Selasa, 26 Januari 2010

Ecommerce Solution Tips: Impulse Selling

If you are running an online business and you want to increase sales, this article is created just for you. More free online shop and ecommerce solutionestablishments are fighting for customers and the competition are now quite stiff. If you are selling general niche products such as gadgets and electronics or common books as well as other ordinary products, you need to be extra creative to increase your sales. One of the things you can do to increase sales and gain more customers is by taking advantage of customers’ impulse to buy stuff when they see them. It may be categorized as exploits, and it is commonly known as impulse selling.

Did you notice how Amazon and several other popular ecommerce sites usually ‘suggest’ other products to buy when you are buying the product you came to purchase? This is exactly what we call impulse selling; extra options and products are presented as the customer is finalizing the purchase of the product they intended to buy. You can use the same strategy on your site as well since most online store platforms have this capability built inside their core or have additional modules to enable you to practice impulse selling.

To make it more effective, you can also add offers and promotions to the suggestions you are presenting your customers with. Give extra discount for purchase of item B if the customer is purchasing item A at the same time, for instance, to boost the customers’ impulses to get item B instantly. The deal will be seen as beneficial in the eyes of customers, and they will most likely buy the two products even when their primary intention was to get item A.

Impulse selling is a very powerful ecommerce strategy you can use to increase sales. It can also be fine tuned and refined to help sell items that are less popular by offering good discounts on bundled purchases effectively. This way, the customer will see the item you are offering as more attractive and they will feel encourage to close the deal and make the purchase at that very moment.

Online Store Specials

One of the best things about selling products online is the low overhead cost. You don’t have to pay for monthly electricity and utility bills as well as other costs when you are opening an online business, and the overall cost of selling your products can be greatly reduced. You can actually allocate these reductions and savings to other posts that will help you generate more sales, such as promotional offers and discounts. These two ecommerce tools can be very effective in increasing sales and attracting new customers to shop at your store when used properly, and we are going to discuss about several ways you can use discounts effectively in this article.

Discounts are naturally very attractive to customers. Don’t believe what I say? See the kind of hype you can find at brick and mortar stores as well as online stores during the last Black Friday. There are literally thousands of customers lining up to purchase different products just because they know they will be getting substantial amount of discounts on the purchase. Add media publications and several promotional offers, and you have substantial increase of sales within your grasp. It is the ultimate example of how discounts can really influence people’s decision making process before purchasing something.

In online store, especially when the one you are running is not mature or financially strong yet, discounts can be given as vouchers for future purchases. This is actually very good since you are actually encouraging the first purchase as well as a possible repeat order or purchase of another item in the future. You wouldn’t have to allocate money to absorb the amount of discounts you are giving immediately because the voucher can only be used on future purchases.

To increase the affectivity of the discount model we discussed earlier, make sure you calculate the amount of discount you are prepared to give carefully and use jargons such as “Only available online!” to let people know that they will not find similar offer offline. You are simply sending stimulus that will persuade people to make the purchase as soon as possible.

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Online Store: Free Shipping

A lot of new online store and businesses are being established each day. They are selling products from different categories and niches, with different offers and bargains to attract customers. If you are running an online business of your own, you need to be able to understand the way customers think to be able to attract them to make purchases on your ecommerce site. This is a lot easier if you are making online purchases yourself on a regular basis, since all you have to do is analyze your own decision making process on online purchases and implement points you see are making you come to the decision of making the purchase.

You may not notice this, but latest research proves that sites offering free shipping sell more products than sites that are not. Shipping costs may not be much at all, but people are considering free shipping as an emotional factor playing a huge part in making the decision to close the deal. Try visiting two online stores selling the same product — one with no shipping cost but slightly more expensive price tag and the other with shipping cost and lower price tag. Customers will generally opt for the one with no shipping cost even if the total cost is a couple of dollars lower for the site charging customers with shipping costs; psychologically or rather subconsciously, customers appreciate the store’s efforts to handle their shipping with no extra charges.

If you are not prepared to provide customers with free shipping offers, there are several alternatives you can take to enjoy similar effects. You can start with offering free shipping on large or bundled purchases; you will surely get more revenues so paying a little extra for your customer’s shipping and handling costs should not be a problem. You can also add the shipping and handling costs, or portions of them, to the price; make sure your products are still reasonably priced though, because some newbie internet marketers may think of adding the maximum amount of shipping charges – for the longest distance — they can find to their prices causing them to rise way above market average.

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Hidden Costs, Big Ecommerce Don’ts!

In several cases of new online stores, you may find it difficult to get the total of your purchase. The site is simply asking you to give your personal information first before knowing how much you have to pay for the products you are buying and shipping, handling, and other costs of the purchase. Several worse stores even oblige you to sign up for an account or login just to see the price of products you are interested at. In the world of online business, these kinds of practices are definitely something you need to avoid at all cost.

