In a recent blog we talked about how you can encourage users to leave product reviews. Quite often though, when you first enable product reviews in your online store, customers see there are none and can be reluctant to contribute. So how do you get the ball rolling wiith product reviews on your site?

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Last week we talked about using your product descriptions as a selling tool. One thing that is often overlooked though is the role that the snippets presented in the search results have in getting customers to your site. If the text that you use for your descriptions doesn’t grab the customers’ attention, they will immediately move to the next result and they might never get to see what you have to offer on your site.

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Saturday afternoon and a little off topic. In this industry we not only meet a lot of business people who are developing new online businesses or have existing businesses that need to move online, but we obviously take a very keen interest in what’s happening with offline businesses.

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In my last blog we looked at the increasing Google focus on website usability in their algorithm. In this blog we’ll start to look at some of the principles of good usability design, and as it is such an involved subject we’ll split the blog over a few posts.

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On the surface, the question “Did you build your website for your users?” sounds pretty stupid, but in reality a great many websites are built with search engine optimisation in mind rather than the user experience.

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That’s a question I often ask an ecommerce store owner, and surprisingly frequently, it’s clear that the site hasn’t been thought about in those terms.

It’s very easy to get caught up in the jargon of online commerce; conversion rates, cart abandonment, fulfillment systems etc etc, and of course these things are all important. The problem with focusing on the technology though is that we tend to forget the psychology of buying and selling.

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Many businesses developing their first ecommerce website seriously underestimate the amount of time required to properly develop the site. In actual fact, the technical side of things is quite straightforward, and it’s the creation of high quality images and writing of good product descriptions that really takes the time.

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Almost always when we’re talking to business owners about a new website development, we ask what work has been done on branding their business, as it is extremely important to understand what messages the website style and design need to project. However, this is usually interpreted as whether the business has a logo and graphic identifier for the business.

Brand and branding are different and understanding what brand is will help with the activities that are part of branding. I found an excellent description of brand and branding by EC (Lisa) Stewart on the website “Indie Creative”.

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In my previous blog I mentioned some research that showed that negative product reviews were beneficial as they added credibility and balance in the eyes of your customers.

Looking around a variety of websites though, you see many sites that have reviews enabled but few, if any, reviews. So the question is, how to you encourage customers or even site visitors to review a product?

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Product reviews, whether on an ecommerce site or in social media, are proving to be an effective online sales tool. Peer reviews seem to have far greater credibility than normal reviews such as those found in industry magazines, manufacturers websites etc.

However, while many ecommerce store owners are afraid of enabling comments on blogs or enabling customer product reviews for fear of negative comments,

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Online retailers have a unique window of opportunity thanks largely to traditional retailers taking their eye off the ball. I shopped across many different types of stores over Xmas and my experience in most of them carried a common thread: lackluster customer service coupled with poor product knowledge.

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It never fails to amaze me how often online stores use poor quality photographs for their products. When you buy online, unless it’s a well known product, instead of your customers being able to pick up or inspect the actual product closely, you are relying on the photographs and descriptions that you write to actually make the sale. So it doesn’t make any sense to use poor photographs and descriptive text that doesn’t describe the product fully for a prospective customer and include product benefits.

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Am I the only retail shopper who's grown tired of retailers asking me to 'Like' or 'Follow' them without reason, reward or incentive? Are you an online retailer who's social marketing "request" is ignored on the basis that "everyone else is doing it too"? Your customers and passers-by need a reason to stop what they're doing, log in to their account to 'Like' or 'Follow' you.

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I approached Twitter with a degree of cynicism and a heavy dose of "fear of the unknown". It took me months until I started to enjoy my "Twitter time", but I had little idea of the fun of engagement that lie ahead - and I quickly learned that getting established on Twitter wasn't as painful as some people say. It was a whole lot of fun so long as I followed a simple, well-trodden path...

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Website Content Management Systems are a godsend. But is there a downside, an ugly face to content management that sends web designers scurrying under their desks and website customers reaching for the 'Back' button?

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