by Simon Horton

5 security tips to protect your credit card when shopping online

Shopping online can be a real breeze. Just choose what you want to buy, enter your credit card details and voila, you’ll have your chosen item at your doorstep in a matter of days (or hours, if Amazon and its drone delivery plans take wing). No long queues, no driving all over town hunting for that perfect pair of shoes.

While online shopping is fun, addictive and a lot of things besides that, what sometimes kills the joy of online shopping is the sheer terror of credit card fraud and identity theft. And no, you cannot cower under a pillow and pretend that this will go away. If you shop online, you need to read the following security tips. If you own an online retail store you need to read this even more.

1. Get the Basics Right

Being safe while shopping online is not rocket science. Millions of users successfully shop for their hearts’ desire and more online without ever getting into trouble. Here are a few basics that every online shopper MUST keep in mind.

Never make the mistake of assigning the same passwords for all your accounts and cards. Use different passwords for each account, make sure your passwords are not easily hackable. With one password, you run the risk of compromising all your accounts with just one crack in your armor. An easy to guess password like your name or date of birth make breaking into your accounts easy as pie. Make passwords a combination of alpha-numeric characters that have nothing to do with any of your personal details like your family members’ names, your wedding anniversary etc. Another key aspect to always remember is to never share your passwords with anyone.
Be aware of your surroundings when swiping your card. When you hand your card over to the cashier at a store, keep an eye on the cashier while they swipe your card. In case you see the cashier swiping your card on a machine that is not a POS machine, raise the alarms. Chances are the second machine is a dip card reader that steals user information from the magnetic strip of the card. Fraudsters use this data to make duplicates of your card and run up giant shopping bills at your expense.
Avoid using your credit card on public Wi-Fi networks. Public Wi-Fi networks are accessible with or without a password to anyone who is within range of the network. With people peeping over your shoulder figuratively and literally, it is not a smart idea to carry out credit card transactions in public Wi-Fi zones where your data can be easily intercepted by an unscrupulous stranger.
Choose only secure sites to carry out credit card transactions. Avoid shopping on sites that look shoddily made – poor selection of images, a very high text to image ratio, spelling errors all over the place etc. Chances are, these are dummy sites set up by credit card fraudsters to capture your payment details and misuse them.

When making any payment online, check if the address bar in the browser shows HTTPS and not HTTP. On the payments page look out for a Verisign logo or a McAfee Security logo that tell you that the site is safe to use. Just a tip, the green lock icon on your browser address bar is a sign that the site you’re browsing is protected by SSL security and your data is being transmitted on a secure connection. Sites powered by ShopIntegrator have this worry of keeping payment details safe taken off their shoulders. ShopIntegrator directly transfers the customer to the payment processor’s site, thus making PCI compliance easier for merchants.

2. Protect Your PC

Playing it safe is sound advice in nearly all walks of life, if you know what I mean 😉

Secure Your Home WiFi. To begin with protect your home internet from outside users by setting up a strong password for it. Data like your credit card details can be easily hacked into while you transmit them over the internet. A secure home Wi-Fi connection avoids this mess. Another critical thing to do right away is to remove Autofill settings from your browser. The browser tends to store data that you use to fill in forms regularly like your name, address, telephone number, sometimes even credit card details in its memory. Removing this autofill data from your browser’s memory eliminates the possibility of someone else accessing your machine and misusing this data. It also thwarts hacking attempts by not offering identity thieves any rewards for their efforts. Different browsers have different procedures for doing this. Check out the settings section of your respective browser and reset this right away.
Updated Operating System. Software makers like Microsoft and Apple keep scouring their software for security holes on a continuous basis and release updates and patches to counter any gaps that they find. So the next time your computer asks to restart itself to install some new operating system updates don’t irritatedly postpone the update. Go ahead and keep your operating system updated to avoid falling prey to potential identity thieves on the World Wide Web.
Updated Browser. Most browsers these days release updates on a regular basis. Either set your browser to automatically update itself when there’s a new release or do it yourself manually without fail. Chrome’s ‘Safe Browsing API List’ is but one example of the many precautions that browsers employ to keep users safe online.
Strong Antivirus. Another smart, but essential investment for your financial and data security is a good antivirus software. It does not have to be an expensive one. As long it detects and removes spyware or keystroke logging malware from your personal computer and protects your computer from third party attacks, it will do just fine. As with all your other software, keep your virus definitions on your unit up to date to avoid online mishaps.

