well.

2. Earnings Per eMail

Tracking the number of sales resulting from an average eMail is an important start. However, even two eMails that result in the exact same amount of sales can still have a very different return on investment, based on the order value of those customers who convert on your website.

That’s where earnings per eMail comes into play. This KPI takes conversion rate to another level, assigning a monetary value to each sale. Calculate it by taking the number of conversions for a single eMail, and multiply them by their average order value.

Use Earnings per eMail to Track: True eMail ROI

Earnings per eMail can be complex to calculate, which is why it might not be quite as important to your success analysis as the easier to track conversion rate. Still, it should play a core role in helping you evaluate the success of your overall strategy.

Perhaps better than any other metric, this metric helps you track the true ROI of your efforts. Calculation and analysis can be complicated. But when you get it right, you will know exactly how much revenue a given message generated for your eCommerce business.

3. Click-Through Rate

Every eMail marketer probably has at least some idea of their average click-through rate (CTR). Put simply, this is the metric that allows you to understand what percentage of your recipients actually clicked on a link in your eMail that leads them closer toward conversion on your website.

In addition to the basic metric, it also makes sense to calculate how many of the recipients who opened your eMail actually clicked on one of its link. Neither of these variants are enough to truly calculate success, but they can help you understand just where your eMails work well and where improvements might be needed.

Use Click-Through-Rate to Track: eMail Content Success

Naturally, your click-through rate is only a piece of the puzzle. Clicks matter little if they don’t actually lead to sales conversions on your website. At the same time, they can help you evaluate a core piece of your eMail marketing efforts: the actual content of your messages.

Recipients only click to take action if they’re interested by the message itself. From personalization to engaging graphics, it’s important to build your content specifically to encourage that click. Look to achieve an average CTR at or above the eCommerce industry average of 2.32 percent.

4. Open Rate

Open rate is perhaps the most widely-used success KPI for eMail marketers, but it’s also far removed from the action. Put simply, it helps you track how many of your recipients actually open your eMails.

Naturally, tracking this metric is important as a baseline for your efforts; if no one opens your eMails, you cannot expect to gain clicks, conversions, or actual revenue. At the same time, it’s a relatively limited metric that isn’t necessarily directly connected with your ROI. Still, it can be crucial to track a couple of elements within your eMail marketing strategy.

Use Open Rate to Track: Subject Line and Sender Credibility

Why do your recipients open your eMails? Two factors answer that question: your subject line and your sender information. The subject line has to communicate actual value and relevance to your audience, while your sender needs to be credible enough to encourage the read.

As a result, many advanced eMail marketers use their open rate to compare individual messages and subject lines against each other. As your first opportunity to communicate with your audience, this metric helps you get the relationship with your recipients started off on the right foot.

5. Deliverability Rate

None of the above metrics matters if the eMail never even makes it into your audience’s inbox. Your deliverability rate lets you know exactly how many contacts on your eMail list actually receive your messages instead of resulting in soft or hard bounces.

Any delivery rate below 99 percent becomes problematic because eMail clients like Gmail and Yahoo begin to trust you less. In other words, your delivery rate is not so much a success metric as it is a necessary baseline you need to achieve in order to continue marketing through this channel.

Use Delivery Rate to Track: eMail List Health

How accurate is the contact information you have about each member of your eMail list? Your delivery rate can provide a definite answer to that question. The more wrong eMails you have, the higher your bounces and the lower your delivery rate.

In fact, you can use your delivery rate to regularly ‘scrub’ your contact list in order to improve its health. To stay above the above-mentioned 99 percent threshold, take regular initiatives to keep your list intact and make sure that you only send eMails to contacts you know will receive them.

6. Abuse/Complaint Rate

Even among actual recipients with accurate eMail addresses, not everyone will appreciate getting your messages. Particularly if you reach out without securing prior consent, or your messages have nothing to do with your audience’s interests and pain points, your abuse and complaint rate will rise.

Recipients who no longer want to hear from you generally take one of two actions: they mark your eMail as spam or unsubscribe from your list. The latter is unfortunate but keeps your active list relevant. The former is problematic: once your reports reach critical mass, eMail clients will become less likely to actually deliver your messages.

