Business Learning Center

E-commerce websites offer a tremendous opportunity for both new businesses and established “Brick and Mortar” businesses.

Utilizing the web gives your business a power and scope that no retail outlets can match.

Many companies, though, fail miserably when trying to turn their traditional businesses into e-businesses. What works in the traditional business world does not always work online.

In years of building ecommerce web sites for our clients, we have learned what works and what doesn’t. While many factors go into the success or failure of an ecommerce site, we have distilled the process to four key elements:

• Clear and Straightforward Messaging
• Strategically targeted Landing Pages
• Personalized/Engaging Features
• Using Credibility to Build Trust

Clear and Straightforward Messaging

When it comes to messaging, we suggest the K.I.S.S. philosophy: Keep It Simple, stupid!

Your business serves a need. Your business message should clearly state how your business meets that need.

Google, for example, is a huge company with a simple message: organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible.

Marketing veterans all agree: not everyone must like you, but no one should misunderstand you. Customers don’t buy products that they don’t understand. Clear messaging is critical.

3D Laser Gifts, a recently-launched BlueFountainMedia website, has clear messaging front-and-center describing the product:

“Customized laser gifts for any occasion.” There are no surprises here: the customer knows exactly what they are getting.

Strategically targeted Landing Pages

Web users have become increasingly sophisticated over the years. Using tools like Google, they know what they are looking for and how to find it.

Using “keyword” searches, users attempt to locate the exact goods and services they want.

To capture their business, it is important that when people use keywords pertinent to your business, they find you.

Google provides terrific tools for businesses. Google’s Free Keyword Tool helps you identify the best keywords related to your business.

To use this, simply enter what you believe to be the critical keywords for your website. Google takes these keywords, then instantaneously generates a large list of related keywords. These keywords also indicate the amount of traffic each keyword generates and the lowest advertiser competition.

Armed with this information, you can then create SEO landinng pages for your ecommerce site that are optimized to capture the highest possible traffic with the lowest possible competition from fellow advertisers.

RAG New York, a Blue Fountain Media client, created a landing page devoted towards “T-Shirts” with just these products.

Personalized/Engaging Features

Among the advantages e-commerce web sites have over brick and mortar stores is the ability to precisely track user behavior. As you follow each user’s use of the website (what pages are visited, what products are purchased, etc.), you can then customize and personalize the user experience for each and every visitor to the site.

Personalization features that we’ve built for clients include:

• The ability to recommend specific products to users based on their browsing history.
• The ability to recommend specific products to users based on their past transactions.
• The ability to enable users to track wishlist items.
• The ability to enable users to personalize their homepage with products or categories of interest.

Amazon.com was a pioneer in personalizing the user experience and continues to be well ahead of the curve.

Take a look at their “Your Recent History” feature:

By directing a visitor back to a product they had recently viewed, Amazon greatly increases the possibility of closing the sale on a second review.

Using Credibility to Build Trust

Users value their financial data and don’t want to just share it with any new website. If you are a reputable brand, then you already have some built-in credibility with customers online.

However, if you are a new or small business, it’s important to proactively earn that trust with your users. It is your task to make your users comfortable purchasing from you online.

The Verisign symbol is largely considered the most effective, traditional symbol for engendering trust with purchasing on your site. Verisign (an SSL certificate) is a guarantee that any transaction will be safe and all credit card information and other personal information submitted will be secure.

It is a very worthwhile investment.

Sophisticated users are now also looking for HTTPS in any website where they conduct transactions. HTTPS is a more secure version of HTTP. All sessions through HTTPS are encrypted with a digital certificate, significantly increasing the security of data passed through the website.

There are a number of other trust symbols that build confidence with users.

Bradleys’ Military Surplus, a recently-launched e-commerce site redesigned by Blue Fountain Media, understands the importance of these trust symbols for their online customers. The company sells a wide range of military supplies to soldiers and proudly displays these trust symbols on all pages on their site:

Generating E-Commerce Success: 3 More Important Points to Keep in Mind:

1. Target a Niche: Unless you are an extremely well established brand, selling products in multiple categories, it is best to focus your e-commerce website on a narrow and specific niche. Odds are, you have no shot at competing with an Amazon or a Walmart. If you can succeed in one narrow area- gain the trust of your customer base- then you can begin to expand your offerings.
2. Design Matters: Many new websites appear bland and uninspired. Often, they are based on template designs that copy other websites. A unique, differentiating design that evokes your brand can create an immediate and lasting connection with visitors.
3. Stickiness Factors: You must give your visitors reason to come back again and again. Above and beyond your product offerings, you must provide your visitors with compelling content. Blog about your products and company; provide reviews of your products; get testimonials from satisfied customers. The fresher your content, the more likely you will attract visitors and keep them coming back for more.

Ecommerce and Online Marketing

Even if you’ve done everything right (see above!), it doesn’t mean that you will be successful at driving traffic to your website. Visitors aren’t just going to find you.

All sites, especially newly launched sites, need to market themselves.

There are many ways to market an online site. Search-engine-optimization is the most cost-effective strategy that has the most enduring effect. It takes some time to implement but it’s worth the wait.

Search engine marketing (Pay Per Click) is another short-cut to traffic. It may require a significant investment, but it is one of the most effective ways of driving traffic to your website.

In addition, viral marketing can be a low cost way of generating traffic. Enable users to share products, recommend products, tell friends and share content on the major social-media sites. These features provide your site with the ability for viral distribution.

At Blue Fountain Media, we have extensive experience in building, launching and marketing e-commerce websites. If you have any questions, or would like to discuss your e-commerce project, please give us a call at 212.260.1978.