Category Archives: Sales

Part two: Focus your website

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I have to admit that while I would like to think that I am a realist, really I am an optimist. I like to look at the positive side of things. I subscribe to the theory of “Field of Dreams” if you build it they will come. While that worked for Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) that really doesn’t work in real life, especially when it comes to e-commerce. Just because you create a website it is not a given that you will have a successful website. Your online business requires the same investment in time and energy that any other offline business. For the next couple of months I will be sharing from a sales point of view what it take to make a successful site.

Part two: Focus your website to your target

So last time we talked about determining who your actual customers are BEFORE you begin to design your website and tailoring it to their needs and wants. In this article I want to talk about how to focus your website. One of the biggest issues I see when people start their website is that there is no focus, no call to action, nothing to move the consumer to open their wallet or purse. Your website has to be a representation of your business in a self-serving way. In other words in retail store environment you can direct people to parts of the store you want them to see and products you want them to buy. You have to format your website with the same frame of mind. So let’s look at how we map out a successful website using this idea.

Make it look good

I can’t stress this enough: you have to have your site look good if you want to have people spend time on your site. If your customer base is conservative stay away from loud colors and college humor, if they are corporate keep the skulls and crossbones designs in the closet; if they teens put away the teddy bear logos and turn on the skulls and crossbones. Know your audience and make the products, artwork, backgrounds, text and images speak to them. There is no way you can be all these to all people. It is ok to cast a wide net but even a wide net has boundaries.

Whatever it is that you want to say you better say it fast

It is estimated that you have between 5-10 seconds to capture your visitor’s attention. This is a stark contrast to a retail store where if someone walks into your store chances are they will browse around or talk to an employee. They do this because they had to invest something to get to your store, their time and gas. So they very likely to spend at least a few minutes in your store. Your webstore is very different, with search engines like Google they can very quickly find what they are looking for so their investment is marginal. That is why you have to capture their attention quickly and give them reason to stay on your site.

Keep it above the Fold

The question then becomes “If I only have 5-10 seconds to capture my audience’s attention how do I best do that?” Great question! From my experience the most successful sites have good content above the fold that capture the audience’s attention and drive them to want to see more. The “fold” is considered the top portion of the website that the user sees before he or she has to scroll down. This is a great location to have a banner or promotion code or a saying that sparks the users interest and makes them want to scroll down to see more. In most cases a visitor to a website decides to hang around purely based on what they see on the first page they visit and above the fold. When a user leaves on this first page it’s called a bounce and can be reported in your Google Analytics as the “Bounce rate”.”

Leave gimmicks to the used car salesmen

Stay away from the gimmicky animations or the huge SALE! SALE! SALE! buttons, they are gimmicky and only distract the user. Keep your message sharp and focused, don’t overwhelm them with 50 products above the fold, keep it simple. I suggest using images that are high quality and possibly a coupon code for say Free Shipping on order over $25 (very easy to do in DecoNetwork).

Give your site a custom look

While there is no silver bullet in having a successful store there are several things you can do to attract potential clients and reduce your bounce rate. One of the most important in my opinion is have your site look unique. It has been my experience that those people that use cookie cutter templates from some of those other web hosting companies have marginal if any success with their site. The reason can be summed up in the following question “If your site looks exactly like a hundred other sites why would I buy from you?” As you know with DecoNetwork you have access to the CSS and HTML, use it! Create a masterpiece, something you are proud of, something that you will have a tear in your eye each time you talk about (it should give you the same feeling you had when you first laid eyes on your firstborn). Make it look special but above all make it unique and designed to appeal to your target market. If you are saying to yourself I like that idea but I don’t know where to begin doing this, not a problem we can help www.deconetwork.com/decocoach.

What can I expect in the weeks to come?

Stay tuned, I’ve got some very interesting topics I want to cover such as “I get a lot of visits to my site but not a lot of conversions. Why?” and “How do I drive better quality traffic to my site?”

