Happy Monday! To start your week off right, I am extremely pleased to bring you our Feature Interview with the co-author of Web Design for ROI, Lance Loveday.

Many thanks to Lance for taking the time to do this for our Shopify community. I provided him with several questions, and in addition he answered almost all of the submitted questions – the couple that weren’t answered were Shopify specific, and you can look for an answer from our team shortly.

Read on for the virtual interview. At the end, find out the recipients of the two books we gave away for submitting questions, and learn about how to get in on another set of free books if you didn’t win the first time around. Enjoy!

---

What inspired you to write the book?

We were struck by how many of the sites we worked with suffered from the same design and usability problems. But that was really a symptom of the way people think about and manage their sites. So in addition to providing some concrete design guidelines, we wanted to try to change the way people think about web design. Personally, I wanted more people to see the money they’re leaving on the table by not designing their sites well.

How the Book Was Born

I had just finished a presentation on Designing for Conversion at Web Design World in Seattle in July 2006 and was answering some audience questions in front of the stage afterward when a kind but serious-looking gentleman handed me his card and said “I really enjoyed your presentation. How’d you like to write a book about it?” A quick glance at his card identified him as Michael Nolan, Sr. Acquisitions Editor at Peachpit Press/New Riders. After a stunned silence while my mind fixated on the long-held perception that ‘I don’t write so good’, I smiled crookedly at him and said with all the gravitas and certainty I could muster “Ummmmm… Sure?” After that inauspicious start I managed to write a book proposal, get it approved by the editorial team at New Riders, and built out a schedule and outline. I was on my way. Then it hit me: “Writing a book is hard. There’s no way I’m going to be able to write a book while managing a business, keeping clients satisfied enough to continue paying me, and being a decent husband and father to my 2-year old son. And I’m certainly not going to get it done on my own before my twin-pregnant wife delivers seven months from now.” Fortunately, the obvious solution to my problem was sitting in the next office.

I’ve been fortunate to have Sandra Niehaus, our VP User Experience and Creative Director here at Closed Loop Marketing, as a friend and colleague for the last three years. In that time, she’s bailed me out of more jams than I can count. And when I proposed the idea of coauthoring this book together, she did it yet again. In retrospect, I can’t imagine trying to write a book like this without Sandra. She brings a designer’s eye and real-world Web design and programming experience that is crucial to conveying so many of the concepts in this book. She also art-directed the whole thing, no small thing for a graphic-rich book about design. In a nutshell, anything good in this book was probably Sandra’s idea. I take full responsibility for everything else.

You have a great approach in the book – you talk about what you’ve seen; you say what will help people with these issues; then you say “stop reading and try this!” and give examples to really bring it home to the reader. Where did this approach come from and what’s the feedback been on it?

I wish I could say our approach was the result of a grand vision we had from the start. But the reality is that we iterated on it for months. We wanted the book to reflect the design philosophy we advocate, so it seemed appropriate to have a strong call to action component. In trying to come up with a name for that section, one of us said “The effect we’re going for this is to have people stop reading and try whatever it is we’re recommending.” So that’s how we came up with that heading. Incidentally, the hardest part of writing the book was figuring out how to structure the content – just like designing a good site.

What were some of the biggest website design “fails” that you’ve seen in your career? (naming no names, of course)

My favorite one is when we were reviewing a client’s shopping cart and got to step 3 of their 4-step checkout process only to find no way to get to step 4. They’d inadvertently commented out the ‘Continue’ button a few days earlier, so it was impossible for someone to actually buy anything on the site. And they wondered why sales were down…

You’ve had a very diverse background before you got to the web space. How do you think that influences the way you look at web design?

I’m not a designer or a programmer, so I don’t see the same things that most Web professionals see when I look at a site; I only experience the interface itself. In that way I think I’m more representative of most Web users. But my background in economics compels me to think through the implications that the user experience has on the web metrics and the business metrics of the organization behind the site I’m reviewing. So I sort of reverse engineer the business model of every site I see and think of ways to tweak the site to help them improve their metrics.

What’s next on the horizon for you?

I’m most focused now on growing my company. We do a lot of Search Engine Marketing and Conversion Optimization work, which is a lot of fun and fulfills our goal of helping organizations get more business benefit out of their sites. On the publishing front, we’re starting to play with video. My sense is that some well-produced multimedia videos would do an even better job at conveying the principles we recommend than 2-D static book format. I’m also speaking at various conferences, which I really enjoy.

Have you seen any Shopify stores that exemplify good design?

