Posts Tagged ‘e-commerce’

Welcome To Cyber Monday

Monday, November 28th, 2011

Today is the biggest online shopping day of the year. Or is it?

According to Mark W. Smith of Detroit Free Press, it’s all a sham. You’ve been had. Just as Hallmark created days for greeting card sales, the candy makers created days to make more candy sales, and the Easter Bunny is in cahoots with Santa Claus and the credit card companies to keep you busy twice a year. We all love a good conspiracy theory.

Who knows? Maybe it’s true. Maybe today isn’t the biggest shopping day of the year. Or maybe if it is it’s because the e-tailers have convinced you to pull out your credit card on this day.

Even if it is true, I still believe this will be a record-breaking year. Today will likely pass all records for single-day sales online. And this Christmas season is poised to become the highest sales season online in history. Not because online retailers have conspired against you, but because consumers have become more comfortable buying online. OK, and partly because online retailers want your money.

If you have to establish an Internet presence, or if you have and Internet presence but haven’t taken advantage of your online promotional opportunities, don’t you think it’s time to get your piece of the online shopping pie?

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Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | No Comments »

When Black Friday Comes

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

This weekend is the weekend that every Internet marketer and every offline marketer will be looking at to determine the state of the economy overall and the state of their business. We all know that Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is the biggest shopping day of the year – off line. The following Monday is the biggest shopping day online. Are you ready?

It’s called Cyber Monday, the Monday following Black Friday. And until 2008, it was the biggest shopping day online. comScore says that day has been moved to either Green Monday (the second Monday in December) or the Tuesday after. Why is that?

Here’s my theory. People would rather still shop off line. On Black Friday they go to the mall. They visit their favorite local merchants to see what they can find for Christmas gifts. If they don’t find what they want, they shop online.

Enter Cyber Monday. Big shopping day. But it’s still not the end of Christmas shopping. If consumers think they can still get a better deal on something locally, offline, then they’ll hold off on their online purchase. Until the last minute.

So they continue to shop locally off line until around December 15, the last day they can expect to order something online and receive it by Christmas. In 2008, Green Monday was December 15. It was the biggest online shopping day of that year. The next year the biggest shopping day was also December 15, but then it fell on the third Tuesday of the month – the first Tuesday after the second Monday. So what will happen this year?

Last year was the biggest online shopping day in history. The biggest day turned out to be Cyber Monday with more than $1 billion in online sales. The second biggest day was Green Monday, the second Tuesday in December, and that day was December 13. Sales on that day exceeded sales the previous Green Monday by $100 million.

If these trends are any indication, this could be another record year, but which day will be the biggest shopping day of the season? Will it be Cyber Monday, Green Monday, or the first Tuesday after Green Monday?

I think it’s anyone’s guess which day this year will be the biggest online shopping day, but one thing is for sure. Online merchants should be prepared for the best.

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Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »

Shopping Cart: The Most Important E-commerce Tool

Sunday, January 9th, 2011

If I were to ask you the most important e-commerce tool in your arsenal of online tools, what would you say? Would you say e-mail? PPC? SEO? Your website, or maybe social media? Actually, it’s none of those.

I’m talking to business owners who have an online store. Your shopping cart is the most important e-commerce tool you have because if you make checking out a frustrating process, many of your customers won’t come back. And a sizable number of them will not even finish the transaction before they amscray.

That’s why you should take special care to ensure that you have a positive e-commerce experience for every customer from beginning to the very end.

But how do you do that? Here are a few tips.

  1. Don’t make your customers become a member of your website before they’re allowed to shop. Trust me, they’ll never shop.
  2. Make the checkout process as simple as possible.
  3. Take credit cards.
  4. Offer every customer a chance to join your e-mail list and send them a note every time you have a sale or a discount.
  5. Upsale. Offer similar items with every purchase.
  6. If you have any doubts about how to set up an e-commerce store, spend a lot of time on Amazon.com. They have it down.

E-commerce is more than just selling stuff. It’s providing a positive experience to every user who interacts with your website.

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Posted in Tools for Small Business | 2 Comments »

Facebook Looks To Be A Big Plus For E-Commerce

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

If you’ve had the slightest doubt that Facebook had any e-commerce value until now, then perhaps you should read this report from WebProNews. There are some companies who are making Facebook work for them. Just check this out:

Kembrel, a private store for students that can be accessed entirely through Facebook, all the way through the checkout process, saw 20% of its overall transactions come through its Facebook store from Black Friday through Cyber Monday. Transactions from their Facebook store are 7-10% bigger when compared to their site, according to Facebook. 55% of new, registered shopers are being acquired through Facebook.

That’s pretty impressive. The four-day weekend beginning with Black Friday and ending with Cyber Monday, traditionally the biggest shopping day for online shoppers throughout the year, culminated in a 20% increase of business. But even more impressive is that transactions from Kembrel’s Facebook store were 7-10% bigger than transactions on their own store. And over half of new shoppers are coming from Facebook. Wow!

That’s just one store. I’d love to see the overall statistics for all Facebook stores. You can bet it’s just as impressive.

But what this tells me is that Facebook has arrived with a powerful new e-commerce model. In the future, businesses will need two stores: Their e-commerce hub, which is their own website and shopping cart, and their Facebook satellite store. If you’re not thinking this way now you will be two years from now.

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Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »

Where Should You Place Your Shopping Site?

Monday, July 5th, 2010

While we were all sleeping, Google became the No. 1 shopping site online. And TheFind became No. 2. Both sites had to pass Yahoo! to gain there positions. What gives?

Yahoo! has been falling steadily for years. Google overtook Yahoo! as the No. 1 trafficked website earlier this year. Before that it was Facebook. All that Yahoo! really had going for it was that it could say it was still the biggest online shopping site. But no more.

So does this mean that e-commerce vendors, online marketers and e-tailers should give up on Yahoo! and just focus on Google? No, that would be an unwise choice. Yahoo! is still at No. 3, not off the radar yet.

Besides, traffic is traffic and it doesn’t matter the source. If you get any traffic from Yahoo! then it’s good. But I’d say the site to look for right now is TheFind. If you are an online retailer, marketer or e-commerce vendor then you should diversify your marketing channels. Don’t cut Yahoo! out. Cut all the others in.

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Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | No Comments »

Are You Ready For M-Commerce?

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

With mobile phones thriving, the popularity of iPhone and smartphones, and services like PayPal, you’d think people in the U.S. would be ready for mobile commerce. Not quite. According to Marketing Pilgrim, we’re still lagging behind many countries in the area of mobile e-commerce.

Jordan McCollum points out that there are companies working on providing a secure mobile commerce solution and one of them is Facebook. And she also points out that other companies like Visa, Master Card, and Nokia are moving in that direction as well. But, sadly, there is no mention of PayPal in her article at all. Why not?

You’d think that the leader in Internet pay services would be on the forefront of this emerging technology, but it appears that PayPal isn’t even on the radar screen. And neither are their primary competitors.

It does cause one to wonder just who will emerge the main conduit of mobile commerce – once that is as acceptable as purchasing over the Internet. Even still, there are privacy and security concerns still lingering over e-commerce as a whole. Why should we expect those concerns to falter with M-commerce?

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Posted in Mobile Marketing for Small Business | 4 Comments »