3. Don’t Fall for Phishing Scams

The Nigerian Prince story has been done to death on email by fraudsters around the world. It’s gotten so stale that even my Dad knows that it’s all just a scam. But not all scamsters are so naive. Phishing for bank account and credit card details has reached sophisticated levels with many fraudsters posing as your bank representatives asking you for your personal financial details as a matter of routine maintenance. There have been cases of people receiving links inside perfectly innocent looking emails which if clicked can download a malicious keystroke logging malware into your machine.

Large scale scammers even go to the extent of building replicas of bank websites that end up stealing your passwords and other personal details as you access the site. Some easy pointers to avoid being phished:

Do not open emails from unknown or suspicious looking email IDs
Avoid opening or downloading any suspicious looking attachments even from known contacts
Never click on links without verifying where the link leads to. You can easily do this by hovering your mouse over the link in the email for a few seconds. The browser will automatically reveal the destination URL in a separate box.
Double check logos of banks, spellings and other minor tell-tale signs in emails that deal with financial data.
No bank or credit card company will ask you for your passwords or other personally identifying information over email. Never pass this information on without double checking with the bank over the phone or in person.

4. Activate Two Factor Authentication for your card

With the number of financial frauds rising by the day, banks and card issuers are becoming wiser and thinking two steps ahead. Many banks now offer users the option of adding an extra level of security to their cards while they carry out online transactions.

Many banks make it a point to call users personally when their card is swiped for a larger than normal amount. This ‘average’ amount is presumably arrived at by taking a median of all the different amounts swiped on the card till date. Banks also tend to call users when transactions are made outside the country of issue of the card.

Two factor authentication takes these basic precautions a notch higher. Instead of relying on just a username and password for a transaction, two factor authentication requires card users to enter a second identifier which they typically carry on their person like a fingerprint scan or a password sent via SMS to a mobile phone, a personal PIN number not stored anywhere else and so on.

Besides banks many other online services too have realized the importance of two factor authentication and actively encourage users to set it up like; Twitter, Yahoo Mail, Facebook etc.

5. Use digital wallets for online transactions

Swiping a credit card can now be replaced by a slew of ingenious payment mechanisms that do not even reveal your card details to the online merchant, thus keeping your identity and financial data safe and sound.

PayPal was the trailblazer in digital wallets which allowed users to transfer money into a seller’s PayPal account from a prepaid PayPal account for any online transactions. It also helped reverse transactions in case of complaints regarding fraud.

The biggest benefit of digital wallets is that you have the option of transferring only as much money you need for your online purchase into your digital wallet. This avoids the scenario of miscreants breaking into your account and emptying it of all its cash.

Now the digital wallet has gone mobile with the introduction of the Google Wallet about four years ago and Apple Pay coming in last year. There are also a bunch of social media payment mechanisms like SnapCash that are gaining in popularity for their sheer convenience and novelty. However the security levels of these social payment mechanisms are yet to be tested and one would do well to tread cautiously in these choppy waters.

Conclusion

Online security during your e-commerce binges is not just the responsibility of the merchant site where you carry out your transactions. It is equally yours. Whether you choose to check users reviews about site’s security online before using a website or use a security app to protect your credit card or activate two factor authentication for your card or even switch to a digital wallet; the idea is to be proactive and work towards avoiding a situation where your financial data is at risk.

By following simple guidelines that typically don’t take much time or resources, one can ensure that one’s hard earned money remains safe and sound without any external threats. Stay safe and happy shopping!

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03.26.15

by shopintegratorsarah

5 indispensable tips small businesses can implement to create a successful blog post

blogging tips for small business When executed well blogging can be a great asset to small online businesses. But what is it that makes a blog successful? We take a look at how to create an effective blog post for your e-commerce site with some indispensable best practice advice and helpful tips on how to generate content (great for when you are a bit short on ideas).

“Small businesses that embrace blogging see 126% more growth in terms of leads than those that don’t blog.”

Setting up a blog for your online business can initially be a bit daunting and you will need to invest time and resources in its ongoing management. However the many benefits blogging can bring makes it well worth the effort.

Companies that blog are more likely to be found on page one of Google.
Companies that blog generate 55% more traffic
70% of people learn about a company from articles instead of advertisements
B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads than those that don’t
77% of internet users read blogs

So what turns an ‘all-right’ post to an excellent blog post? Take a look at our tips below to find out how you can improve your blog offerings.

1. Create engaging content

Just blogging away isn’t enough. You need to think about how to create engaging content – content that your target market will be interested in reading. Whatever you do don’t just churn out reams of posts about your products. Your blog is not the environment to aggressively promote your businesses products or services. It should be about creating sharable content that is relevant to your industry and of value to your target audience. Take a look at notonthehighstreet.com’s blog. They provide interesting and lively posts relevant to their customers.