I just bought a T-shirt from the Tesla Motors site because I can’t afford one of their cars just yet. There was one unique element of the checkout process that really stood out as a best practice. When I was entering in my payment information there, a nice green check image that said something like “OK” dynamically appeared when I entered the last digit of my credit card number. I thought that was a brilliant way to minimize the risk of typos and reassure people that they at least had entered the right number of characters into that field. I hadn’t seen that before, but it was a really nice touch that I think reinforces credibility at a critical point in the checkout process.

And now, good readers: Here are Lance’s answers to the Blog Submitted Questions:

Melany Gallant : Is it better to have a PPC ad link to a landing page or a product page? Or does it really matter? I hate to sound like a consultant, but it depends. I’ve seen situations where product pages worked best, cases where custom landing pages worked best and instances when there’s been only a negligible difference between the two. There are too many variables involved for there to be a hard and fast answer that applies to everyone. But it absolutely matters, because the potential gain in conversion and revenue can be substantial. The only way to know is to test. Fortunately, the PPC engines make it extremely easy to test. Just run two identical ads in the same Ad Group, link each of them to different landing pages you want to test and see which page converts better. Note that you may need to change your Campaign settings to have each ad rotate equally. After you’ve run your test for a while, you can use this tool to make sure you’ve captured enough data to achieve statistical significance.

Regardless of where you’re sending your traffic, there are almost always some things you can do to increase your conversion rates.

Jonathan Briggs: Do you think the choice of payment partner (PayPal, Protx, Google Checkout etc) affects users willingness to purchase? Assuming you have a reliable provider, I don’t think it makes much difference who your payment partner is, so long as the checkout functionality a) works, and b) works the way people expect. The problem I see with some sites is that they play up their payment partner too much, assuming that doing so buys them some credibility. But I think that does more harm than good in most cases, as it risks of introducing doubts for users they wouldn’t otherwise have. So a user’s inner monologue might go something like this: “This site seems otherwise professional and credible, but why do they feel the need to tell me who processes their payments? I’ve never really thought about that before. Should I care about it? And I don’t recognize the name of that processing company. Who’s the company behind this site again? Maybe I should shop somewhere else.” Payment processing is a utility function, like electricity. So I’d talk about it as much as I talk about my local utility with guests to my house (not at all). I’d argue that your customers shouldn’t even be aware of who your payment partner is, because most people just don’t care.

Marcelo Alvarez: Can you please talk about websites bounce rate and what to do to avoid this common problem? Could you give some tips on how to deal with this issue in Blogs? Great question. High bounce rates drive me crazy, because they’re usually easy to improve once you understand why they’re happening. But doing so involves putting yourself in the shoes of your customers. And most of us aren’t wired to be able to see things through other peoples’ eyes very easily. At a high level, a high bounce rate is usually indicative of a user making a snap decision upon landing at a new site that the site doesn’t have what they’re looking for. The problem is that people make these judgments almost instantly, based on visual cues and the presence or absence of trigger words (the words they expect to see that indicate “Aha! That’s what I’m looking for.”). So how do you reduce bounce rates? There are countless ways, but I’ll discuss two important ones. First, we recommend simplifying the design as much as possible. Too much busy-ness and visual noise easily overwhelms people and requires them to think, which is bad. See my favorite book on web usability: “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. It may seem counterintuitive, but fewer more obvious navigation options and use of white space can reassure people that this site is easy to use. So resist the temptation to cram as much as possible on to your pages and cut out the clutter. Second, think about creating a visual hierarchy and flow to your content that reflects the relative importance of each content element to the customer. This requires prioritizing your design and content elements so a user can quickly tell which information is most important without having to read everything on the page. Think about how the content is prioritized on the front page of a newspaper, with a few large headlines, more smaller headlines and subheads, and then story copy. Try to achieve that level of easy scannability with your web pages. Because like it or not, very few people actually read everything on your pages. And in many cases, they won’t even try unless you make it easy for them.

Chelsea Bell: What is considered to be a ‘good’ bounce rate for a hard-goods e-commerce site? That’s impossible to say (that too many variables thing again). Also different analytics systems report the number differently, so a 50% bounce rate on Google Analytics might be reflected as a 60% bounce rate on HitBox, for example. I try not to focus on a fixed goal for an acceptable bounce rate. My goal is always to improve from where we are using whatever analytics we have available. The absolute number is less important than having a benchmark against which to measure progress.

