Accessibility for AllAuthor: Melissa - Posted on June 30th, 2009
There are literally hundreds of things to think about when launching or overhauling an eCommerce site. You’ll be faced with such decisions as which hosting provider is right for you, what graphical elements will best showcase your products or services, and how to handle inventory control and fulfillment. One vital element that often gets lost in the shuffle is site accessibility.
Many site owners stick web accessibility on a back burner for future consideration—and we all know what that usually means. While it may seem like a secondary concern, the opposite is true. Customers can be won or lost depending on how hard your site works to help people with visual disabilities, learning challenges, and speech disorders, as well as the elderly and infirm, to navigate and use your site.
For special-needs customers, such as those with a visual or hearing impairment, offering your web content in audio, video, and text formats allows them to digest the same information in the format that’s easiest for them.
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Posted in eCommerce Usability |
At Blue Acorn, we’re always looking at ways to be innovative in capturing online sales, and design plays a big role in those efforts. As we continue to grow, we’re looking for a senior web designer to join our team that strives for greatness. A talented, seasoned individual that can create compelling user experiences for our clients, and be an integral role in our pursuit of eCommerce sites that drive revenue. This full time position will require a talented individual to work on cutting edge designs for a variety of clients. The ideal candidate will be able to take creative briefs and requirements, and deliver CSS/XHTML designs to be used in PHP based theming/templating. Design capabilities should be up to the level of sites featured on popular review sites such as CSSdrive.com, CSSbeauty.com, UnmatchedStyle.com, etc.
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Posted in Administrative |
eCommerce FreedomAuthor: Kevin - Posted on June 24th, 2009
Last week while attending the Internet Retailer Conference in Boston, I had the pleasure of meeting a variety of eCommerce vendors in the exhibition hall. Many of them with innovative (and some not so innovative) software, solutions, or services targeted towards online retailers and solving their needs, pain points, and goals. In discussions with a few eCommerce software vendors, I noticed a trend that seemed to pique my interest and raise concern. This is the trend of eCommerce solutions as a service. Vendors that provide the solution, the hosting, and the services on the platform, all from one place. At first glance, this seems like a great solution for merchants - get everything you need all in one place, right?
Well, my concern with this practice stems from a few points:
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Posted in eCommerce Business Issues |
Impulse purchases are one of the more unpredictable and uncontrollable facet of online sales. Encouraging new or current customers to fork over their hard-earned cash for something that wasn’t on their shopping list takes more than just a great product or service – it takes an attention-getting sales pitch and a unique spin on the item that makes it seem absolutely essential, something they need to have in their homes and their lives RIGHT NOW.
Motivating impulse purchases takes finesse. Read on for some tips on how to encourage your customers to indulge, even when it goes against their budget and even, in some cases, their better judgment.
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Posted in Conversion Optimization |
If there were a 10-step program for breaking a Facebook addiction, I’d be an ideal candidate. As a confessed social networking junkie, I do take some comfort in knowing I’m far from alone. With more than 175 million active members and the numbers mushrooming year after year, Facebook has catapulted itself into the #1 spot among today’s top networking sites, even bypassing the monolith MySpace.
For many, Facebook is a forum to connect with long-lost friends, post vacation pictures, and kill time playing mindless online games. But for owners of eCommerce stores, it represents a priceless opportunity to increase visibility, build branding, and boost revenue. Best of all, establishing a presence on Facebook won’t cost you a dime.
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Posted in Online Marketing |
When it seems like all of the marketing ploys have already been played, it can be tough to come up with a new trick that will attract new customers and bring old ones back for seconds. Today’s wary consumers are watching their wallets closely – but that doesn’t mean you can’t succeed in turning browsers into buyers. It may take an innovative approach to send them from product to cart to confirmation, but you can do it – and your existing customers can help.
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Posted in Online Marketing |
One of the most appealing benefits of selling online is unlimited reach. While a brick-and-mortar running shoe store is likely to draw consumers from a 20- or 30-mile radius, an online seller can gain instant exposure to athletes across the world. Whether your target e-market is two miles down the road or three continents away, anyone with an Internet connection can browse and buy your products.
But before you grab your passport and head into the world of cross-continental selling, take the time to do a little homework. Jumping on the international bandwagon entails more than just adding a currency conversion tool to your site. Below are some tips for enhancing your eCommerce store’s global shopping experience and increasing the chances of converting buyers from around the world.
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Posted in eCommerce Business Issues |
In the Twitterverse last week, the fine folks at MarketingProfs talked about “confusability,” which they defined as “the direct opposite of usability in terms of web site or application design. This is achieved either intentionally or unintentionally.”
Around the same time, Blue Acorn CEO & President Kevin Eichelberger tweeted that he didn’t like Kmart’s new website. I checked out the site - talk about confusability! It looks as if someone vomited random text and pictures on the page, with no thought whatsoever about placement. The navigation wasn’t much better. Your eyes don’t know where to focus because there’s so much to focus on - and I’m just talking above the fold. Scroll down, and you’ll find even more confusability.
Now, this post isn’t going to be a case study on Kmart. Instead, I’d like to offer some strategies for avoiding confusability–many of which will seem like common sense, yet they obviously bear repeating, given the state of Kmart’s site.
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Posted in eCommerce Usability |
There’s a type of advertising that you might not know much about, but it’s one that can work well with a wide variety of products and services that are sold online. It’s called an advertorial.
What is an advertorial?
The word itself–advertorial–is a portmanteau, combining the words “advertisement” and “editorial.” It’s essentially an ad dressed to look like an editorial or news article. All advertorials have a disclaimer–usually located right above it–saying that it’s a paid advertisement.
Why are advertorials effective?
Despite the disclaimer, they’re incredibly effective because of the layout and content. In terms of design, they look just like the other articles in the publication. In terms of content, they’re written with a journalistic style using quotes, facts, and statistics. This combination proves persuasive since someone casually reading the publication might assume it’s another news article.
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Posted in Online Marketing |
On a current client project that we are building on Magento Commerce - the client brought up a great question - should we provide shipping and tax calculators on the shopping cart page - or on the checkout page? By default, Magento Commerce has widgets that do both on the cart page itself, but to answer this question, we wanted to do a little research.
Magento Commerce Shopping Cart Page with Shipping and Tax Calculators
We actually posed this question on our twitter account and just as we expected, most of the respondants indicated that they felt it was better on the shopping cart page itself. And traditional logic would lead us to believe that this is the case, we’ve been told for years that “surprise costs” late in the checkout process can lead to higher rates of shopping cart abandonment. The theory was, provide as much cost information to the customer as early in the process as possible to provide transparency of final costs. So many of us have been practicing this technique for years.
But, we wanted to see how some of the top converting online retailers handle this very question. And I’ll preface this study by clarifying that just because something works for them, doesn’t necessarily mean it will produce the best results for you. Every market, every site, and every product is unique, so by no means are we necessarily advocating any particular method simply because the best converting sites do it.
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Posted in Conversion Optimization |
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