Variety is important so try an assortment of themes such as;

How to guides
Best practice tips
Top ten lists
Infographics
Industry news, facts and statistics
Forthcoming trends
Reader / client case studies

A blog is a great way to build your brand personality so a good tip is to write as you would talk. Remember you are trying to build a relationship with your readers so be natural and personable.

2. How to generate fresh content and new ideas

Engaging content is all well and good but what happens when you feel you’ve run out of ideas or have writers block? There are lots of ways you can keep generating great content. For example;

Competitors: Check out the topics your competitors are writing about. See how you can improve on it or approach the topic from a different angle.
Scribble down ideas: Often your best ideas come to you when you least expect. I try to jot ideas down as and when they come to me so I have some topic ideas up my sleeve when needed.
Turn one post into a series: Rather than writing a long blog on one topic see if it lends itself to be turned into a series. Breakdown a large area into several bite-sized posts.
Guest blogs: Accepting guest blogs can be a good way to get some additional content on your site. But do just make sure that any guest blogs you accept are from legitimate sources delivering high quality content and value to your audience. It’s a good idea to have content guidelines in place such as not allowing any unrelated links (for example sales links) in the body of the text.
Hubspot’s blog topic generator: If you’re really stuck then try using a tool like Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator. It takes just seconds, simply fill in a couple of broad terms and it will come up with a list of relevant topic titles.
Ask your customers. Find out from your customers the kind of topics they would be interested in reading.

3. Use research to create credible blog posts

It is really important that you take the time to research your topic. A well researched blog post will stand out and give you and your business more credibility. Use evidence such as facts, quotes and statistics to support your content. Do credit your references and include links back to the source – just make sure you open them in a new window. I recently came across a great article that gives you some excellent tips on how to approach researching your blog – How to Research Blog Topics: A Step-by-Step process. Definitely worth a look if you’re writing regular blog articles.

Spend some time thinking about the keywords and phrases you want to target in your article. Consider what search terms your target audience might use to find information about your topic area and include them in the post. I don’t mean overstuffing your article with keywords or phrases as this will just reflect badly on your article but adding a couple of well-chosen key phrases in the body of your text will help keep you focused and your article honed-in on the topic in hand.

4. Include visuals – they make a big difference

The majority of us are visual learners. Indeed visual content makes up 93% of all human communication. Including images in your blog article makes a significant difference to the effectiveness of your post. A good visual will capture your audience’s attention and make your article far more visually appealing.

Articles with images get 94% more total views

Of course not just any old image will do. Your image should be relevant to the topic being discussed or used to support a point you are making. Try to be creative and don’t just churn out the same old stock photo everyone has seen before. There are lot a great sites you can source interesting images such as: Shutterstock, Dreamtimes, istockphoto.

There are also free image sites such as freedigitalphotos. You don’t need to pay for these images but you will need to include an attribution to the author and website when you use the image. Alternatively sites like Pixabay offer interesting images that are in the public domain and fine to use for commercial purposes with no attribution required.

5. Presentation is essential

How your post looks is important . No matter how great the content, if the presentation looks poor then people simply won’t take the time to stop and read your article. Long reams of text are uninviting. So break your post up into scannable, bite-sized chunks. Don’t be afraid of segmenting text with:

Sub headings
bullet points
Lists
Bolded text
Quotes
Statistics
Images

Headline. Your headline is important so take the time to craft it. It needs to be attention grabbing so incorporate keywords and compelling adjectives. Keep it to the point and ensure your headline accurately reflects the content of the post. If you’re a bit stuck, I came across a great post suggesting the ultimate headline formula as:

Numbers + Adjective + Target Keyword + Rational + Promise

Finally, before you publish take the time to check your post for spelling and grammatical errors.

Hopefully we’ve give you a few tips on how to optimise your posts to engage your audience and stand out from the crowd. Of course there are plenty more things you can do to make the most out of your blogging so if you’ve got some more tips then we’d love you to share them below. Happy blogging!

We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this post, so do please leave a comment.

03.18.15

by Simon Horton

5 Tactics to Improve Checkout Conversions and Reduce Abandoned Carts

Imagine an athlete who trains round the clock every single day for four years and then right on the first day of the Olympics breaks her leg and is forced to sit out the greatest sporting competition on earth. Now multiply that by three and you realize how it feels when a user who has been identified, prepped and coaxed into visiting your site arrives on your site, browses for a few minutes and simply clicks away.