Ryan: What are your 5 top tips for designing a website to be more ROI friendly? What’s the 1 thing that everyone should take the time to do? Read Chapter 3 of my book…? :) I’ve provided a few tips above. The one thing everyone should do is sit down and write a web site strategy. That simple act of getting your goals, strategies, target audiences, tactics, key success metrics, etc. down on paper is extremely powerful. To make it super easy, we’ve created a web site strategy template for you to use, available here. There are also some sample chapters of the book on that site, if you want to get some more design tips.

Aydin Mirzaee: How Important is Google PageRank for shopping websites and what is the best strategy to up ones page rank? If you’re trying to attract organic search traffic, then getting your pages indexed by Google is definitely key, as is gaining link popularity (inbound links) to your site as a whole and to key pages in particular. But I don’t obsess about the PageRank score that the Google Toolbar provides, as Google has stated it is not accurate and the score it provides is based on data from roughly six months ago. Better to track your rankings for your most important keywords and keep an eye on your link popularity overall. There are some free tools at HYPERLINK “http://www.MarketLeap.com” www.MarketLeap.com that can help.

Bill Hall: What is the best way to turn people who need a website into clients? We know a lot of people need sites, but they are hesitant to have one built. I don’t have as much experience with that, as we only work with clients who have sites already. In fact, my company’s unofficial tagline is “We don’t make web sites, we make web sites better.” Which I think is a ripoff of an old BASF commercial… If you haven’t figured it out already, I’m a contrarian. So my natural tendency is to avoid selling to people generally. There is so much business to be had that I’d rather focus on tapping into the huge and growing demand that already exists for help moving online rather than try to persuade the recalcitrant few who need to be convinced of the obvious. On those occasions where I do have to convince people why they need to have an online presence, I demonstrate how their competitors are eating their lunch. For whatever reason, that ‘s a much bigger motivator than all the charts, industry data and general business case. And if I really believe they need to be online and there’s a decent revenue opportunity, I’m not afraid to work on a pay-for-performance/revenue share basis. A willingness to put some skin in the game to reduce the level of risk for a client can be pretty compelling as well. But that gets risky pretty fast, so we’re very selective about when we offer to work on a P4P basis.

Tom Scott: Now that we have services such as Shopify, which make delivering a simple e-shop to market so quick, how important is market research is in this context? The cost of trying and failing is certainly a lot lower than it’s ever been, which is good in that it encourages some risk-taking. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do your homework ahead of time. Know the market, the pricing, the competition, and so on. That research is pretty easy to do. You can do most, if not all, of it yourself for free. But beyond the basics, the biggest way to differentiate yourself online is via the user experience. And to deliver a truly compelling user experience requires you to understand your customers intimately. In my experience, the best way to do that is to conduct live usability testing, a form of research that doesn’t get nearly the attention it should. The simple act of watching someone use your site while thinking out loud can be profound. The insights you can gain from testing as few as five people can make the difference between a site that does well and a site that leads its category. If there’s one common factor between the sites we’ve worked on that have done the best online, it’s that they’ve all done some form of user testing.

John Rawsterne: We hear a lot about semantic XHTML, W3C standards, tableless designs etc. How important do you think these ideas? Will the underlying XHTML, CSS and Javascript affect conversions or is it just the visual appearance of the site that is important? As with the choice of payment processor, the technology behind a site is less important from a conversion standpoint than whether it works and how well it helps users achieve their goals. What bothers me is when I see the gratuitous use of an advanced technology when it isn’t really required and doesn’t contribute to the site owner or users’ goals. For example, a major technology client of ours implemented AJAX expand/hide controls on long blocks of text on a few pages of their site. When we asked why, they hemmed and hawed for a while before finally admitting they just wanted to use AJAX because it was Web 2.0 (I’m still not sure what that really means). But in doing so they broke a decades-old convention in human computer interaction (scrolling) and likely confused the heck out of most of their visitors. Lest you think I’m against using the latest technologies, here’s an excellent use of AJAX.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak with all of you. And thanks to Shannon and Shopify for bringing us together and making it all happen.

---

And thanks to you, Lance! What do you think, Shopify users? What’s striking you the most out of all of these responses? Is there anything you think deserves further attention? Leave a comment and start the conversation.

The recipients of the books we had available for submitting questions are Jonathan Briggs and Troy Davis. Congratulations!

Disappointed you didn’t get a book? Don’t worry. We have more books to give away! If you’re interested in receiving a free copy of the book compliments of Web Design for ROI, simply comment on this post. We’ll let the recipients know by the end of the week! Or if you must have the book in your hands immediately, then head on over to Web Design for ROI’s website.

