Successful Blog

7 Death Traps to Avoid When Starting an E-Commerce Business

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By Simon Horton

The Web offers endless possibilities to businesses. You sure are aware that the Internet has changed the dynamics of buyer-seller relationship forever. The lure of the Web is very difficult for an entrepreneur to resist and you are already planning your e-commerce blockbuster.

There is more happy news for you. The holiday season has brought in bumper sales for retail sellers. Cyber Monday saw sales totaling $2.68 billion with almost 21% of that sales coming from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

The weekend after Thanksgiving raked in more than $2 billion in online sales. Online sales in the US for the months of November and December combined are expected to surpass $89 billion, an increase of 16% over 2013.

The Internet obviously is the place to be for businesses. Amazon shipped approximately 426 items per second on Cyber Monday, with sales totaling in excess of 37 million items.

But finding your place under the sun in an unforgiving online marketplace is not easy. With super-hot competition breathing down your neck it becomes increasingly important for you to be at the right place at the right time to land the sale.

Success is very hard to find in an over-crowded global marketplace. Here are a few things you need to keep in mind to avoid a potential disaster for your online business.

1) Think Style over Substance

Once you have decided to take the leap and start selling online, is time to work out a clear strategy.

Do not spend hours creating the most attractive, interactive, responsive and stylish website. Not only are you required to put in endless hours, but you also end up spending quite a lot of money.

Dive into the potential customer base you are targeting. If you are selling kids’ garden accessories, make sure you know where to find your customers. Parenting blogs, forums and self-help groups offer much potential.

So do schools and kindergartens. With increasing stress being laid in schools on teaching children to eat healthy and natural, on how to source food from their kitchen gardens, and in general encouraging them to spend more time outdoors, your products do have potential to sell.

Go where your potential customers are more likely to find you and try to engage them constructively.

2) Neglect Content

Your website need not pay big bucks to bloggers to write for you. Spare some time to share valuable, informative, engaging and interesting content with your online visitors.

Blogging would not take up more than a few hours every week. Once you get the hang of it you will be easily able to post two fleshed out posts every week. And that’s all that is required in the early stages of your business.

Do reply to all comments and suggestions, and ensure you do not neglect any visitor to your blog.

3) Not Stay Social

Social media holds much sway over the online marketplace. This is where your potential customers meet and share ideas, opinions and latest gossip. You need to be familiar with popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Once you have succeeded in building up considerable traffic to your site, you will be able to leverage social media to increase your visibility to a much vaster audience.

If you ignore social media sites very soon you will be left behind in the race with your competition getting there first and building up a dialog with the prospective customers.

4) Not Gauge the Practical Aspects

Your business is not all about your brilliant idea and yourself. You will need the help and support of plenty of others to actually get your business up and going.

Vendors, suppliers, shippers, customers and employees are all stakeholders you need to work with to ensure the success of your online venture. You need to measure how much all of this is going to cost you financially. How long can you sustain the nuts and bolts of your venture if the revenue takes time rolling in?

Amazon would not have been the success it is if it had shipped stuff late and broken all through its formative years. You will have to sweat to win your customers trust and most importantly their familiarity with you.

You have to honestly and thoroughly assess all of this before you set up your online store. Do you have all the necessary ancillaries in place for your business to flourish and run well?

5) Do Not Have a Customer-Centric Site

This is one of the biggest mistakes that could really mar the customer experience.

An online business site should be a delightful experience for any guest, not just for those who have painfully created an account. Do not make it mandatory for visitors to register to complete sale. Ensure the visitor faces as few hurdles as possible.

Quality, high-resolution images should be provided along with comprehensive product descriptions. There should be no room for doubt in your prospective customer’s mind as to what he is paying for.

You should also clearly specify the price of the product and the shipping options available. All modes of shipping do not cost the same. US Postal Service offers several benefits for small businesses that you can pass on to customers. Be clear to your customers about the choices available to them..

You should also clearly define your return policies and provide all info regarding customer support for all available channels including phone, e-mail and instant chat.

6) The Checkout Process Is Tedious

Tedious checkout processes can really depress your sales. Help your customer complete the payment in a single click. Follow the industry standard for entering credit card information and make the flow as intuitive and responsive as possible.

