Re-Committing To Goals

Clearly I need to be on a path of repentance, especially since my last post wasn't even during this last season. So here I am, entering one of the busiest parts of the year for online sales, ready to lend some support and guidance to any who would like it. Below are my own personal short term goals:

1. Post on setting up a Google Trusted Stores account. There is a 30 day (I actually think it is a 28 day) probation period, so if you would like to have a Google Trusted Stores account setup by December, you will need to get that set up by next week.
2. Create New Friendlier Design. I have been looking at redesigning my website and blog for a while now.  With the hype of this holiday season approaching, I think I will be able to finally get the new look implemented.
3. More Customer Support Avenues. I normally only provide customer support via email.  This goal has 2 parts, the first is setting up and advertising a website analysis option.  I will offer my own website analysis, as well as provide detailed information on how merchants can do their own website analysis.  I think this is especially important for merchants who hire companies to do work for them.  The merchant should be able to check, to some extent, the quality of the work being done.  The second is to actually setup a business phone number. I am sure that most of your companies already have a business phone number setup, but since my company is mostly just me, I haven't needed it.  I find that I have been a little hindered without an option for customers to call me directly, so I will be setting that up before the end of the year.

I would advise that you sit down and map out a few short term goals for your company that you would be able to complete before the holiday season gets crazy.  Make these goals things that can take advantage of the holiday season sales, such as setting up an avenue for new customers to be added to a newsletter, or to streamline promotions. Whatever your goals are, bullet point a few steps that will help you reach those goals in the coming weeks.

Small Steps To Stay On Track - Navigation

A website's navigation is an essential element that is often overlooked. Below is a list of DON'Ts and DOs for your site navigation. First the bad news:

What NOT to do in your Site Navigation

• Don't have link-appearing titles that are not links.  When you go to a website, for example, Target.com, there are a list of links at the top of the page such as "Women" and "Men." These links denote different departments in their store/website. When you hover over these links, there are many sublinks that are available. Here is the don't, even if a link-appearing object has sublinks, still make the link-appearing object link somewhere.  Yes, many customers will hover over "Women" then find the subcategory that they want and click that subcategory, but there will be some customers who keep trying to click "Women" and may become frustrated when it doesn't go anywhere. This is good for customers who are not sure what subcategory they want, as well as for customers who may jump the gun and click on a link before the page loads enough to have the sublinks even appear.

• Don't have too many levels in drop down menus. I am a firm believer in drop down or flyout menus in top or side navigation bars.  However, if there are too many levels, chances are that a customer's mouse will slip and they will lose all the levels they have gone through.  This is a similar idea to avoiding too many clicks before a customer can purchase. There are some websites that need to have that many clicks or need to have that many levels, but if you can avoid it, do. 
• Avoid vague links.  A single link that says "Customer Service" is less helpful than a series of links that say "Returns," "Shipping Information," and "Privacy Policy."

What you SHOULD do in your Site Navigation

• Build navigation with your customers in mind. The first navigation bar that you see on the page (no-a-ways this is typically the top navigation bar), should contain your main categories or your main site links.  I would not suggest using the top navigation bar for informative links like "About Us" or other customer service related links.  Those links are informative about your company, but they are not as useful to the customer.  Start your navigation with major categories.  If you look at Target.com, the first categories on their page are "Women," "Men," and "Baby." Looking at Apple.com, you will find that their main categories at the top of their home page list the main products that they sell. Toys "R" Us starts their navigation with "Category" and "Age" pull down menus to immediately help their customers sort through the thousands of products available.

• Do create a navigation menu that is straight to the point with meaningful text.  Don't include links called "Products" with a flyout menu.  Instead, include major categories at the top and any non-major categories in the side navigation bar or a flyout selection. 
• Do have interactive links.  If a customer mouses over a link, something should happen.  The link could change background color, change text color, become underlined. The customer should be visually shown what link they are mousing over, and be able to see that it is in fact a link. 
• Do include link titles.  In the HTML for an href statement, you can include the href location, as well as a link title.  This is not only good for search engines, but it is good for customers, especially for links of images.  
• Do make the navigation stand out.
• Do have clear breadcrumb menus.
• Do make it simple. I like the idea of getting to any category page on your website from any category page on your website. Repeat customers or customers on a mission will know exactly what sub category they would like to view.  Having a categorized navigation with all of your sub categories will make it simple for customers to get exactly where they want without having to dig.
• Do include company information links in the footer.  Just like the top navigation, the footer navigation can have categories of links.  Group your links in categories such as "Company" containing "About Us" type links, "Customer Service" containing "Shipping" and "Returns" type links, and "Stay Connected" with links to blogs, Facebook, etc.