There it is, in your pockets, jingle jangle… the April 16 edition of Spare Change!

A new report from Shop.org and Forrester Research called The State of Retailing Online 2008: Marketing Report says that Online Sales are still set to climb despite the struggling economy. “From higher shipping costs to changes in consumer shopping habits, online retailers are not immune to the current economic climate,” said Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org. “But the fact that online sales will increase substantially this year demonstrates the resilience of the channel and is a testament to the value and convenience most customers find when shopping online.” This summary touches on the two different kinds of shoppers that access the web; the most effective way to reach prospects, and the initiative that online retailers are most apt to use in 2008. The bad news: The full report costs $995. The good news: If you’re already a Forrester RoleView™ client you will be able to access the report as part of their subscription service starting on May 7, 2008.

Do you use e-mail marketing? Practical e-Commerce has some advice for you – make sure you ensure your list is up to date. It’s even a good idea to delete any addresses over a year old – find out why!

For the UK folk, there’s an interesting seminar coming up on e-commerce analytics: Pindar Graphics to host e-commerce analytics seminar. This seminar is designed to help online retailers understand the performance of e-commerce activities using Google Analytics, and will be held June 3 in London.

Just across the Irish Sea, the Irish Independent tells us that “online clothes shopping has become the cornerstone of the eCommerce revolution”. This article talks about the advantages – and disadvantages – of fashion shopping from the couch, and gives a few helpful hints to the consumer for making their online experience as satisfying as possible, including ways to help overcome the inability to try stuff on (know your measurements, since a 10 in one store is a 12 in the next!). It also has links to successful Irish stores, with tips on how they make the online shopping experience more attractive to female shoppers, such as net-a-porter.com: “I’ve often thought it would be wonderful if girls could flick through their favourite fashion magazine, instantly order whatever designer shoes or dress they fancy and have it arrive at their home beautifully wrapped. That’s exactly what this site does.”

Finally, don’t forget: We’ll be doing a feature interview with the author of Web Design for ROI and we want you to ask the questions. Submit them to us by Tuesday, April 22 and you could get a free copy of the book!

Great news, Shopify users!

Web Design For ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads is a fascinating new book written by Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus. The book is filled with useful, practical advice on how to design your website to really give you results. And we’re bringing one of the authors to you!

The co-author of the book Web Design for ROI, Lance Loveday, will be doing a virtual interview right here on pixelSoup – and you’re invited to submit your questions. Anyone who submits a question will be eligible to receive one of two copies of the book we’ll be giving away. So ask away! We’ll use the most thought-provoking questions in the interview, to be posted here next week.

In this book you’ll learn:

• Why so many organizations think about web design the wrong way
• How small design changes can have a big impact on your bottom line
• Simple tips to increase web sales/leads by 10% – 50% (or more)
• Concrete design guidelines for:
  o Landing pages
  o Home pages
  o Category pages
  o Detail pages
  o Forms
  o Checkout processes
  

Packed with helpful examples from a wide variety of sites.

Interested? You can read more about the book including a sample chapter, or read the blog and see other interviews the authors have given and more discussion about the book. You can also read more about Lance Loveday here. And of course, you can buy Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads too!

Are you interested? Do you have a question for Lance? Want to ask about web design, about results, about a specific issue you’re facing? Get creative and ask them all! Please post your questions by next Tuesday, April 22 if you want them considered for the interview. Submit your questions here in the comments or email me directly – shannon at jadedpixel dot com.

At the BlogHer Business conference last week in New York, I had the pleasure of live-blogging a session entitled “Improve This Pitch”. This session is aimed squarely between the eyes at traditional media and others who are reaching out to bloggers to ask them to talk about their products online. As we learned, there are several ways of doing this right – and several ways of doing it wrong. As it turns out, reaching out to bloggers involves a lot more than getting the top 10 lists from Technorati and firing off a press release. I’ve summarized the most important things to note for you here. Have you ever thought “if only I could get some bloggers to talk about my product and link back to my site!” ? Don’t start without reading these tips!

_{Cartoon by Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void}

Where do I start?

1. Blog. The best way to figure out how to interact with a blogger is to be a blogger. If you go through the process yourself of finding something you care enough to write about it every day, setting up the blog, writing the content, building the traffic, managing the comments, reading the other blogs and building the relationships with the other bloggers, then you will understand the perspective of the blogger and you will understand how you would like people to approach you about adding content to your own blog.