I know I’m being a tad dramatic. But it’s only a tad. Every e-commerce business spends nearly all their marketing budgets and resources on getting more users and getting them to buy more. An incomplete checkout or an abandoned cart is not too far from that athlete’s Olympic leg fracture. And the bad news is that trillions of dollars’ worth of goods just get left behind in ignored shopping carts – the ghosts of lost e-commerce potential.

The biggest fix for this chronic pain point is checkout optimization. Yes, we have talked about checkout optimization before. But the more time I spend online on different e-commerce sites; the more compelled I become to do something about the terrible, terrible checkout designs so many online retailers resort to.

Somebody has to stop them. I nominate me. So here goes.

1. KISS

Keep it simple, silly.

That’s the first and foremost rule of checkout design. The more bells and whistles you tag on to a checkout process, the more distracted your user gets and higher are your chances of a drop off midway through your checkout.

According to the data above from Smashing Magazine, the usability of a checkout process drops sharply with every increasing step that you tack on to it. Beyond eight steps, the user friendliness actually declines making these ripe candidates for abandoned shopping carts.

A good option to reduce drop offs is to create a one-page checkout process as against the standard multi-page processes. This one page checkout will ideally combine all the various stages of an e-commerce checkout like picking the items and their quantities, personal information, payment and shipping information etc.

Panic makes users complete their transactions in a single flourish by combining the three key sections of a checkout process into one seamless page.

2. Users are Impatient, Easily Distracted. Tackle these Hurdles.

Anyone who has shopped online will testify to how tempting it is to peek at a bunch of different sites at the same time. I won’t hold this against users, as it is in the very nature of the internet to keep things free and transparent. So how do you ensure that the fickleness that comes with the territory does not translate into dismal checkout conversions for your e-commerce site?

Well, play into the foibles of your audience and feed their impatience. A progress bar located at the top of your checkout process tells your shoppers exactly how many steps they can expect ahead and how close they are to completing the transaction.

Crate and Barrel has a clear numbered progress bar that staves off impatience in shoppers

The more clarity you offer your shopper, the lower are his chances of quitting and moving on from your site.

Another key feature of a checkout process that holds on to users like a magnet is a self-contained checkout design. With a checkout process that is clearly cordoned off from the rest of the site, the users have minimal distractions to pull them away from completing the transaction.

With an enclosed and minimal checkout process like the one above from Under Armor, the user has no other temptations to tear them away.

An oft-irritating hurdle that too many e-commerce sites build into their checkout process is the need to compulsorily register with the site in order to make a purchase. This is a little like saying you need to first plant a few bushes before you can stroll through a garden. While getting users to register with your site does have its merits from a long term relationship building perspective, enforcing it at the time of purchase is a risk you ought not to take. Leave absurd ideas like these behind with the option of a guest checkout like the one from Crate & Barrel below.

This checkout model meets a happy compromise of guest checkout and user registration by offering the user both options side by side. No prizes for guessing which the more frictionless choice is.

3. Money Matters. Flexibility Matters Even More With Money

How people spend on your site as well as how much they spend on it both have a lot to do with your attitude towards pricing and payment mechanisms.

A large majority of e-commerce sites show only the listed price of the item that a customer selects in the checkout section. It’s only when the user reaches the final payments section of the checkout process that a load of ancillary fees get tagged on to the original list price of the item. These ancillary prices include service charge, service tax, VAT, shipping charges and so on. The result? The final price the user ends up paying becomes almost 25-30% higher than what he originally saw. That’s an immediate trust breaker, right there.

Invest in transparency in your pricing across the site. As far as possible, show all inclusive pricing up front to avoid giving the user a nasty shock at the time of payment.

Men’s formal wear retailer Haggar Clothing does a great job of showing a clear break up of each and every cost associated with the purchase even before the checkout process starts.

Once inside the checkout section, the pricing does not vanish. It remains clearly visible with the amounts getting updated automatically to match any change in the cart items.

The information that Haggar provides regarding shipping costs, is a smart touch. It is estimated that close to 30% of users will simply drop off the checkout process when faced with unexpected shipping costs. Good save there, Haggar!

Take a look at some more ways to minimize drop-offs due to shipping concerns, while we’re on the subject.

Identifying the geographical location of a user is easier than pie these days. And yet, there are thousands of e-commerce sites out there that will only show prices in their home currency, irrespective of where a user logs in from.

Avoid this fundamental tactical error by offering prices in the local currency of your user. Most well-designed shopping carts, including ShopIntegrator can detect the user’s IP address and serve up prices as well as site content based on the user’s location. If your site is unable to automatically identify the country where the user logs in from, at least ask the user to choose their location from a drop down list of countries and set your site currency accordingly. Not only does this make for a frictionless user experience, with exchange rate calculations out of the picture, your users now have a higher chance of converting.

