Are You Ready for Your Online Christmas Rush?

Odd to think about Christmas when you are just off the beach, but here's our 7 point eCommerce Healthcheck to make sure you're in good shape and maximised for peak trading:

1. Have you submitted your sitemap to Google so they can easily index your site? This is the vital first step for any SEO campaign.
   
   
2. Have you submitted a Product Feed to Google Merchant Centre so that they can display your products in their shopping pages? Sorting out your data feeds is a quick win that is guaranteed to generate revenue over Christmas.
   
   
3. Are you running own-brand PPC? You may not run PPC for the rest of the year but it's worth running your brand terms as keywords at Christmas. PPC has the advantage of letting you tailor your message to your audience so make sure you push your Christmas offers with your copy.
   
   
4. Is your software configured properly?  A good Google Analytics set up - as well as other SEO software like Webmaster Tools and SEOMoz - will give you a great vantage point to see what is working and what isn't and help you adapt accordingly. It will also give you priceless data for perfecting your strategy as Christmas draws nearer.
   
   
5. Have you planned your email calendar? Plan your email calendar early -  What offers are you making and when? What stock levels do you have?  What products are you selling? Don't get caught out by the rush of Christmas, by making proper plans.
   
   
6. Are your delivery details properly presented? Christmas is the worst time to have ambiguous delivery policies. Make it very clear what your prices are and how long delivery will take. Turn your delivery terms into a strong selling point by offering guarantees and going the extra mile in your Customer Services.
   
   
7. Do you have gift options? What do you have that makes your gifts better than everyone else's? For example our client David Hampton supply all their products in lovely gift boxes. We're working with them to make sure everybody knows just how nice they are. It's not too late to create and promote some fantastic reasons why your products will be the perfect gifts this Christmas.

Moneyspyder are eCommerce experts, running eCommerce platforms, as well as Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and eCommerce mentoring. If you would like help maximising your revenue this Christmas call us on 0207 492 1929 or email on info@moneyspyder.co.uk.

Moneyspyder Ecommerce Platform – Always Getting Better

At Moneyspyder we’re passionate about developing our platform. From the very start (over six years ago!) we have been committed to making a platform that makes making changes not only possible, but easy.

We have a great relationship with our clients who are also committed to developing their sites incrementally on our platform according to Best Practice Research and Google Analytics data. 

As such, let’s take a look at some recent additions to The Present Finder’s  functionality and see what Mark Ashley Miller, owner of The Present Finder, has to say about them.

• We’ve added a Photo Zoom functionality to the product page images. Mark says “[This] has made a huge difference and I’m sure will improve conversion as we are now upgrading the photos so detail can be displayed.”
• Previously used addresses drop down in Checkout. If customers have used the site before their address will drop down so users can enter their details extra quick. Anything that increases the speed of checkout will reduce checkout abandonment.
• We’ve added a Metatrack link in Order Confirmation E-mails. This makes it possible for customers to track their parcels and reduces the load on the customer services team.
• We’ve added more information about customers and their order history in the order processing section of the back-end. Mark says “This makes a huge difference for customer service, especially when looking at and chasing up Abandoned Orders.”
• We’ve improved our merchandising capability so we can show users items that are frequently bought together. Mark says “this is proving to be a very useful tool.” Good merchandising is vital to a successful ecommerce business. Have a look at our site for more information about our ecommerce mentoring program.

These improvements would be impossible without the passion of our clients to improve their sites and their willingness to take chances and try out new functionality.

Click for more information about our ecommerce platform or give us a ring on 0207 492 1929.

Pay Per Click Isn’t For Small Businesses... Or Is It?

If you own a small to medium sized multi-channel ecommerce business you might have tried Adwords and found it seriously wanting. 

 

 The Problem with Adwords for SMEs

Here are some scenarios you might have encountered: 

In order to drive high traffic volume you may have had to bid on broad terms that were expensive and rarely led directly to revenue.

You lost lots of money on the Content Network without even knowing it (I once met a client who had spent £30,000 on Adwords with no return, and the main culprit was the Content Network). 

The market was cornered by the big players – Amazon, Ebay, etc. – who were driving up bid prices and making it impossible to compete.

 

Time to Give Up on Adwords?

In since 2011 Adwords functionality and reporting has come a long way, while SEO is getting harder and harder to do right and track properly.

The Panda and Penguin updates from Google have meant that optimising your site for search is no longer a case of submitting your site to the right directories and filling your blog posts with enough links. The Analytics update in Autumn 2011 also made it harder to track organic keywords. Any traffic coming from Google searches where the user isn’t signed in now lists the keyword as ‘not provided’. Google have even suggested they will penalise sites for being over-optimised.

This could be seen as a cynical strategy to drive us back to paid search, fortunately Google’s paid search offering has come on in leaps and bounds. Here are our top picks for new stuff on Adwords:

• Product Search – Have you linked your Merchant Account to your Adwords account yet? Google will automatically take product prices and images and display them in search result pages.
• Retargeting – Follow your PPC traffic around the internet. Adverts for products they’ve shown interest in will appear on multiple sites. This has now been combined with Google Analytics to make it even easier.
• Social Ads – Link your Adwords to your Google+ account and display how many ‘likes’ your company has got. (Don’t have a Google+ Page? Call us about our ecommerce mentoring programme and we can help you out).
• Assisted Conversion Report – It’s always been hard to attribute revenue to PPC, this report makes it much easier to see which Ad Groups are giving you long term value even if they aren’t delivering immediate conversions.

At Moneyspyder we run PPC Campaigns for clients in a wide range of sectors. We also regularly advise people how to improve their existing PPC strategy as part of our Ecommerce Consulting package.

If you’ve tried PPC before and it hasn’t worked, or if you’re struggling to make it turn a profit, give us a ring on 0207 492 1929.