OK, ok, you’re an e-merchant, not a blogger. If you don’t have the time or verbal proclivity to blog, then:

2. Read the blogs that you want to target. This sounds simple, but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t take this crucial step. Be familiar with their subject matter, understand their viewpoint, take the time to find out who they are. Bloggers reveal a great deal of information about themselves on their blogs, whether it’s about themselves and their personal lives or about their professional preferences and interests. It’s obvious to the blogger when you approach them whether you’ve taken the time to learn about them or not, and if you have, your chances of building a relationship with them are hugely increased.

3. Don’t bother with sending a blogger a press release. Bloggers who get a lot of traffic receive these in their in-boxes every day. They’re usually generic, badly addressed (such as “Dear Blogname” instead of “Dear Blog Writer”), and there’s no link between the content of the press release and the blogger’s subject matter. Bloggers will ignore it at best, openly mock it at worst (especially if it’s completely missed the target, ie. sending something about kids’ products to a non-parent, or something about an event in San Francisco to a blogger in St. John’s, Newfoundland). As Liz Gumbinner from Cool Mom Picks said, “us bloggers are all smartasses”. Bloggers tend not to ignore a bad pitch; it’s more likely they’ll tell each other – and if you’re lucky, you – about it. Instead of sending the press release in an email blast, contact the blogger directly. Tell them what you do, why you think it would jive with their blog, and contact information for you if they have any questions. Yes, this approach will take more time, but you’re also far more likely to get uptake on your request.

4. Realize that a Blogger is not a traditional advertising medium. Magazines and newspapers and other traditional forms of media are formal ways to be a conduit of information to the consumer. Blogs are a different beast: They are both the conduit and the consumer. There’s a big difference, and it doesn’t always work out the same as taking out a traditional ad would. For example, if the blogger chooses to write about you, you are not in charge of controlling the message – provided “sample text” probably would be ignored, since the blogger is a writer, after all. Think about what it is you want to achieve: if you just want eyeballs on your link and you want the message strictly controlled, would you be better off simply buying ad-space on that blog?

5. Finally, Understand what it is that you’re asking the blogger to do. In many (most?) cases, bloggers aren’t being paid for blogging. They are writing out of passion, telling the world about something they love. If you ask them to write about your product to help drive traffic to your site, you’re asking them to put your product in their living room and highlight it – for free. In other words, you’re asking them for a favour. So what can you do for them to help even the score? Discount coupons? Free samples? Backlinks? Access to you or someone you’re connected to who can give the blogger an exclusive interview or open a door somewhere? See what you can do for the blogger, as much as you see what the blogger can do for you (with apologies to JFK!)

If you’re interested in reading more about this or just finding out more about the smart ladies who said all this stuff, you can visit the blogs of the panelists – Susan Getgood, Maria Niles Mir Kamin and Liz Gumbinner.

Welcome to the latest version of Spare Change, the rebranded “e-commerce roundup”. As usual, here’s where I bring you all the latest interesting e-commerce news on the vast Web.

Tech News World has posted an article on E-Marketing: Cashing In on MeCommerce. They see “a mashup between e-commerce and social networks as the Holy Grail for members, advertisers and social networks.

“The demographics of the social networks are changing; the relationships between the members are changing; and thus, the applications from the developer communities on social networks are changing. New breeds of social networking widgets are giving social network members the opportunity to instantly participate in e-commerce without the headaches of back-end fulfillment such as payment processing, fulfillment and customer service. People naturally seek out products and make buying decisions based on recommendations from their friends, not necessarily from third-party banner ads and advertising placements. The ability to create a fully e-commerce-enabled site for total transaction management, all without any involvement from the user’s perspective, is a new way to conduct e-commerce. It’s more like MeCommerce, from me to you, with a plethora of vendors’ products to recommend on your social networking profile.” Read the rest at Tech News World.

Credit Crunch is a Boost for e-commerce, according to Simon Crisp, director of Shopsafe.co.uk, who notes that consumers are “increasingly searching for bargains online in a climate of restrictive lending conditions.” Consumers are “looking to squeeze every penny out of their budget”, and e-commerce vendors are responding with discount codes and vouchers “that cut prices by ten or 15 per cent, he explains, noting the importance of such strategies as funding conditions grow increasingly stringent.”

HeroTurko.net has come up with a list of 20 of the best ecommerce websites. They list their picks for “well designed, standards-compliant E-commerce stores. These are a tricky site to get right and design can give way to conversions, which is after all, the reason they are there – to make money.” What do you think of their picks?