Payment flexibility is the final cog in the wheel of your monetary transactions with your users. The more payment options you allow your users, the easier it becomes for them to buy from you. Go beyond the regular debit and credit cards to offer users the chance of paying through unconventional methods like mobile wallets, PayPal or even Bitcoin; which safeguard the security of the user’s payment details much better than other methods.

4. Never Say ‘No Looking Back’

If there’s one advantage that the virtual world has over the real world, it is the ease with which one can ‘undo’ our actions compared to the real world. Imagine sending out a press release to your PR agency with the name of your product spelt wrongly. An email send-out can be rectified within minutes by correcting the name and emailing the respective people right away. On the other hand a press release that has been hand delivered or sent out via snail mail will take a minimum of 24 hours before any corrections can be made.

Allow your users this same luxury by allowing them to edit their cart at any time during the checkout process. The ability to modify quantities, colors or sizes at will without losing the data entered so far, makes the likelihood of the user getting frustrated and leaving your page extremely low.

If editing shopping carts is good enough for Amazon, it’s definitely something you ought to consider!

A corollary to the ability to edit carts, it the ability to retrieve an abandoned shopping cart within a certain number of days. This feature is called a persistent shopping cart, where an e-commerce site saves users’ session details and cart contents for a pre-decided period of one week or one month. This saved data allows users who dropped off on an earlier transaction to pick up right where they left off, thus avoiding a complete loss of your marketing efforts.

While a persistent shopping cart may not be a contributing factor to conversions during a user’s first visit to your site, it definitely aids conversions on their subsequent visits to the site.

Sometimes even the savviest online shoppers get bamboozled about specific items that they have their eye on online. While some people have no worries simply dropping an email or calling the customer care department to clarify any shopping related query, users who are first-timers or are flight risks in general are relieved to have someone they can speak to immediately and fix the problems right away.

For such cases and more, offer your users checkout assistance in the form of a Live Chat plugin. Customer care representatives can walk through the entire process step by step, thus helping the cause of the website owner spectacularly well.

Users who leave your site due to a payment failure or some other frustrating quirk can also be recovered by an instant call back mechanism to the user in question. Remembering the users’ login credentials for their next visit makes the process even smoother and helps grow the conversions even on subsequent visits.

5. Abandoned Cart Emails

Despite the best efforts by my team and me, not a single day goes by when we don’t join the ranks of the rest of the e-commerce world and suffer from abandoned shopping carts. But unlike a large portion of the e-commerce sites in the country, we don’t take the abandonment lying down. We give chase and pursue the user like a spurned lover in an attempt to remind them of our services and the items they left beyond in their cart.

An abandoned cart email does not have to be very fancy. Even a simple standard template with placeholders for the items still inside the user’s abandoned cart will work wonders. Just remember to include the following key pointers in every abandoned cart email

A personalized greeting such as, “Hi Jack!”
A snapshot of the items in the original shopping cart
Pricing details
A sense of urgency by reminding users that the abandoned cart will remain active only for a pre-decided duration
A Clear Call to Action

What Do You Think?

I realize that I have rambled on about my own checkout conversion optimization methods. Are there any different methods that you employ to prevent users from moving on to your competition? Let’s hear it from you in the comments below right here!

Image Source: (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

03.11.15

by shopintegratorsarah

5 indispensable marketing metrics to help small online businesses and start-ups measure performance

As a small online business owner or e-commerce start-up not only do you have a million and one things whirring around in your head, you also have to contend with small budgets, limited resources and constant time pressures. Having to then dedicate even more head space to performance measurements like web analytics can feel somewhat overwhelming. You can be left wondering where to focus your time and effort in a sea of numbers. To help you get the ball rolling we’ve outlined a few key measurements that are quick and easy to understand and can tell you all sorts of helpful things about your performance.

Start small and focus on a few key metrics

Of course there are all sorts of different ways for you to measure your marketing performance, from number of ‘likes’ on social media, customer satisfaction surveys or in-depth analysis of web analytics. Your chosen measurement depends on your goals and objectives and how much time and resources you have available.

Getting started with metrics can feel a bit daunting but the trick is to start small and focus on some key measurements. Don’t be tempted to rely on a scatter-gun approach to marketing where you do lots and hope that some of it will pay off. With small budgets it is essential that you can account for every penny and feel secure that the money and resources you’ve invested are working hard for you. Sign up to Google Analytics and learn to analyse what it is your metrics are telling you. You can then implement whatever changes are necessary to optimise your performance. The last thing you want is to throw good money after bad.