The owners of those ecommerce sites I talked about earlier deliberately add hidden costs to their customer’s total price. The hidden cost, aside from the purchase’s total being actually hidden from customers, is personal information. Dealing with online customers, asking them to give you their personal information without letting them have the kind of information they need to make the decision of whether they want to finalize the purchase is more or less similar to telling them to go to another online store to shop instead; such practices are driving customers away. Obliging customers to login just to see prices of available products is even more ridiculous; it may be an effort to gather customer data and create a subscriber list for email marketing, but such strategy is not effective in any way.

The right approach is to let customers know at all times how much the purchase will cost them. Make sure your customers can access their shopping cart easily and give detailed information about the price of the products customers are buying, discounts — if you are offering any — and handling costs, shipping costs, and of course the total amount of payment the customers need to pay if they want to finalize their purchase. The customers will objectively assess if the purchase is worth making, and they will finalize the deal anyway if they find your overall costs and total are acceptable. No need to use hidden costs just to influence customers to give away personal information, because by doing so you are dooming your own site.

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Customer Care for Ecommerce Sites

One of the most important aspects of online business you need to provide if you are opening an online store is reliable customer support. You can browse around or do some research to make sure that successful sites and online stores all have live helpdesk and 24/7 customer care available should customers need some assistances. In fact, good customer care and support are very important that you need to allocate some of your investments into creating a reliable support channels that customers can easily access.

Live helpdesk is definitely the most common customer care channel for ecommerce sites. Operators can assist customers online using web-based chat interface as well as several additional tools. If you are running the site on your won, make sure you allocate several hours a day to go live and be the support for your own site to increase your chances of attracting more customers. You can find live help platforms available online equipped with mobile interface, so you can manage your site using cellular phones at all times.

If you have enough money to invest in customer care, getting a toll-free number to allow your customers to contact you easily will help increase the quality of your site’s customer care substantially. Although it may cost you some money, having a toll-free number can also increase the overall image and credibility of your online business, which means more customers will trust you and make purchases at your site. The investment will be well worth it.

Last but not least, make sure the operators you are assigning to handle customer care know how to reply emails properly. Emails are definitely the most common customer care channel available, and it can easily be managed using simple web-based applications to increase response time. Never let your customers’ email stay unanswered for more than 48 hours, or even 24 hours, because they will surely think you are not as good as they thought and leave to make their purchase somewhere else. You will be losing a lot of money and potential sales just because you don’t reply customers’ emails quick enough.

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Choosing the Right Ecommerce Platform

Starting your own online business can be very exciting. I’ve started a couple of businesses and online stores myself and I still find the starting-up process very addictive and fun to go through. One of the things I love to remind new internet entrepreneurs is to select their ecommerce platform properly. There are a lot of ready-made platforms available to choose from, which means starting your own online store is just a matter of customizing the platform to suit your needs and providing information about the product you are selling. When you choose platforms, make sure you consider flexibility, ease of use, and of course search engine friendliness as important aspects the right ecommerce platform should have.

By choosing a flexible ecommerce platform or scrip you are simply making it easier for you, or a programming and design experts you are hiring to build and customize the site for you, to achieve the overall look of an online store you wanted; some products for certain niches may look a lot more appealing when you present them in a certain way, so make sure you are designing the site with your products in mind to make it effective.

You need to make sure the ecommerce script you are using is easy to use. Managing orders and customers’ data are handful of tasks on their own and having complicated platform to add will make managing your online business irrationally difficult. Make sure the script you are using supports automated payment and order tracking and is compatible with popular payment gateways. This will make the ordering process quite automated and all you have to deal with personally is shipping the products sold.

Last but not least, make sure the ecommerce platform you are using is search engine friendly. Customers are using search engines to find the product they are looking for, and having your site listed as search results will surely lead more potential buyers to the right page. With proper combination of information and search engine optimization, your online store will appear on the first page of the search results quite easily.

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Website Copy for Ecommerce Sites

Webmasters are beginning to understand and appreciate the value of quality copy for their sites. A good sales copy can really persuade customers to buy the product after reading it, producing high conversion rate and more revenue for the site. Potential sales can also be lost if the sales copy you are using on your online store’s product page is just not catchy — or too catchy in several occasions — enough to arouse customers to make the purchase. Yes, website copy can be quite hard to create especially when you are aiming at great — highly converting — one. To help you get started, you need to understand the concept of customers’ decision making process and reflects them properly into your sales copy to create an appealing one.

Customers usually start with attention. They may hear about the product you are selling elsewhere or accidentally stumble upon your site while browsing around the internet. You are getting potential leads, and your first task is to create attention. Make catchy headlines and let the customers know the main benefit of getting your product. If they are interested, they will continue to search for information about the product and read the sales copy even further.

The next part of your sales copy needs to have the ability to generate interest. You want the customers to want your product enough that their attentions are caught and they are seriously considering getting your product. As soon as you provide them with enough information about advantages and benefits of the product to get them interested, mention aspects and reasoning that will make them move on to the third stage, desire.

When customers desire your product, they are one step away from actually closing the deal. Your focus should be to attract them with offers and promotional discounts that may encourage them to take action immediately. Old sales copies usually mention that the price will be upped in a matter of days, even hours, but this is no longer effective and you shouldn’t even use the trick. Just state enough beneficial offers to make them finally got to the fourth stage, action, and complete the purchase.

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