Finally, ecommerce guide has published a very valuable guide for this time of year: a Guide to Making Online Sales Tax Compliance Less Taxing. For those of you in the USA, this may be an exceptionally useful – and well timed – article.

Got any recommendations for Spare Change? Email me at shannon at jadedpixel dot com!

Happy St. Paddy’s! It’s been a while since you’ve seen one of these.. blame conferences and holidays! Here’s all the interesting e-commerce tidbits the Internet came up with for the last couple of weeks.

• At Vunet, interesting survey results highlight a big missed opportunity for small businesses to reach into the ecommerce market – thus leading to a great marketing opportunity for e-commerce providers and designers. In a survey conducted in 2007, “The company discovered that 23 per cent of websites looked at had not been updated since their launch, making much of their content inaccurate or obsolete. The average age of a website was four years.

  But perhaps the most revealing figure, given the huge growth in consumers using the internet to buy goods and services, was that a mere eight per cent of respondents had an e-commerce element on their sites.

  “We were completely staggered by the tiny percentage of small business owners who were actively using their websites to generate sales,” said Jon Beal, managing director of Netflare.”

• eMarketer has an interesting article on the current percentage of internet users who buy online, and where the increase in e-commerce sales will come from: ””Most analysts including eMarketer say that online sales growth has more to do with incumbent online buyers increasing their e-commerce spending rather than increasing new online buyers,” said Jeffrey Grau, senior analyst at eMarketer.” They also talk about the shift in attitude by online purchasers: “buying without a human became an asset rather than a liability.”
• Check out the recap of the Effective Merchandising: What sells? webinar put on by Get Elastic e-commerce. I missed this session, so I’m particularly grateful for the chance to see the recap online. Read about Merchandising based on Intent, Smart Cross-Sell and Up-Sell Strategies, SEOandizing and more.
• Reuters’ article Indie Labels take e-commerce into their own hands shows an example of a new market opportunity for musicians: Selling their music directly to the consumer. Not only does this take the middle man out of the equation, it also gives the band the opportunity to give their fans access to music as well as merchandise. Designers, looking for clients? Try approaching your local indie rock band and see if they’re up for selling online.
• Over at e-Commerce Times, they’re talking about the increasing fickleness of online consumers, and how to increase customer loyalty by using personalized services.
• Fiinally, MSNBC posted an interesting article on Transforming your website into a sales powerhouse. It’s full of tips on design, traffic conversion and using tools such as video and blogging. Check it out!

  Got any interesting e-commerce tips? We’ll blog about ‘em.. just email me at shannon [at] jadedpixel [dot] com.

I’ve found a few upcoming events that could be worthwhile for folks in e-commerce to attend. At PayPal, there are several PayPal/Jupiter Research events in March about how to grow your business in what appears to be a slowing economy. They will be visiting five US cities and will have a large retailer present in each city to discuss e-commerce strategies for growth.

Also, over at Sitebrand, they are hosting a Webinar on Thursday, March 6th entitled Jon Stewart or Oprah: What’s your Online Store’s Personality?. The webinar is free and will cover topics including: - the 4 types of people browsing your site - how to adjust your design to speak to each type appropriately - what type of messaging and incentives optimize conversion - what features will trigger action for each type - creative ways retailers speak their language

If anyone attends these events, we’d love to hear your feedback. Post a comment here or talk about it in the forums.

The days of “build it and they will come” are long past us. In order to survive in an e-commerce world, a seller has to learn the online game, which can be challenging when the rules change every day. SEO, Social Media – what are these tools and how can you apply them to your advantage?

What is SEO? SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, is the art of improving your ranking in search engines. The higher you rank in a list of search engine returns, the more traffic gets driven to your site. Sounds simple.. but it’s in many ways a black art. And it’s the kind of voodoo that’s important for someone working in e-commerce – if you want to sell your widgets, and there are lots of widget sellers out there on the web, then you’d better make sure your widget shop shows up first. How to achieve this? Check out these 25 ecommerce SEO tips from Palmer Media. Even if you aren’t able to apply all of the tips, integrating at least a few of them in to your store could make a big difference to your SEO – and your sales. Have any of you applied these tactics? Have they worked or not? What else have you done to optimize your search rankings?

Search for the phrase “social media definition”, on the other hand, and you’ll find as many different answers as you do web hits. As in, 27 million different ones. Some rely heavily on “customer driven content” as part of the definition; others, like Robert Scoble, provided his definition as a more multifaceted, broader type of media that differs from traditional media in a number of ways, then opened up the conversation to his readers for feedback. Which, in my mind, is plain old social media itself in action. What do you think of Scoble’s definition, and how could his definition be applied to help drive traffic and revenue to your site?