Small Steps To Stay On Track - Home Page

If you are anything like me, it is about this time in the year that you realize you aren't sticking to your New Year's Resolutions.  I start off the year with so many goals and ambitions, but I realize that by trying to take on everything at once, I end up failing on most of my goals.  So what I propose is to relax a bit, and take those New Year's Resolutions one step at a time.  This series of blog posts will take various elements on your website and evaluate the good vs the bad. You can make improvements to your website one section at a time.

Home Page
The home page on your website introduces your company to potential clients, advertises your top products and promotions, and gives information on the various categories in your store.  With those three goals in mind, your home page should have some of the following features:

• Clear call to action.  This may be a current promotion or sale, a top product, or a seasonal product line.  Whatever it is, have one, and only one, clear call to action that you change periodically.  You want your customers to come back and see what's new in your store.
• Full navigation. Have your page setup so that either in your top navigation, side navigation or footer navigation, customers can go directly to what they want.  With ShopSite you can create categories or top navigation fly-out menus so that customers can find the main category (for example, Women's Clothes), and view a list of sub categories (such as Shirts or Tops) to go directly where they want.
• Links to additional resources. You are an active business owner so you'll have Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, blogs, newsletters or other ways to keep in touch with your customers.  Let your new customers know that you are current with many online resources. 

A few things to watch out for that could hurt your home page are the following:

• Too many calls-to-action. Trying to pull your customers in 5 different directions could distract customers or overwhelm customers. If a customer comes to your website with a purpose, for example to buy pants, they will look at your navigation and find exactly where they want to go.  If a customer finds your website some other way, direct them with one call-to-action.  If you want to direct them to more than that, have your additional features (such as other best sellers or promotions) highlighted as cross selling items on another page, not all on your home page.

• Slow Speed. Your home page should be the attention grabber, but a slow loading page does not grab attention.  Make sure that your home page is clean and loads quickly. 

On the right I have the home page of four popular brands, Apple.com, VictoriasSecret.com, Nike.com and Columbia.com. You can see that each of these home pages has one main call-to-action.  Apple.com is advertising their iPhone 4S; VictoriasSecret.com is advertising their swim line; Nike.com is advertising their new sport band; Columbia.com is advertising their waterproof shoes. With each of these sites, the main thing they are advertising will take up nearly all the space 'above the fold' when viewing.  In order to view the categories below, a customer would need to scroll down. 

Online Store New Year's Resolutions

This weekend everyone will be thinking about and possibly writing down things that they would like to do differently in the coming year.  These New Year's Resolutions often include a fitness goal, a social goal, an education goal, or experience goals.  These same goals for the coming year in your personal life can be applied to your business' website.  Below I have outlined a few New Year's Resolutions for your online store's website for this coming year.