Use Abuse/Complaint Rate to Track: Message Relevance and Quality

Actively tracking your abuse and complaint (or spam) rate helps you do one thing above all: track the quality and relevance of your messages, in the eyes of your audience. A key goal has to be keeping spam reports low. You can only achieve that if you make sure that every eMail you send is actually appreciated by your audience.

When the abuse report rate spikes on a message, it’s time to investigate why. Then, you need to make the adjustments necessary to make sure it doesn’t happen again. For the sake of lasting eMail marketing success, depressing this metric as much as possible is absolutely essential.

Building a Better eCommerce eMail Strategy

Each of these eCommerce eMail KPIs offers a crucial piece of information about your messaging, targeting, and strategic efforts. But they are most powerful when taken as a whole. Combined, they provide the framework you need for successful eCommerce eMail marketing.

Understanding your top eCommerce eMail KPIs is the first step. Next, you need to put a system in place that helps you actually track them in order to maximize your eMail marketing success. That’s where we come in.

InteractOne offers eMail marketing services that are specifically optimized for eCommerce merchants. We can help you gain more customers, retarget shoppers who have abandoned their carts, and re-engage past customers for future purchases. We can also help you track your ROI to ensure the success of your eMail marketing efforts. Contact us to learn more, and discuss the details of a potential partnership.

Mobile Surpassed Desktop Years Ago

These paradigm shifts always start with the user. Businesses just try to respond appropriately to browsing and searching trends.

You may have heard by now that the majority of emails are opened on mobile devices, along with 60% of searches. Consumers use their phones when they’re on the train, waiting for a friend to return from the bathroom at a restaurant, and in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. And they’re not just sending SMS messages, either. They’re opening emails, browsing sites, and checking social media.

Google’s New Mobile-First Index

To accommodate this wave of mobile users, Google rolled out “Mobilegeddon” a few years ago. By making mobile-friendliness an SEO factor, eCommerce sites were more or less forced to provide a mobile shopping experience.

Now, Google is introducing a new mobile-first index. It may not have quite the same SEO impact as Mobilegeddon, but it represents a major shift in the search engine’s method. Mobile sites will now be the primary page to index, with desktop versions being secondary. The important thing is that your mobile site hits all of the major SEO criteria — content, links, title tags, meta descriptions, etc. That’s what you’ll be graded on moving forward.

The Rise of Progressive Web Apps

But don’t just focus on mobile because of what Google says. Instead, listen and observe what your prospective customers want. You’ll find that Google’s move is backed by demand.

Just take a look at what developers are trying to accomplish with Progressive Web Apps. Here’s how the Google Developers page describes their function:

“Progressive Web Apps are experiences that combine the best of the web and the best of apps. They are useful to users from the very first visit in a browser tab, no install required. As the user progressively builds a relationship with the app over time, it becomes more and more powerful. It loads quickly, even on flaky networks, sends relevant push notifications, has an icon on the home screen, and loads as a top-level, full-screen experience.”

Progressive web apps have home screen icons and can even work offline. At the same time, they don’t need to be downloaded or installed. They offer a smooth mobile experience that requires minimal sacrifice (memory, data, etc.) from users. eCommerce sites, in particular, can leverage PWAs for a convenient mobile shopping UX.

In fact, Magento announced that they would be creating a Magento PWA Studio in support of the change they think PWAs will have on the future of eCommerce. Read more about the impact PWAs could have on the future of eCommerce for Magento merchants here.

It Doesn’t Stop Here

The incoming wave of PWAs is really just a continuation of the mobile experience as we know it, however. To understand where the mobile UI is headed, we need to broaden our horizons.

This CMO article explains the concept of zero UI where users are less reliant on screen interactions:

“Today everyone’s walking around with a smartphone in their pockets. But the future version of the smartphone might look very different from what we are used to today. It could be some new, improved version of smart glasses atomized experience that breaks the mobile interface into various components worn more discreetly, in different places of the body.”

Consider how far voice technology has come since Amazon released the Echo smart speaker in 2014. Marketers should already prepare for UIs that rely primarily on voice commands. eCommerce marketers should also keep an eye on AR and VR for a more visual or immersive UX.

Mobile-first isn’t just a trend. It represents what users need and where mobile UX is headed. To talk more about getting a mobile-first eCommerce strategy, contact us today.