In today’s tough economy, no business is immune to the nationwide belt-tightening efforts. Penny-pinching consumers are spending less and saving more, resulting in sagging sales for eCommerce stores, especially those that peddle non-essential goods and services.

Until things improve on the financial horizon, online sellers may need to shift their marketing focus. While it may not be the ideal time to attract new prospects, you can help to recoup revenue losses by working at boosting the average size of the orders that are still coming in. This retention strategy leverages the loyalty of your existing customers to pad their shopping carts—and your bottom line.

Boosting average order size is easier than you might think. Below are some simple strategies you can start using today: Read the rest of Tips for Boosting Average Order Size

Tale of the Law School Professor

I used to teach a writing course to first-semester law students. I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. But this brilliant little law school where I worked decided it wanted “real” writers to teach its student how not to write like stereotypical lawyers.

As a professional copywriter and creative writer, I had a blast. I championed the use of contractions, conversational tones, and first person viewpoints. Of course, the problem is that the legal profession has certain standards and expectations. The rules of formal writing prevail when it comes to writing legal briefs and contracts. You can’t use contractions in your wills or contracts, and no one cares about “me” or “you” in legal briefs–you need to write them in third person. Still, I think students got the point we were trying to make: don’t make your writing overly complicated. Read the rest of Professional Does Not Mean Longwinded Gobbledygook!

It may not be the prettiest page of your website, but it’s an essential one. Considered the directory of your online store, a text-based site map provides both users and search engines with a structured list of all of the sub-pages contained within the main domain of your site, along with links to each page.

Benefits of a site map

There’s a reason more than 63% of eCommerce websites include a site map. Read the rest of Why You Need a Site Map

We recently had a client who said, “But the problem with testimonials is that you know they’re only going to say good things. How is that effective?”

It’s an interesting point. When we read customer testimonials, we’re expecting to hear the good–not the good, the bad, and the ugly. Still, testimonials work. Why? Read the rest of Why Testimonials Work

We’ve heard this saying so often that it’s almost become cliché: know your audience. But instead of letting the words bounce off our eardrums and evaporate into the ether, let’s stop and consider what they mean.

I bet if I asked, you could describe your ideal customer. You’d probably rattle off the person’s sex, age, income, etc. But does that mean you really know your customer? No.

Yes, you know certain characteristics about this customer, this audience member. And don’t get me wrong—these characteristics are important. But you need to dig deeper. What does it mean if more of your customers are women than men? What does it mean if most of your customers fall into the 18- to 34-year-old bracket? What does it mean if the average income is 48K a year? These things don’t mean anything unless you dig deeper into an audience member’s psyche. You need to get inside their heads if you’re going to fulfill their needs. Read the rest of Know Thy Audience Members

Fifteen years ago, I was one of a gaggle of teenagers whose pastime of choice was wandering up and down the corridors of the local shopping mall. The managers of the shops eyed us suspiciously, silently accusing us of loitering, shoplifting, or driving away the “real” patrons. They certainly didn’t try to sell us anything — it never occurred to them that we might actually become paying customers if we were made to feel welcome.

In today’s Internet age, the teenage shopper is no longer treated like a pariah, but rather embraced as a potential source of revenue. Gone are the days of begging for rides to the mall — today’s tech-savvy teens are booting up and browsing websites for the stuff they want and need, from clothing to Wiis to MP3s. And they’ve got money to spend, even if it’s not their own: most high-schoolers may not have credit cards in their name, but a surprisingly large number have access to their parents’ cards. Read the rest of Catering to the Teenage Market

As you know, staying in front of your customers is a key component to business success. It costs more marketing dollars to get new customers than it does to keep ones you already have, so you do the math. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go after new customers. What it does mean is that you need to put some thought into how you’re going to take care of the ones you already have. One way many e-commerce sites does this is through email marketing.

At first blush, email marketing sounds simple. I mean, what’s so hard about sending an email, right? But like everything else, just because it’s easy to do, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do right. Effective email marketing takes thought. Read the rest of Getting the “Right” Word Out: Email Marketing Know-How

In today’s “me-centric” marketplace, consumers are demanding customization on virtually everything, from bath towels to welcome mats to barware. Today, hundreds of thousands of U.S. businesses are offering some level of personalization on the products they’re selling, with annual sales well into the billions. And it looks like the trend isn’t fading anytime soon — each year, demand swells even higher for all things monogrammed, with a sharp peak during the holiday season.

So, what’s the appeal? In a word, ego. By adding their name, monogram, or personal message to an item, the buyer ensures that the end product will be truly unique, something the Joneses next door will never have. Personalized items are also popular choices for gifts, demonstrating the extra touch of thought and foresight to make them memorable. In the face of a hot trend, more parents are demanding customization for children’s décor items and toys to add a personal touch to nurseries and playrooms.

The industry has come a long way since the days of the pre-made, inexpensive personalized gifts that became popular in the 1950s. Back then, the options were limited to a few common names, and if you had an unusual moniker, you were out of luck. Today, the cutting-edge technology provided by online customization tools has revolutionized the art of personalization and extended it into the luxury marketplace. Read the rest of Make it Personal: Tips for Effective Customization

In the world of book publishing, a title can make or break a book. Think about it. When you visit a bookstore, what gets you to pick up a particular book? No doubt the cover art and the title.

Page titles are important to websites as well, as you already know. But what do you know about page title competition?

Understanding Page Title Competition
I recently took an SEO seminar with Jill Whalen of High Rankings. Jill is one of the premier SEOs in the business (and she’s a really nice person to boot). One of the best tips I learned from her seminar was this: focus on page title competition rather than web page competition. Since search engines, like Google, put such a heavy emphasis in their algorithms on page titles, it makes sense to see how well your keyword phrases compete with other existing page titles. Read more…

Don’t Describe–Sell!

I’ve never liked the name for the meta description tag, mainly because describing what’s on a web page isn’t necessarily going to get someone to click on the link on the search engine results page (SERP).

Describing is Passive. Selling is Active.

The act of describing is a passive process. It doesn’t involve thinking; it involves observation and parroting back what you see. If you’re selling a house, you may start by describing what it looks like: the style, the square feet, the color, etc. Basically, you’re identifying the features, and as we talked about in this blog post, features alone don’t sell. Benefits do. The same is true for the meta description tag–simply describing what’s on the page is not going to compel someone to click on the URL. You need to write a clear, crisp, and compelling piece of marketing copy that focuses on (or at lease alludes to) a benefit–in about 20 to 25 words. Not an easy task.

And yes, not all search engines use the meta description tag (Google sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t). But it’s worth putting the effort into each description. Read more…