If you’re interested in applying more social media strategies to your store, then check out this fantastic blog find: the Persuasive e-Marketing blog from Sitebrand. They post regularly about e-commerce and social media, and the blog is a valuable resource. The article eCommerce marketers – how does your social media measure up? tells you the basics on getting started with social media, such as knowing who your audience is and what it is you’re trying to track.

In upcoming weeks, we’ll be posting more on social media strategies as well as other tactics for helping you increase traffic. Do you have any suggestions or comments? Let us know here or post a comment in the forums.

Here’s this week’s dose of “I’ve posted the best and not the rest” for you…

The 2007 e-Commerce Success Report is available at RetailSolutionsOnline.com. The report, compiled by MarketLive.com , details the e-commerce sales over the 2007 Holiday season, what the trends and gains were, as well as the strategies that drove the results. There are some very interesting numbers in here, such as the comparison between early holiday and peak holiday conversions (a 66% increase) and a 27% increase in year over year revenue. Take a look and see if there is any information you can apply to your stores for next year.

Over on the Get Elastic blog you’ll find an educational article on SEO. It touches on the SEO Shenanigans a threat to Social Media debate, as well as providing great ideas for good search engine optimization that you can apply to your site.

ZenTrend’s has come up with a very innovative approach that combines e-commerce and customer driven content. Their iStyler allows customers to view potential future fashion offerings from their store and vote on whether they love it or hate it. As described by openPR.com , the customer then gets a direct say in whether or not a piece makes it to the virtual shelf – thus prompting return traffic as well as providing real feedback in what is sometimes a hit-and-miss decision for fashion buyers. Not to mention it is completely addictive.

There’s a fun podcast over at Startup Nation, where they interview Kevin Harmon from InflatableMadness.com on various approaches to e-commerce, including finding the best outlet for your products!

And finally…

Happy Birthday to you
Happy birthday to you,
Happy Birthday e-Commerce!
Happy Birthday to you!

Read the story of how the first e-commerce transaction took place on March 4, 1983 – with a 300 BPS modem and phone line, no less!

Morning all, here’s your e-commerce news roundup. I read the internet so you don’t have to!

eMarketer, a market research and trend analysis company, predicts that online retailers in the US will ring up over $100 billion more in sales in 2012 than they did in 2007. They predict that the sales growth will come mainly from consumers who are shifting their spending from traditional retail stores to the Internet.

Great news (and great kudos) for online retailers: The American Customer Satisfaction Index reports that while customer satisfaction in retail is down overall, it has increased for online shopping. As stated by Medill Reports, the sole bucker of the depressing slump is e-commerce, “an avenue that enjoyed its highest ever rating of 81.6, a 2 percent improvement from 2006 and the apex of its eight-year presence on the index.” The highest rated online retailer was Amazon.com, with Newegg and Netflix close behind.

“Basically, the theory being, as consumers are satisfied, they spend more,” said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results, an Ann Arbor company that measures online customer satisfaction in conjunction with the ACSI. “This is one of the best indicators of consumer spending.””

More good news from the UK: E-commerce Topline Growth Continues, with electronics and clothing leading “led year-on-year growth of 75 per cent during January or the equivalent of £74 [being] spent online for every person in the UK.”

Also for UK designers: The Manufacturing Institute is providing a grant to SMES in areas of Northwest England to assist them to diversify online. This could be a great incentive for some of your customers to take the next step. More information is available online.

Got news? Email Shannon at Affiliates [at] jadedpixel [dot] com.

Hi all,

A few tidbits for your perusal today.

You’ll notice that the feed for Affiliate Blog articles is now in your affiliate page (Thank you Tobi!). This will allow you to easily be notified of new content, which we plan to provide you frequently.

We’re pleased to announce that Australian SecurePay Payment Gateway has been integrated in to Shopify. SecurePay supports merchant accounts with most Australian banks including Advance Bank, ANZ Bank, Bank of Melbourne, Bank of SA, Bank West, Commonwealth Bank, Challenge Bank, National Australia Bank, St George Bank, and Westpac Bank, and should help extend the reach of Shopify to more Australian customers.

If you haven’t seen it already, the Pew Internet Report on Online Shopping covers a lot of very interesting ground on the average American online shopper. The report details how attitudes, technology, socio-economic status and age factor in to an individual’s likelihood of carrying out an online transaction. The good news is, consumers find e-commerce easy and convenient, but concerns about entering their credit card details keeps many from pushing the “buy” button. Which is interesting, since as this article states, online credit card purchases are generally safer than in-store transactions. The report, while a bit dry, has a lot of valuable information about the kind of person who tends to be an online shopper – and the reasons why others aren’t.