Grow your business with affiliate stores

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Now that you are starting to grow your online business it is time to really spread your wings on what you can do in DecoNetwork.   It is time to grow your business exponentially by incorporating affiliate stores to your business plan.  What are affiliate stores and how can they grow your business you might be asking.   The answer is quite simple, an affiliate store is a full e-commerce store that has their own products, designs and URL.  This store is not your Fulfillment Store, it is a separate store.  If you have signed up for the Premium level of DecoNetwork then you already have the ability to create affiliate stores.

How can I use affiliate stores to grow my business you ask?  You can create affiliate stores for key accounts, such as the restaurant down the street or the bakery on the corner.   There is no limit to who or what can be an affiliate store.   The affiliate store can be for use by the clients employees only to order say uniforms or it can be used to market to their clients.   Let’s say you work with a photographer, you can set up an affiliate store for that photographer with their images on your products such as mugs and tee shirts.   The photographer would promote “their” site so his clients would go and purchase products from his site but the order would go to you, you would process it and send it to the consumer.   So the Photographer never has to print a single mug or t-shirt.   But they can log into their affiliate site and check the status of the order.   One hidden gem to doing this is that you can offer to pay a commission for any orders that come through his affiliate site.   So not only does he get a professionally created website that is targeted to his audience but he can make money off that site.

Speaking of commission, you can use the affiliate network to do fundraising.   Think about the opportunity if you use it for fundraising.   You could go to the elementary school down the street, say Washington Elementary and tell them: “I am going to build you an online store for us to sell spirit wear and school uniforms, don’t worry about anything I will manage it and collect the money.   No need to do any work just promote it”.  What school would say no?  Schools LOVE fundraising but it is a big drain on their resources, they have to send out order forms, collect the order forms, collect the money, consolidate the orders, once they receive the orders they have separate the orders and hand them over to the parents.   This is so exhausting.  With the affiliate network, you turn the tables and completely automate this, the orders come to you, you process the orders, you ship the orders, and you pay the commission.   While this sounds like a lot of work you now it really isn’t because of the tools that are built into DecoNetwork.   To maximize the sales opportunity I encourage you to create postcards that can be sent home with the kids telling the parents to support their school and buy their spirit wear online along with the web address.  We created a sample postcard below.   I encourage you to create a postcard similar to this.  Not only schools, but nonprofit organizations will want to do this.

Here’s another idea for using affiliate stores to grow your business, right now in this tough economy there are millions of people looking to supplement their income.   Why not put them to work by offering them an affiliate site?  Again, they need no money to start, there is no risk, no equipment to buy, no capital investment.   All they need to do is promote it.   Tell their friends on Facebook, their family, their neighbors and anybody that will listen to check out their site.   If the site is nicely laid out and has good pricing then they will make sales.   No risk for them and no risk for you because you only pay them a commission when they sell something.   What a great way to help people earn some extra income.   We have a great customer that has made this his business model.   Zach has really grown this idea into a sustainable business model.   I asked Zach if he could share some of his thoughts and ideas on the affiliate model and why it should be a huge part of your business.   He has graciously agreed to do an informative webinar on December 13 at 2:00 PM EST, I would like all of you to attend this informative webinar.   We will be sharing more ideas and how to’s during this webinar.   Hey, if nothing else come for the free virtual doughnuts and coffee. Here is the link to register for the free webinar.

Oh! did I mention that the affiliate stores are free and unlimited in the Premium package?   That’s right, having 1 or 1,001 stores is FREE, free for you and free for your client!   So it really is a no brainer.

School postcard

Increase your average order value with free shipping

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Customers love a bargain and a common and effective way to give your customers a bargain and increase your average order value is to offer a free shipping threshold.

Shipping is a cost so you don’t want to offer free shipping on all orders, but free shipping is a very attractive incentive to a consumer which is why it is used (and use effectively!) by major online retailers.

