Stephan Spencer's Scatterings

The Scattered Wisdom of a scientist turned web marketing virtuoso

March 2010
S M T W T F S
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Ecommerce Best Practices, Tip #13: Incorporating customer feedback

I've already shared some of the benefits of incorporating discussion forums into your ecommerce site. Now let's delve deeper into the concept of user-generated product review content. Intuitively it makes sense that your customers would convert better… more »
Posted by Stephan Spencer on 11/16/2006 | Permalink

Comments (0)| Comments RSS | Filed under: Search Engines, Ecommerce, Online Retail, Conversion best practices, product reviews, reviews, seo, user-generated content            

Ecommerce Best Practice Tip #12: Email customers who have abandoned their shopping cart

An effective way to recapture the potential customer who has abandoned their shopping cart is to send them a reminder email. Don't do it right away. JupiterResearch recommends waiting at least 24 hours. I'd wait a few days. In the email show a photo of e… more »
Posted by Stephan Spencer on 07/21/2006 | Permalink

Comments (0)| Comments RSS | Filed under: Ecommerce, Email, Online Retail, Conversion best practices, email marketing, email reminder, recapture, shopping cart abandonment            

Ecommerce Best Practice Tip #11: Design that works

In a way, a good ecommerce website is a work of art. Form and function working together. An intersection of intuitive navigation, usable information architecture, an appealing look-and-feel, and attention to detail. An experienced web design company is m… more »
Posted by Stephan Spencer on 07/20/2006 | Permalink

Comments (2)| Comments RSS | Filed under: Ecommerce, Online Retail best practices, design, information architecture            

Ecommerce Best Practice Tip #10 - Incorporate "breadcrumb navigation"

Breadcrumb navigation is wonderful for usability and for search engine optimization (SEO). Breadcrumb navigation, if you're not familiar with the term, is text-based navigation that shows where in the site hierarchy the currently viewed web page is locat… more »
Posted by Stephan Spencer on 07/11/2006 | Permalink

Comments (1)| Comments RSS | Filed under: Usability, Search Engines, Ecommerce, Online Retail best practices, breadcrumb navigation, seo            

Ecommerce Best Practice Tip #9 - a slippery shopping experience

Shopping cart abandonment is of primary concern to online retailers, and for good reason. If real-world stores were like their virtual equivalents, there'd be so many shopping carts littering the aisles the shoppers would have to literally climb over the… more »
Posted by Stephan Spencer on 07/07/2006 | Permalink

Comments (0)| Comments RSS | Filed under: Ecommerce, Online Retail, Conversion abandonment rate, best practices, etailing, shopping cart abandonment            

Ecommerce Best Practice Tip #8: Incorporate discussion forums into your ecommerce site

Discussion forums encourage customer participation, getting customers and prospects to stay longer which means more interaction with your brand. They drive repeat visits too. Some customers become "regulars" on your forums -- which should, hopefully, lea… more »
Posted by Stephan Spencer on 06/14/2006 | Permalink

Comments (4)| Comments RSS | Filed under: Search Engines, Ecommerce, Community, Online Retail best practices, discussion, etailing, forums, long tail, seo, user-generated content, woot.com            

E-commerce Best Practices Tip #7: RSS feeds

RSS feeds are your tether -- your lifeline -- to your prospects after they've left your site. Unless they've ordered from you, how else can you reach out to that nameless, faceless hoard? It used to be that your email newsletter served that purpose, but… more »
Posted by Stephan Spencer on 06/06/2006 | Permalink

Comments (0)| Comments RSS | Filed under: Ecommerce, Online Retail, RSS Marketing best practices, feeds, rss, rss feeds            

Ecommerce Best Practice Tip #6: Be there around-the-clock

Those of us in New Zealand will probably remember the Amazon.com wanna-be that flamed out, FlyingPig.co.nz. The marketing fanfare that announced FlyingPig’s launch was undermined by the fact that the site was down within minutes of going live. Yes of c… more »
Posted by Stephan Spencer on 06/05/2006 | Permalink

Comments (0)| Comments RSS | Filed under: Ecommerce, Online Retail 24x7, best practices, customer service chat, liveperson, load balancing, load testing, server support            

Taking full advantage of CSS

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) offers many more benefits beyond that of streamlined web pages with table-less layouts and precise positioning (no more transparent 1-pixel spacer GIFs!), mentioned in my previous post. Indeed, that's just scratching the surf… more »
Posted by Stephan Spencer on 05/30/2006 | Permalink

Comments (4)| Comments RSS | Filed under: Usability, Search Engines, Web Design best practices, cascading style sheets, css, image replacement, search engine optimization, seo            

Ecommerce Best Practice Tip #5 - Streamline your site

Is your ecommerce site a breeze to use? Is it fast to download? Does it render (paint) quickly on the screen? If not, is the HTML at least built to display the most important parts of the page first? You can trim precious seconds off the download time… more »
Posted by Stephan Spencer on 05/30/2006 | Permalink

Comments (2)| Comments RSS | Filed under: Search Engines, Ecommerce, Online Retail, Conversion best practices, download speed, html optimization, image optimization            
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