April 19th, 2007
Web Store Features - Part 2 From Ana Rincon
Marketing and Promotion
This, Part 2 of a series, explores marketing and promotion features available in e-commerce packages. You should be using every opportunity you have to draw customers to your Web store and to increase conversions once you have a visitor. The newest e-commerce programs have many built-in features that can help you do this.
Part 2: Marketing and Promotion
Search Engine Optimized: Many storefront software packages create product pages from a database that are not easily found or indexed by search engines. Instead, look for a feature that creates search engine optimized html files pages designed to be attractive to search engines and help drive traffic to a merchant's web site. Some programs generate keywords, Meta Tags & text that can help your SEO efforts.
Data Feed: Some packages can create data feeds that allow you get listed more easily in Froogle, Yahoo! Shopping and other third party shopping marketplaces.
Bulk Mail Wizard: A Mail Wizard allows merchants to create bulk e-mails. Some allow segmenting, so that you can communicate with just a portion of your client base depending upon their purchase history. Look for the ability to send plain text messages or rich HTML e-mail. And make sure that customers can automatically unsubscribe from the mailing list. A mail wizard makes it easy to run promotions, with e-mails that link directly to specific products in an online store or even a link that automatically activates a coupon.
Tell-A-Friend: A tell-a-friend feature allows your customers to promote your online store. Customers who think one of their friends would be interested can click on a button to send the friend an HTML e-mail containing product descriptions, pictures, and links to your store.
Affiliate / Marketing Tracking: If you might use affiliates to help promote your products, look for a storefront with an affiliate module. Affiliates may sign up online and once approved, the merchant can track sales that are generated as a result of the affiliate's effort. Merchants may also be able to set different commission levels for different affiliates and track payments to the affiliates. A very common use of this program is to track Return on Investment (ROI) from the pay-per-click search engines such as Overture. Some affiliate management systems allow your affiliates to login to their account and view their statistics live and in real-time.
eCoupons: eCoupons can be a great way to increase sales from your existing customers. You may be able to set up percentage off coupons, flat rate coupons, or free shipping coupons. Coupons may be set for a specific number of uses or can expire after a certain date. More sophisticated systems offer coupons and promotions such as "buy product x, get product y at 50% off."
Product Reviews and Ratings: Many customers like to see what others have said about the products they are thinking of purchasing. In fact, you may like to see the feedback yourself. Enabling customers to write reviews of your products can increase consumer confidence and your conversion rate. All reviews and ratings can be moderated by the merchant.
Related Products / Up-Sell: Merchants can set up relationships between various products in their online store and utilize these relationships to facilitate up-sales. For example, a merchant might say, "May we recommend accessory X?," on a product detail page for Product Y.
Gift Certificates: Customers can buy gift certificates from you and use them as payment when they purchase from your store.
Gift Wrapping: Allow the customer to have the item gift wrapped (you set the rates).
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