5 essential marketing metrics

We’ve outlined below some simple to understand measurements that can quickly help you identify areas that are paying off or conversely need improving. Of course, there are all sorts metrics you’ll want to analyse as your business develops but these five are a great starting point.

1. Bounce Rate

“If you could only choose one metric to look at Bounce Rate might be your best choice” Google

What is it? Bounce rate is almost self-explanatory, it identifies the percentage of visitors to your site who view just one single page before leaving almost immediately. You are looking for a low bounce rate, the higher the percentage the higher the likelihood of there being a problem. For example visitors came, looked, didn’t like what they found and so left. The general consensus amongst web analytics experts seems to be that about 30-40% bounce is a good target to aim for anything above 50% needs investigating.

What does it tell me? The key things your bounce rate could be telling you is whether there is a problem with the quality of the traffic coming into your site, your page may be loading to slowly or your landing page is putting people off.

What should I do next?

Firstly check that you’ve added your tracking code to your page and that the keywords and search terms you are using echo the content of your site. If there is a mis-match you are going to be enticing in the wrong traffic. No matter how great your website looks they just aren’t interested in its offerings.
Make sure your website is loading quickly. People don’t have the patience for a website that loads slowly – they’ll simply give up and move on elsewhere.
Check out your landing page. Don’t underestimate the importance of a good landing page. It should be well-designed, easy to navigate, contain quality content, reflect the promise you made in whatever promotion enticed them in the first place (so try to always have a separate landing page pertinent to each channel or campaign) and have a strong call to action.

2. Traffic sources

What is it? On your Google Analytics dashboard the Traffic Source metric tells you where your website traffic is coming from – what platform are your visitors using to find you?

What does it tell me? It will tell you the percentage of visitors coming in through each channel. So traffic coming in via search engines using particular keywords is your Organic Search traffic. Direct traffic is those visitors who entered your website’s URL into the browser. Social traffic are those who arrived through your social media platforms and Referral traffic will tell you those visitors who clicked on your link from another website. It is good way of identifying which areas you need to focus on to drive traffic to your site.

What should I do next? Spend sometime looking at each traffic source. Are you doing as well as you expected or do some channels need some work. For example the percentage of visitors finding you via organic search will give you a good indication of how successful your search engine optimisation is. If it is not as good as you’d hope spend some time looking at how you can improve your content. Your content is absolutely essential in improving your search engine ranking. Equally if you find that you are putting lots of time and effort into Facebook but actually you’re getting a better percentage of visitors from Pinterest then it may indicate that it’s more worthwhile for you to put some of the time you spend on Facebook into Pinterest.

3. Cost-per-acquisition

What is it? Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) is the average amount of money it costs you to acquire a new customer. Divide the total costs of acquisition (for example sales and marketing spend) by the total number of new customers over a specific period – for example 6 months.

What does it tell me? Cost-per-acquisition will tell you if you’re spending too much on acquiring a new customer. For example, does what you spend on the acquisition of a new customer exceed the profit your new customer is generating for you?

What should I do next? Are you spending more than you can afford? Investigate where you are spending your marketing budget. Examine the performance of the marketing channels you are using to acquire your new customers in more detail. Which leads us nicely onto…

4. ROMI

What it is? ROMI is your Return on Marketing Investment. A simplistic calculation for ROMI could be: Total revenue generated from a campaign / Total campaign cost. Remember to multiply the result by 100 as ROMI is usually expressed as a percentage.

What does it tell me? The higher the percentage then the better the campaign is working. What you don’t really want are percentages that are in the negative. Work out the ROI for each campaign you undertake.

What should I do next? Think about what campaigns are giving you the best return on investment. You can then allocate your budget in the most profitable areas and get rid of the campaigns that are losing you money.

5. Shopping cart abandonment rate

What is it? Your shopping cart abandonment rate is the percentage of customers leaving you during the conversion process. To find out where people are abandoning you, in Google Analytics go to conversions and look at goal flow.

What does it tell me? These people had already decided to part with their money but somewhere during the conversion process they’ve quit. It will give you an indication whether there is a potential problem during the checkout process that needs addressing.

How you can improve it? Identify the steps on your flow that have the highest abandonment percentages and think about what it could be that is making people leave. For example do you present them with an overly long registration form, are their some hidden shipping costs that suddenly appear or is confusing wording making it difficult for people to know what to do next? Try to make your checkout process as simple and straightforward as possible. Don’t ask for too much information and don’t have any hidden costs appearing out nowhere.