When you shop at Amazon or eBay the breezy checkout process makes shopping a pleasant experience.

A long and tortuous order placement process can make your customer abandon the shopping cart and find a better place to shop at.

7) Limited Payment Options

71% of e-transactions are made with cards. But a whopping 29% are using non-card methods which include PayPal and e-wallets. Go for payment methods that are favored by your target audience.

Lack of preferred payment options will deter your prospective customers from completing the transaction.

Ensure you allow payments without having to create an account and do not redirect people to other sites. SSL and PCI badges add to the credibility of your website. Customers value the padlock icon and the https URL prefix that shows you are using a secure payment gateway.

The path to online marketing success is waylaid with potential deathtraps. Avoid these mistakes and your venture is sure to succeed and win customer loyalty.

Author’s Bio: Simon Horton is the Founder of ShopIntegrator.com, a Hosted Shopping Cart Store Add-In. His years of experience has helped him setting up this platform. Feel free to reach him out on Google+.

Put the Boiler Back in Your Boilerplate

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By Mickie Kennedy

Think back to the last time you wrote a press release.

I bet you spent hours dreaming up the concept, digging up the right quote, and crafting that perfectly pointed inverted pyramid. You probably had a colleague or two proofread it before lovingly releasing it out into the world over the wire.

Now think about the last time you wrote the boilerplate that goes at the end of your press release. How long did you spend on it? Did you have a friend proofread it?

I’m willing to bet you didn’t. And I’m not blaming you. I’m guilty of the same sin. And I have a challenge for the PR pros out there. It’s time to put the “boiler” back in boilerplate.

steam engine

Where has all the steam gone?

The term boiler conjures up intense heat, sweat, clanging metal and honest hard work. It’s a powerful image. So why are our current boilerplates so wimpy?

I blame it on our current all-encompassing focus on content. In today’s increasingly digital world, the challenge is to get as much content out there as we can. We want to build credibility, get found through search engines, and best of all, see our carefully written words in print or on our favorite news website.

But it pays to remember that well-written boilerplate can facilitate all of that. Put yourself in the shoes of an editor. Say you receive a similar press release from two t-shirt companies. Apparently they have both noticed a sharp uptick in consumer’s buying t-shirts based around the 80’s television series Diff’rent Strokes. A trend has been spotted! But which company would you trust, just based on their boilerplate:

“Novel-Tees has been selling novelty t-shirts on the web since 1999. Visit us at novelteesz.comm.”

“Arty-Tees provides the most comprehensive collection of 1980’s nostalgia t-shirts on the web. Arty-Tees’ collection of over 60,000 designs includes limited edition signed t-shirts as well as hard-to-find designs straight out of the MTV heyday. Awards include a “T-Shirty” for innovative original t-shirt design, and stars as diverse as rocker Keith O’Keef and ingénue Marylin Maryland have been spotted in our swag. Backdate your look at arty-tees.commm.”

Arty-Tees is the hands-down winner. Here’s why:

  • It’s comprehensive – By the time you finish reading the Arty-Tees boilerplate, you really have a sense of the company and what they do.
  • It’s specific – it mentions exactly what the company sells, who they sell to and why you should also buy from Arty-Tees.
  • It’s repetitive – Will you forget that Arty-Tees sells t-shirts? Doubtful, because the boilerplate makes repeated mention of the company name and the product they specialize in.

Best of all, your boilerplate is the only place in your press release where it’s allowed, and even expected, for you to promote your company. So don’t waste this smoking hot opportunity!

How much time do you spend writing company boilerplate? Has this post inspired you to pump up your boilerplate? Let us have a look in the comments!

Photo Credit: midcheshireman via Compfight cc
Author’s Bio: Mickie Kennedy, author of the PR Fuel blog and founder of eReleases.

Find out where your ideal client is hiding

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My parents used to live near a famous fishing stream, the Yellow Breeches. Over the years, I noticed that on certain days, there would be a lot more fisherman out there in the water, decked out in their waders, waiting hopefully.