To solve the problem of eating into your margins by giving away shipping, and the boast the average order value, set-up a free shipping coupon code that can only be used when the order value reaches a certain threshold. i.e. for orders of $50 or more.

Step 1: Create the coupon code

Coupon codes are a great way to track the use of this free shipping incentive. Through the available options with coupon codes you can track the number of uses, limit the offer to the first 100 buyers for example, and turn it off at any time without having to set-up any special shipping methods or products.

  1. Log into your DecoNetwork website.
  2. Browse to Manage Fulfillment Center > Configure Coupons
  3. Select New Coupon.
  4. In the General tab complete the coupon code details.:

    Coupon code: Enter the code people will use to apply this offer. i.e. FREESHIP
    Coupon name: Enter a name for your own reference to track this coupon code.
    Discount amount: Enter 100% to apply a full discount.
    Expiry date: Enter a date if you want this to a “limited time only!” type offer.
    Minimum purchase: Enter the amount or order value threshold a buyer must reach to use this coupon. i.e. $50.
    Enabled: Check this box to enable the coupon.
    Number of users: Enter a number if the coupon is for the first 100 buyers for example.

  5. Select the “Available Products” tab.
  6. Un-check all options accept “Shipping”

  7. Click Create and your coupon is now ready for use.

Step 2: Promote the coupon code on you website

There are various ways to promote this coupon one you website but. As the coupon code is designed to encourage people to buy and buy more on your website you want to make sure it is visible clearly while people are browsing around your site.

For this I recommend a small promotional bar that will sit at the top of each page of your site:

1. Log into your DecoNetwork website

2. Browse to Manage Store > Appearance > Customize Template HTML.

3. Select the Custom Layout tab and check the Override default layout check box.

4. After the <body> tab paste in the following HTML, remember to change the coupon code and value to match your coupon:

<body>
<div id="couponcodebar">
Enter coupon code <span>FREESHIP</span> to get free shipping for any orders over $50!
</div>

5. Select Update to save your change.

6. Browse to Manage Store > Appearance > Customize Template CSS

7. Select the Create custom CSS tab and paste in the following CSS:

#couponcodebar {
background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #000000;
color: #FFFFFF;
font-size: 14px;
padding: 5px;
text-align: center;
}
#couponcodebar span {
font-weight: bold;
color: #FF0000;
font-size: 16px;
}

8. Select Save CSS to save you changes.

Bingo! You’re done and your website will now contain a small bar at the top of the screen promoting your coupon promotion to all users on every page of your site.

Should a potential customer  attempt to use the coupon for an order value lesser than the amount you specified the customer will be notified:

 

Have fun and happy Deco’ing!

Creating a simple floating promotional bar for your website

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‘Tis the festive season to give and be given to, and no doubt you’re thinking its time for some kind of festive season special on your website. So how best to promote this to your visiting customers?

Well a banner on the front page is an obvious start but more and more visitors to websites don’t enter from the home page. As search engines get better at indexing and digging information from the depth of sites, its not uncommon for a visitor to enter at a secondary page such as http://www.mypage.com/tshirts instead http://www.mypage.com.

So how can we ensure our special promotion is not missed and available to any visitor on any page?

A quick and easy way to do this is to insert a floating bar on your site that always sits at the top of your site all the times.

Example:

However unlike a static bar this floating bar floats so as your users scroll down your site the floating bar will always appear:

Yes, yes, yes… you will need to give up some pixel spaces for this, but it doesn’t have to be much!

So how does it work:

First you need to create a custom DIV in your customer HTML. In your DecoNetwork website browse Manage Store > Appearance > Customize Template HTML.

Select the Custom Layout tab check Override default layout:

This will allow you to add some custom HTML to your site.

Scroll down the custom HTML and locate the <body> tag.