• Fitness - Trim Down While Bulking Up.  This does not mean removing content from your website.  When you work out, it is best to have some fat on you in order to build muscle.  If you don't have any fat, then you have nothing to convert to muscle.  This is the same for your website.  Every website has some "fat" on it; it is just a matter or rearranging or re-purposing that fat to bulk up. Look through your website and find areas where pages or functions are not as efficient as they could be. Then take those areas and enhance them or move them to where they will be more useful.
• Content vs. Calls-To-Action. Content is important, but you should not have all of your content above your calls-to-action.  Make sure your calls-to-action are above the fold on your website; this will likely involve rearranging your content so that it it lower on your page.
• Images with Text. Do you have large images such as banner graphics that have text in them?  Change those images to be smaller background images, and allow the text to be plain text on top of those images.  This will cut down on your page load times, while improving the content for search engines on your pages.
• Too Much Information. Again, this does not mean removing content.  If you throw all of your website options, products, advertisements, et al. all your customers on your home page, it can be overwhelming.  Divide your content out into sections or even multiple pages with each section or page focusing on one area.  On your home page, customers can click on the area they would like to learn more about and get that additional information.
• Social - Let Customers Know You Appreciate Them. Customers purchase from your website because they like something about your website.  It may be that they like your products, or that they love your low prices, or even that they like your flexible and informative customer support and return options.  Whatever the reason may be, customers who purchase from you are letting you know that they like your business.  So show the love back; let your customers know that you appreciate their business.  This could be as simple as a thank you card included when you mail their order, or it could be an email.  Ask customers for feedback on both the products that they purchased, and your company as a whole.  See if there is anything that you could do to improve their experience.  Also, provide customers with a way to keep up with your website and learn about new products, specials, or changes that might interest them. Make sure that any newsletters that you send are regular and not spammy (if you say it is a monthly newsletter, don't send one every week), and that they are for the benefit of your customers.  After all, it is your customers that keep you in business :).
• Education - Continue Learning And Sharing. This is great for you as a merchant, the customer, and your search engine ranking. Continually add content to your website or update a blog with information that deals with your company, the products you sell, and the industry you are part of.  If you sell furniture, you can include information on how to maintain your furniture, or new interior design trends.  If you sell clothing, show pictures of people wearing your clothing, give style tips on accessories, research the best materials and maintenance and share your research with your customers.  If you sell books or music, share information about your best selling authors and musicians, as well as relevant news in your industry.  Keep the content on your website current and informative. If you make your website an information resource, customers coming to your website for information might just end up purchasing, and customers who have purchased from you will come back to see updates.  You can include some of this information in your monthly newsletters, your blog or twitter posts, your facebook wall, and one relevant pages of your website.
• Experience - Try Something New. Your website may be functioning great, so you may not even be considering trying something new, but this can be good for both improving your visibility on the web and increasing sales.  If you are not doing regular newsletters, start a sign up.  Services such as MailChimp have packages that are free to get you started. You may want to add mobile pages to your website.  If you are using the latest version of ShopSite Pro, you can add a mobile option to all of your store pages easily. Maybe you haven't been blogging or you have yet to get on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Google+.  You don't know how may more customers you can reach until you try to branch out from your norm. 

I am going to try all of these things on my website, http://LaurenHillsDesign.com this year.  I resolve to re-organize my pages so that the most beneficial information for my customers is the easiest to find.  I resolve to provide more ways to keep in contact with my business.  I resolve to provide regular information updates about the eCommerce industry on my website, both information that I have researched and write, and link to third party websites providing helpful eCommerce information. I resolve to send out a monthly newsletter with eCommerce tips, specials for website enhancements, and fun facts or online stores that I come across.  If you would like to sign up to receive these monthly newsletters, you can sign up at the following URL: http://laurenhillsdesign.com/newsletter-signup.html.

Good luck in the coming year, and have a happy New Year!

Push to Christmas - Emergency Preparedness

Cyber Monday is over, you have a little calm before the last-minute-Christmas-shopper storm. Now is the time to do your emergency preparedness. Getting ready for those frantic shoppers needing their orders on time and those customers who ordered and expected their order by the holidays is essential for making your business' holiday season finish smoothly. One of the best ways to do this is to let customers know approximately when they will receive their order. Do this on your home page, your product pages, in the cart, and on the email receipt.

• Home Page Delivery Notice - on your home page, or in a main area on your website, advertise when is the approximate last day to place an order in your store and safely receive it by Christmas.
• Product Page Delivery Notice - some products ship quicker than others.  If you drop ship products, have custom products or products that ship at a different time, you will want to let customers know.  Include some text near the add to cart button letting customers know approximately when to expect each individual product if they ordered it that day.  Or, for each individual product, list the last day that product can safely be ordered to arrive by Christmas.
• Shopping Cart Delivery Notice - this should be the most exact delivery notice because at this point you have the customer's shipping zip code.  Include on this screen the delivery date as exact as possible.  Make this notice clear so that customers can assess if their gifts will arrive when they want.
• Thank You Delivery Notice - include the approximately delivery date in the email receipt if possible.

Another thing you may want to offer this time of year is expedited delivery. This will put some of your last minute shoppers very excited.

Good luck preparing for the final push of the hectic holiday season!

Advertise Cyber Monday Deals with Post-Purchase Share

I recently added a new enhancement feature for ShopSite merchants to add a post-purchase share to Facebook or Twitter.  This allows your customers to share what they purchased, and it is a way of advertising your website through your customers to their friends and family. I believe that this feature will be especially beneficial over the Black Friday - Cyber Monday weekend.  You can encourage your customers to share their purchases with their friends and family by including coupon codes or sale announcements in the Facebook post or Twitter tweet. Advertise your Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales through post-purchase advertising.

The post-purchase share to Facebook and Twitter enhancement is regularly $50, however if you "Like" LaurenHillsDesign.com on Facebook (click here), you can receive 70% OFF this enhancement feature by using the coupon code "sharenow" at checkout.