Turns out it wasn’t coincidence. They stock the stream periodically, and the fishermen know when that happens, so they show up to fish when there is a newly stocked stream.

(This seems like cheating to me, but whatever.)

fisherman in stream

The point is, fish where the fish are biting.

It’s so important to find out where your ideal client likes to hang out.

Once you have established a strong picture of the person or business that will absolutely love and benefit from your service, go out and find where that person spends time.

How to find out where your ideal client hangs out

1. Ask Them

This seems obvious, but many business people forget to actually talk to their customers.

Either do a formal survey of your existing customers, or do it more casually. Next time you’re in conversation with a prospect who you think fits your ideal profile, ask them what their go-to social network is, what magazines they read, what association they belong to, what conferences they attend.

2. Look at Available Data

There are resources online that will help you sort through the demographics and composition of most of the social networks. Check out the Pew Research Internet Project for yearly updates on social network usage. Edison Research has a wealth of information on social habits.

3. They Gather in Pools

If your ideal customer’s industry has a trade association or magazine, this is a good place to find them congregating.

Look for the association website and see if they have an online community. If it’s open, you can join the community and be helpful (no promoting, just be useful). See if they accept guest posts on their association blog.

Don’t ignore print magazines–many associations have print materials that present an opportunity for articles or advertising.

Another offline opportunity is the time-honored trade show. You don’t have to drag an exhibit with you, just attend and form some relationships. Seek out the chance to be a presenter if the show includes sessions or workshops. Just keep your “knowledgeable expert” hat on and leave the “sneaky marketer” hip waders at home. The more helpful you are, the more leads will naturally flow in your direction.

And then maybe you’ll land the “big one!”

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo Credit: Chris | christopherharrison.net via Compfight cc

How Do We Get More Social in 2015?

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global-social-media-concept-10084871Are you a business owner who is afraid of social media? If the answer is yes, why is that?

When you stop and think about it, there really are no downsides to being socially active when running a company.

Among the advantages of having a steady and solid social presence are:

  • Increased opportunities for sales;
  • Being seen as an expert in your respective industry;
  • Interaction with current and potential customers;
  • Ability to stay up to speed on industry trends and discussions by seeing what others are sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and more.

Must Give 100 Percent

In order to successfully use social media going forward, keep in mind that you can’t give a half-hearted effort to the cause.

When you stop and look at some company’s social sites, do you ever stop and wonder why they do social media in the first place?

Too often you will come across social pages that are sporadically updated, do not share useful information for consumers, and almost never respond to consumer inquiries. Basically, these pages exist just to have a social presence, something that at the end of the day is not all that beneficial for the company or the consumer.

If you’re thinking that 2015 might be the year you and your business fully invest in social media, consider the following:

  • Who is in charge? – First and foremost, who is in charge of your social media outreach? Your two basic options are doing it in-house or outsourcing it. Either way, there needs to be a command structure in place so that there are no communication issues;
  • What are the goals? – It is also important that you set social media goals and stick to them as much as possible. If your main goal is to provide useful info through shares and retweets, follow that plan. If your goal is to interact with consumers, do that. Ideally, you will be doing a little of both and have a well-rounded social media plan;
  • Who speaks for the company? – Lastly, you need to have it understood by all employees of who is allowed to represent the company when it comes to tweets, shares, pins etc. While you may want to encourage your employees that have social accounts to retweet and share stuff, you almost certainly do not want them speaking to customers (current and potential) regarding issues of concern. For example, if a customer sends a nasty message via Facebook or Twitter, you don’t want one of your employees engaging in a conversation that puts a bad light on the business. Have a social plan in writing that details who can speak for the company socially.

As 2015 nears, make it your goal to be the most socially active business going.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of arztsamui at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Miguel Salcido has been a professional search marketing consultant for over 11 years. He is the founder and CEO of Organic Media Group, a content driven SEO agency. He also likes to blog at OrganicSEOConsultant.com and share insights into advanced SEO. 

The Secret to a Successful Marketing Strategy

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acres of farmland

The ambitious farmer, fresh out of agricultural college, wrote up a detailed plan for his farm.