Cool Blog Find: This Week in Etail showcases the changing face of online stores, displaying screenshots of popular sites and tracking the ongoing changes made to keep their looks fresh – or not so fresh.

For our European and International partners: Computer Weekly states that The UK will account for at least 40% of 2008 online sales in Western Europe. That’s great news for our UK and European partners; now how to capitalize on that trend? If any of our UK/European partners want to comment or share some ideas with others in that space, please let me know and we can look in to doing a feature in this blog.

Finally, do you have any questions about the content of the blog, about the Affiliate program or about Shopify in general? If so, please let me know by contacting me at affiliates [at] jadedpixel [dot] com. Thanks and keep in touch!

Hi all! This entry will cover off the following topics:

1. Adding previously referred shops to your affiliate account

2. Shopify Banners

3. Using your Affiliate Token

If there are any other burning issues you’d like addressed, please let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them in a future entry.

1. Adding previously referred shops to your affiliate account

By now you all should have received your email confirming you as part of the affiliate program. Many of you have also requested to have shops you’ve previously brought to Shopify added to your account. If there are any more of these requests, I’ll be happy to accommodate them, just drop me a line, telling me the URL of the shop you’d like added.

If you ask to have a specific store affiliated with your account, I will confirm that the shop is not owned by you or your company (as this is a violation of the terms of service). Most of the time this is easy for me to check through our admin interface. However, if you are signed up as the store owner, I’ll be double checking with you to confirm ownership. Often, the designer will create the store and do the design work under their own name, and at launch time transfer ownership to the client. You simply need to ensure that down the line the client is associated with this account, or eventually the system will choke on paying you out affiliate transactions.

2. Shopify Banners

If you’re interested in putting a Shopify banner on your site, we have several available here. If there are any specific banners or badges that you think would be valuable, drop me a line and let me know.

3. Using your Affiliate Token

Your affiliate token is the link that you need to sign your clients up under to have the store automatically associated with your account. When you log in to the affiliate portal, you can view your token by clicking on the “affiliate token” button. You’ll see the following text (replacing “shannon” with your handle):

The first link is the one you’d use if you’re simply creating a link from your website to ours, or if you want a client to check out the Shopify website. The second one is the one where you or the client would directly sign up for an account.

Once the link is clicked, your affiliate token is valid for 7 days. So if someone clicks on the link to access Shopify through your token, then return to shopify.info and sign up within 7 days, you’ll automatically get the affiliate relationship with that client. However, tokens can be overwritten – as in, if a client clicks on your token, then clicks on someone else’s and signs up, the last token to refer will get the affiliation. If you suspect something parasitical’s happening, as in someone is intercepting your clicks and replacing them with their own token, please let me know immediately. We will do our utmost to quash those kinds of shenanigans immediately.

Please let me know if you have any questions on the affiliate system. Til then, happy shopifying!

Shannon

Welcome, everyone, to the Shopify Affiliate program!

This is where you’ll find all the latest and greatest news about the Shopify Affiliate System. To link directly to the latest news, bookmark http://www.jadedpixel.com/affiliates, or just go to the Jaded Pixel blog and select the “Affiliates” section.

I’m Shannon, and I’m your first point of contact for the Affiliate program. The affiliate email is affiliates [at] jadedpixel.com, or if you want to reach me directly it’s simply shannon [at] jadedpixel.com. The difference in the two is that shannon only goes to me, whereas if I am out of the office I’ll make sure someone is monitoring the affiliates account.

My role in the affiliate program is simple: I’m here for you. I monitor the program, ensure you’re getting paid what you’re supposed to get paid, answer questions, get creatives made, develop the program as required, fetch coffee. OK, maybe not the coffee. That depends on the day. But anything else you need, I’m your man. Except that I’m a woman, but you get my drift.

The affiliate program has been created to do two things. It says “thank you” to those who have brought their clients to Shopify. And it helps us extend our reach by incentivizing those who bring clients to Shopify from now on. The original folks we were thinking of when we created the program were designers, but the program is by no means limited to designers. Anyone who has any kind of influence on helping others make an e-commerce decision is welcome to join the program.

I will be posting ongoing news, tips and tricks here on the Affiliate Blog. If you have any questions or have something you’d like to see answered here, please let me know.

Til then, happy Shopifying!