Next steps…

As your business grows and develops you’ll want to start delving a bit deeper into measuring and understanding performance. Moving forward you will need to have clear goals and set yourself specific objectives that you can measure using the most appropriate metric. Of course numbers on their own mean little, it is about understanding what it is your metrics are telling you. Only then can you make the right improvements.

Try to get yourself into the routine of regularly checking your metrics on Google Analytics (or whatever web analytics programme you are using). Before you know it you’ll become proficient in reading metrics, identifying trends or spotting any hiccups!

We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this post, so do please leave a comment.

03.04.15

by Simon Horton

12 Tips to Master mCommerce

Mobile technology can do stuff today what science fiction didn’t even dream up just a decade ago. From being able to print 3D objects straight from your mobile to detonating IEDs to designing outfits for yourself for that special date night, there seems to be virtually nothing mobile apps cannot do.

Shopping seems to be almost child’s play in comparison. However, since we all love to shop and since many of us love to sell even more, why not figure out what makes shoppers go crazy when they browse through a mobile site?

Without further ado, let’s get down to understanding a mobile commerce site drool worthy for a shopaholic like me. 🙂

1. Responsive Website

A website can be accessed by users on their mobile phones in a readable, user friendly manner if the website owner adopts one of these three forms of serving up the site:

a. Responsive design, where the same HTML and CSS adapt themselves for different screen sizes based on the type of device used to access the site. The URLs for mobile and desktop sites remain the same.
b. Dynamic Serving of URLs based on device type. In this case, there exists a desktop version of the site and a completely different mobile version of the site. Depending on the device being used, the appropriate version of HTML is served up. Here again, the URLs remain the same for both mobile and desktop sites.
c. Exclusive Mobile-Only URLs are created that follow the format of “m.websitename.com” which are completely different from the pages hosted on www.websitename.com.

By its own admission, Google favors responsive web design as it is more user friendly, scalable and easier to SEO than two different sets of URLs. If Google wants it, give it to them. You’ll only stand to gain from it.

2. Build Your Own Mobile App and Nurture it

Over 80% of users spend their time inside mobile apps when they access the internet on their smartphones. According to TheNextWeb, retail apps account for 27% of a user’s time on a smartphone.

The writing on the wall is clear. Users are going mobile first today. The web is accessed more often via mobile than via desktops. Finally, mobile apps is where all the real action is. Get yourself a slice of this action by building a mobile app for your e-commerce brand. Grow it and make it popular by investing in advertising, mobile SEO and social media.

3. Promote Mobile Commerce to Online Customers

We all know that it is easier to sell something to an existing customer than to convert a brand new visitor to our site into a customer. The whole idea of customer retention is based on this single undeniable insight.

Use this profound insight to drive traffic to your mCommerce site (site or app, as the case may be). Inform your existing online customers about your new mCommerce site via emails, social media or your site itself. Encourage them to look around and offer them incentives to shop via mobile. No need to spend big monies on getting traffic to your mCommerce site, when your e-commerce customers will happily oblige!

4. Simple Layout

A small screen comes with its inherent set of limitations. Besides the obvious lack of real estate, the touch functionality in all smartphones is not comparable and bad touchscreens can be a deterrent to users against exploring a complicated looking mCommerce site. Besides, the more complicated your site design is, the heavier your site will end up being.

Try and drop the fluff and stick to a simple and intuitive layout for your mobile site. This means no moving carousels, minimize the banners that dot your website and keep the clickable elements per page to as low as possible.

Make sure your Call to Action is prominent and the buttons are adequately large to prevent fat-finger syndrome from striking users cold.

5. White Space

Continuing the thought we just discussed, space on a mobile device screen is at a premium. However, this does not mean cramming as many features as possible into this tiny space so your users can enjoy everything.

The answer to a small screen is to simplify (as discussed above) and to offer enough breathing space for users to navigate freely around your site. More white space could mean toning down the features of your site. If it comes to that, sacrifice some of the bells and whistles from your desktop site in favor of usability.

Nagaraj Nagabhushanam offers some sage advice on mobile commerce layouts. He recommends keeping the touch elements at 7×7 mm size visually, while maintaining the separators between touch elements at 2×2 mm size.

6. Minimal Fields in Forms, Keep Checkout Processes Short

If fat fingers are a problem while clicking buttons, imagine how much tougher it would be to fill out an endless form that leads to your checkout page.

Minimize your users’ misery by making your forms short and to the point. Ask only that information which you will reasonably be using. Data collection and knowing your customer inside out will happen over a period of time. A mind-numbingly long checkout form is not the answer.