He designated which crops he was going to grow, how he was going to rotate them, what equipment he would need, and how many farm hands he was going to hire.

After gathering all of his resources, he and his farm hands went out and planted acres of crops. It was laborious work, but when he looked out over his acres of fertile land, he was very proud.

Then he and his farm crew got into their shiny pickup trucks and drove away.

The young farmer took continuing education classes in pest control, irrigation, and hydroponics.

He went to some conferences.

He started writing an e-book about farming.

He and his farm hands finally returned to the fields the next year to find acres of weedy, rotting crops, half-eaten by wildlife. No corn. No potatoes. Nothing to harvest at all.

You will get no potatoes from your detailed marketing plan unless you have a system in place between January and December.

The secret to a successful marketing strategy is follow-through. Do it, measure it, adjust, and do it again.

Set Your 2015 Marketing Up For Success

Analytics and measurement – For tactics that support your key strategies, decide how you will measure success. This should be a number or a concrete result. Set up a spreadsheet and track the results from each tactic.

Did you send out a direct mail piece? Track how many people called the phone number or visited the special landing page. Did you create an infographic? How often was it shared? How many people downloaded it? Don’t include any activities in your marketing plan that can’t be measured in some way.

Decide in advance how often you will look at the numbers. Is it weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? Once you look at the numbers, be prepared to take action based on them.

After-action reports – At the end of every campaign, schedule time to review it. Not just the statistics and analytics, but also budget, resources, how the campaign resonated with customers. What could you have done better, more efficiently? Is it worth doing again? If it failed, why did it fail? Record this information and save it where you can refer back to it in the future (perhaps a Dropbox folder, shared with your team).

Budget updates – Hopefully you included budget projections with your plan. Those projections need to be tied to real-time numbers on a regular basis. The more you do this exercise, the smarter your estimates will be next year. You do have to spend money to make money, but you want to spend it intelligently. If you have your finger on the pulse of your budget routinely, you can reallocate funds if necessary. You will know whether you have the cash to invest in that sponsorship opportunity that pops up in April.

Focus your efforts – Unless you’re a Fortune 500 company, you probably can’t move forward on five big marketing campaigns at once. When you’re writing your marketing plan, don’t assume that you’re going to do it all in January. In fact, you may not want to plan out your entire year up-front. Consider going quarter by quarter. Plan your first quarter’s efforts in detail, and then have possible campaigns outlined and ready to be slotted into the next quarter.

There’s a sweet spot between completely unplanned and rigidly scheduled…you want to go there. Give yourself the gift of flexibility, but don’t wait until the last minute to prepare the next quarter’s actions.

Accountability and reporting – Even in a solo entrepreneurship, you need to have accountability to the business. It’s not a waste of time to put your marketing plan down in writing, even if you’re the only one reading it. It’s not a waste of time to do a weekly review of your numbers and prepare a written summary. When your business grows, you will be happy to have records! In a small shop, grab that extra set of eyeballs for your campaign reviews and budgeting. It doesn’t have to be an all-day event, just make sure you’re not stuck inside your own head. It’s important to relate your marketing activities with the sales person, the customer service person, and the rest of the team. You’re all working toward the same corporate strategic goals anyway, right?

So while you’re preparing your 2015 marketing plan, don’t forget the systems. And we’ll be harvesting lots of potatoes next year!

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo Credit: Ian Sane via Compfight cc

How to Get Your Buyers to Stop Objecting to Price

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By Scott Dailey

julie andrews meme


Imagine this scenario:

You just finished making your product presentation and yes, it went as you planned – as you hoped even. Your buyer now knows the costs, and was sincerely engaged throughout. As for the other stakeholders in attendance, they leaned forward often and peppered you with good questions. Things looked good. As you were shaking hands with everyone, you even made sure to ask if you could field any lingering questions. After all, you’re not new to closing and “no, no, no,” is all that’s uttered. You, for a moment, feel triumphant.

“Now to close,” you silently meditate.

But suddenly, just as you’re getting ahead of yourself – just as you’re feeling unstoppable — the key decision maker pipes in.