Insert a few carriage returns after <body> and past the following HTML:

<div id="floatbar">
This is your floating bar. <a href="#">Links can also go here.</a>
</div>

i.e.:

<body>
<div id="floatbar">
This is your floating bar. <a href="#">Links can also go here.</a>
</div>

Change the content between <div id=”floatbar”> and </div> to be the content you want in your floating bar. i.e.

<body>
<div id="floatbar">
10% off T-Shirts. <a href="/page/tshirts">Click here.</a>
</div>

Click Update to save your changes.

Next we need to style the floating DIV and ensure it always stays at the top of the page and can be easily seen.

Browse Manage Store > Appearance > Customize Template CSS.

Select the Create Custom CSS tab and paste in the following CSS:

#floatbar {
     width:100%;
     position: fixed;
     z-index: 99;
     background: #000000;
     height: 20px;
     color: #FFFFFF;
     font-size: 12px;
     padding:5px;
}

#floatbar a {
     color:#FFCC00;
}

You can style your own floating bar by modifying the background, color and font size. In my case I have a black floating bar (#000000) with white text (#FFFFFF) and yellow links (#FFCC00). You can also adjust its height and font size.

Finally you need to ensure your new floating bar does not overlap any other content on your site like your login links and currency selector. To do this we ‘push’ your website down the same height as your floating bar (30px).

Add this CSS to your Create Custom CSS tab:

#container {
margin-top: 30px;
}

Click Save CSS to save your changes.

IMPORTANT: If you have already created custom CSS ensure you do not already have the CSS selectors listed in this article. If you do ADD the changes to your current CSS selectors.

Have fun!

Improving The Online Shopping Experience, Part 1: Getting Customers To Your Products

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Lyndon Cerejo and the folks at Smashing Magazine are providing a multi-part topic about improving the online shopping experience which I just had to share!

The first three parts have been published and I can’t wait for the rest.

Here is part one.

Teaser:

Amazon turned sweet sixteen this year, and, by extension, so did online shopping as we know it. As online shopping has grown over the past 16 years, so have user needs and expectations related to the online shopping experience. Setting up shop online is easy, but creating an experience that satisfies target users is a different story altogether.

Read full article here.

Booming internet industry almost contributes as much as embattled retail sector

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You’ve all see the news reports of retailers seeing a slow and steady decline in sales. Laying off staff, closing stores, and slashing prices to attract shoppers. But you’ve probably also heard the news that internet retail is bucking this trend and seeing a steady and healthy growth in recent times.

The Sydney Morning Herald contributor Ruth Williams explains in her article ‘Booming internet hits $80bn‘ the opportunities that are out there and the changing behavior of buyers.

Google Australia commissioned a recent report that shows the internet economy in Australia was worth about $50 billion in 2010 which equates to 3.6 per cent of Australia’s gross domestic product but is expected to climb to $70 billion by 2015.

Williams explains that retail sales took a higher than expected dive of 0.6 per cent in May whereas “PricewaterhouseCoopers tipped online spending to grow at least twice as fast as the total retail sector over the next four years, with online spending by Australians to jump from $13.6 billion this year – 44 per cent of which would head overseas – to $21.7 billion in 2015.”

Unfortunately though some businesses see the internet as the ‘new economy’ and like to treat it differently or see it as a threat. That’s not the right way to look at it. As Jim Collins says in his book Good to Great, there is nothing new about the new economy, making reference to earlier technology innovations such as  electricity, the telephone, and the transistor. These technologies produced new economies that reaped massive rewards for those who embraced and not feared them.

There are some things you can do to ensure you are not left behind in the ‘new economy’:

  • Get online and do it now!
  • Don’t see the internet as a ‘new’ way to do business. Treat it as natural extension of your business.
  • Embrace it in every way and ensure your entire team embraces it as well.
  • Arm yourself with the right tools. Don’t think you need to invent them as off the self solutions (like DecoNetwork) exist for this reason.
  • Engage in online communities. There are many out there such as EmbroideryStartup.com and Tshirtforums.com filled with people happy to share ideas with you.
  • Do some reading to get you up speed on the internet and what it all means. I can recommend ‘50 Ways to Make Google Love Your Website‘ as a worthwhile read to get your head around Google, SEO and promoting your business online.
  • Keep it at! We all can’t be the next Amazon or Google but that’s not what the internet is about. As with a brick and mortar business a little elbow grease and persistence will pay off.