Another point to keep in mind when optimizing your mCommerce site is to ensure there are no pop ups, ads or any other kind of distraction to take the customer away from the checkout process. Your checkout process is your flypaper. Make sure you don’t allow random sawdust to minimize the stickiness of this step.

7. Avoid Dropdown Menus

Your website may have extensive product categories and sub categories to pick from. Chances are, they are laid out in the form of a menu bar across the length of your site with each product categories opening up into a drop down menu of its own with dozens of sub—categories.

This may be possible to pull off – aesthetically and from a conversions perspective – on desktop sites. However, when it comes to a mobile site, you don’t have the luxury of multiple drop down menus that expand into further sub categories. Instead go with a sandwich icon in place of your horizontal menu bar. Let the categories open up when the user hovers over the sandwich menu icon. Instead of dropdown menus from each product category, opt to hide the sub categories in nested sections that will reveal themselves when individual categories are expanded. Why not dropdown menus? Because a number of dropdown menus go ‘beyond’ the screen on small mobile devices, making the entire experience of scrolling up and down while keeping the drop down menu open a real pain in the wrong place.

8. Ditch Flash, Not Just on Mobile

Mobile users are already under a lot of stress just being able to read the font on your website and find their way around various product categories and sub categories. By adding flash elements to our mCommerce sites, we are inadvertently upping the ante from a usability perspective.

The problem is not faced by iPhone users alone. Users who access your site from a Mac don’t get to see your fancy flash animations either. Talk about wasted effort and time.

In Google’s own words, HTML5 is a far better tool to create and showcase your interactive designs on your website. “For animated content rendered using Flash or other multimedia players, consider using HTML5 animations that work across all web browsers. Google Web Designer makes it easy to create these animations in HTML5.”

9. Prominent Search Function

Nearly every e-commerce site is defined by the large variety of products that they have on offer. As we saw in the last section, navigating through various product categories and sub-categories can be quite a challenge on a mobile device.

To overcome this basic issue of usability, introduce a clearly visible and easily locate-able search function on your mCommerce site. This way, even if your navigation is the pits, users will still be able to find what they came looking for. Make sure you enable autocomplete and autosuggest options in your search function. With a keyboard as tiny as smartphones have, it’s far easier to tap than type.

Offer your users the option of paying by a variety of payment modes – PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Wallet, Venmo, payments via QR codes etc. – which minimize the user’s exposure to your mobile app. These mobile wallets have heightened security standards (SSL ) that are at par with banking websites. They are linked to a user’s credit card or bank account from which they debit the exact amount that the user owes an mCommerce site like yours and transfers the money directly into your account without revealing any financial information belonging to the user.

10. Set up the Option Allowing Guest Checkouts

If there’s one characteristic that runs across the entire smartphone generation, it’s the fact that they all seem to be in a huge hurry. By forcing users to register themselves on your site by filling out lengthy forms and answering umpteen questions, all you really succeed in doing is putting a big hurdle between the user and completion of your sale. A large chunk of users drop off right at this juncture on being asked to register before completing the checkout process.

Do yourself a favor and allow your users the option of guest checkout. It’s not just quicker, it’s also a lot less painful for your users.

11. Mobile Social Ads

Over two-thirds of all social media users access their social media accounts via mobile devices on a regular basis. This figure, combined with the impressive number of mobile web users in the world, and you have a recipe perfect for mobile ads on social media.

Studies show the growing contribution of social media to overall site traffic in the last one year. Facebook, the Big Daddy of social media made more revenues from mobile ads than from its regular desktop ads. All of these data points mean the same thing – invest your marketing budget in mobile social media ads to reach your users exactly where they like to spend time.

12. Geo-Targeted Offers

A mobile phone goes to the ends of the world and back with its user. mCommerce needs to understand and harness the unique mobility of the mCommerce user and target them with communication based on where they are and what they are doing, in order to maximize message effectiveness.

Use the geo-targeting option in your mobile site to identify where a user is logged in from. Based on the user’s current location, serve him limited period offers and discounts that can only be used in the geographical location that he is in. This way, your communication is more relevant and the user’s interest is stoked by a simple, yet effective marketing tactic.

Conclusion

The mobile juggernaut is on the move with no signs of slowing down any time soon. Mobile accounted for 21% of e-commerce sales in 2014, according to the Internet Retailer Mobile 500 report. Larger retailers enjoy an even bigger chunk of mobile sales – clocking in at an average of 23%.

In the case of technology behemoths like Apple and Google Pay, the mobile effect is even more pronounced with mobile sales stood at over 56% and 80% respectively in the previous year.

If the biggest and the best have already embraced mobile commerce wholeheartedly, isn’t it time your site took the plunge as well?

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