“Thank you Scott. Very thorough presentation. I learned a lot. Of course, I’m going to need to think about it. And besides that, I also have a few other vendors Bob’s located, that I want to have a look at. Yah know; before we decide anything.”

Imagine this happening to you. It’s probably not hard to do at all. Surely you have encountered this very set of circumstances. Fired out of a cannon, you slay the room and ready your kill shot when seemingly out of absolutely nowhere, you’re faced with this very objection and its brawn threatens the close, the win, YOU!

Well then what would you say? What sort of ironclad retort would you have prepared ahead of your meeting? I mean, surely you would have had something cued up, right? What go-to answer would be cocked and loaded, ready to dispatch with absolute haste this oh-so common sales hurdle?

Remember that, in this scenario, you almost certainly spent hours preparing your presentation and dammit, that preparation has covered well your product’s features and has earned your audience’s respect. Kudos! But at that pivotal moment, when your buyer suddenly tells you, “no,” how would you have remembered that meeting? How would you recall that particular opportunity? Your presentation had done the heavy lifting. Your buyer believed you. Believed in you. Yet the objection emerged. What didn’t you do? Or said differently, what did you not, perhaps, do well enough?

Would your meeting be remembered for your failure to produce an irrefutable argument that squashed that objection as it grew wings? Would you, at that moment, convert your prospect into a buyer?

What Didn’t I Do?

Now let’s be clear on something. We’ve all heard this objection registered in a thousand different styles. But every time you do hear it, no matter the delivery or the packaging, I assure you, it’s the same old objection and an easy one to negotiate if you know why it’s being tendered.

You are getting this objection because you didn’t convince your buyer sufficiently that the benefit to using your service outweighs the benefit of keeping the money it costs to buy it. If your buyer values the money it costs to purchase from you more than the value your solutions yield your buyer, then you have no chance to make the sale. Only you can persuade the buyer to see value as something that has more appeal than cost. This your responsibility, not your audience’s.

You cannot simply prepare a world-class presentation, do your research and hypnotize your listeners and expect that the work is done. As a matter of fact, your research must be more immersed in how to field this objection, than it ever is in showcasing your product’s features.

Your products, their features, what makes them shine — it’s all for you and means nothing to your buyer. You must make them see that the value had in using your solutions creates the outcomes they seek. Do this and you’ll begin to help your buyer see that retaining the funds it costs to buy from you is less critical than getting hold of your solution.

Next time you encounter this objection – no matter the flavor it’s dipped in – try this:

“Great! I think that’s great, Sue. You should totally look at alternatives to me.

But if you’re shopping for a less expensive vendor, or what I mean is, if the continuing shopping exercise for you deals in finding the most inexpensive provider, then we don’t fit, I’m afraid.

If you’re truly going to shop around, then look for someone who is better than me, not cheaper than me. Better than me, you won’t find. But cheaper? I can throw a rock out of this conference room window right this very second and hit someone in the head who will do less for you, for less than me.”

If we’re tabling next steps because you want it less expensively, then this isn’t a fit, Sue. I’m the best. And I want to be clear on this point: I wouldn’t begrudge you a bit for looking for better than me. I actually encourage that.

But I don’t compete with cheaper than me. I won’t compete with it.

How about this: you’re the best at what you do, Sue and I’m the best at what I do. Let’s get this right the first time?”

In this scenario, Sue may actually believe she needs to shop around for competitive pricing, while never realizing she’s mistakenly comparing value with cost. There is no comparison to be made between average outcomes and successful ones.

Lead with value in everything you present to your buyer. This will not only help keep the conversation in your control, which is critical to the sales process, but it will also assure your prospects that benefits, when satisfying the buyer’s wishes, always outweigh cost.

Sales professionals must believe passionately that they have an obligation to get buyers to stop asking questions about cost by producing answers that deal in value. Therefore, every action you take should be meant to provide satisfactory answers to questions your buyer may not even know he or she is asking.

Author’s Bio: Scott Dailey is the Director of Strategic Development for the digital marketing company Single Throw, in Wall, New Jersey. Scott leads the marketing and sales department for Single Throw and is an ardent lover of all things digital marketing and lead generation. You can follow Scott on Twitter at @scottpdailey.