Online retail is up by 12%

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As online retailers we like to hear positive news about online sales trends and November 2010 did not disappoint!

comScore released some stats comparing the holiday season of 2009 to 2010 with an overall increase of 12% totaling $16.8 billion spent online.

Source: comScore - Cyber Monday Hangover: U.S. Online Spending Growth Softens After Strong Early Week Performance

2010 Holiday Season To Date vs. Corresponding Days* in 2009
 Non-Travel (Retail) Spending
Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore, Inc.
 

 Millions ($)
2009 2010 Percent Change
November 1 – December 3 $15,041 $16,803 12%
Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 25) $318 $407 28%
Black Friday (Nov. 26) $595 $648 9%
Cyber Monday (Nov. 29) $887 $1,028 16%
Week Ending Dec. 3 (Nov. 27 – Dec. 3) $4,724 $5,163 9%

Have you seen an increase in your sales this year compared to last?

DecoNetwork Tip: Setting up Promotional Coupon Codes in DecoNetwork

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A neat tool to drive traffic and sales to your DecoNetwork site is using promotional Coupon Codes.

Coupon codes are a great way to drive traffic to your website and increase your website sales.

Coupon codes are created by the Fulfillment Center owner. If you are an affiliate store contact your Fulfillment Center to discuss this promotional tool.

Accessing Coupon Codes:

  1. Log into your DecoNetwork Fulfillment Center website
  2. Select Manage Fulfillment Center > Fulfillment Settings > Configure Coupons

To create a new coupon select the “New Coupon” button.

Under the “General” tab you configure the code, name and special offer associated with your coupon code:

Fields include:

  • Coupon code: This is the code your customer will enter at checkout point to receive the special offer.
  • Coupon name: A name you give the coupon code.
  • Discount amount: A coupon can be configured with a % or $ amount discount.
  • Expiry date: When the coupon code will expire. Customers will not be able to use the coupon code after this date.
  • Minimum purchase: As part of your promotion you may require the customer to purchase a certain value of products. i.e. “buy more than $50 and get 10% off”.
  • Enable: Check this field to enable this coupon code. At any time you can un-check to disable the coupon code.
  • Number of uses: You can limit the number of uses of this coupon code. i.e. “Limited to first 100 customers!”

The next tab “Available products” allows you to limit the use of the coupon against certain products.

For example, the coupon code can only be used for:

  • Pre-decorated products
  • Non-decoratable products
  • Blank products

; or even limit to the product type. i.e.:

  • All products
  • Apparel only, or
  • Apparel and Mugs

You can select any combination of products types.

Finally the “Availability” tab allows you to limit the use of this coupon to certain stores. By default customers on all stores (including your affiliate stores) can use the coupon code. Select which group of stores or which stores in particular you allow to use the coupon code. Alternatively leave the coupon code to be available for all your stores.

Once you’ve finished click Create.

Now that you’ve created your promotional code don’t forget to put it to use! Some suggestions are:

  • Create a banner on your home page promoting the coupon.
  • Email your registered website customers using the Manage Store > Marketing > Send Marketing Email tool.
  • Email your “offline” (non-web) customers. In fact, you can create a special coupon for your “offline customers” to encourage them to become an “online” customer. This will reduce your cost of manually handling your offline customers orders and give them a nice incentive to start using your site.
  • Twitter it!
  • Facebook it!
  • Foursquare it!
  • LinkedIn it!
  • MySpace it! (if you still have one… does anyone any more???)
  • Tell your sales team

Have fun and enjoy getting more sales!