Be Thorough

Be sure to describe the product well and in detail. When shopping online, most consumers are most likely to purchase from the site that provided them the information that was needed to make the buying decision.

Know What’s Above the Fold

The phrase “above the fold” is an old newspaper term that refers to the part of the paper above the center fold. In other words—the most important part. Nowadays, this term refers to the part of the website that is seen by a visitor without having to scroll down. This is the area visitors see first and it should contain the images and content that is most important.

How Does it Solve the Problem?

Let the prospective customer know exactly how the item will solve a particular problem or fill a certain need. Listing features and benefits is necessary and useful but telling the consumer how it will solve his problem will drive home the feeling of need.

Keep it Simple

If technical specifications are needed, make sure they have their own section. For most products, the technical statistical details can be confusing to buyers and do not factor into the buying decision. By clearly stating the facts in a separate section the information is presented but does not become an exit point from the site.

Align Keywords with Products

Make sure that landing pages for each item are optimized specifically for that item. Do not target the same top level or broad keyword phrases as are targeted on home pages or product category pages. Use brand names and technical specifications that may influence searchers.

Jennifer Gniadecki loves to write. You can find her on any given day writing lists, blog posts, articles, assignments, outlines or fleshing out story ideas on her laptop.

Image from startupagents.com

Main shopping cart abandonment preventer? Hunger.

I was actually working on a post about shopping cart abandonment when I stumbled upon the worst online checkout process I’ve ever encountered.

I was working at home and starving. We had no food in our house, and I wasn’t interested in putting on pants or abandoning my work long enough to go to the store, so I hopped online and went to Pizza Hut’s website.

When I got there, I noticed that they were offering 20% off of all orders placed through their new iPhone app. As an iPhone junky and a penny pincher, of course I immediately downloaded the new app and attempted to place my order over my cell phone.

The first thing I noticed is that, like their website, the app had no visible pricing for any of their products. There’s no place to find out about deals or if there’s any price increase for adding ingredients. The only time you ever see pricing is when you get to the checkout screen.

Having loaded up my cart in a state of starvation, I realized when I got to the shopping cart that I was about to have $40 worth of pizza delivered to my home for a party of one. I tried to change my order, and found even more problems. There wasn’t a clear, easy way to make changes or updates and at one point I got so frustrated I just deleted everything and closed out of the application — cart abandonment in action, people.

Of course, five minutes later I decided that I was still hungry, and something about ordering a pizza through the computer rather than the phone made me think I would be fed sooner rather than later. (In reality, that’s not at all how it works. Your order is sent to your local Pizza Hut restaurant and fulfilled exactly the same as it would have been if you’d picked up the phone.)

So, in the end, Pizza Hut got the sale, right? Technically, their shopping cart abandonment rate from this user is still 0%. But I had to go back to make a purchase. Had I been able to find some leftovers or an ad for another pizza chain with online ordering, I might not have given Pizza Hut my business. And it had nothing to do with the product, and everything to do with the ease of purchasing.

There are two lessons I think we can get from this.

One- Many consumers equate online ordering with convenience. It’s important that you not only have an online presence, but that you remember what your visitors are looking for when they come to your web site: convenience.

Two- Don’t hide your prices! Seriously.

Britt Reints is a freelance writer living in Orlando, Florida.  She ate two pieces of pizza and eight chicken wings while writing this article.

Image c/o goyetta.com.

Should your website be put out of its misery? Photo: Time Magazine

Whenever you’re developing your written web content – be it the static web copy or a continuously updated web content marketing feature like a blog – you need to ask if you’re meeting a number of different criteria for success:

1. Is this informative and useful?
2. Is this engaging or perhaps even entertaining?
3. Is this relevant to my business and audience?
4. Is this worded nicely without typos or grammar issues?
5. Is this the truth?
6. Is this going to come up (higher the better) on a search engine results page when someone is looking for the kind of information, products or services I offer? (So important and so often overlooked!)

All of these lead to the big question:

 7. Is my website going to help me acquire, keep and grow business?

 Well – will it? Be honest, people.

I can’t tell you how often I come across corporate websites that could probably only answer yes to one or two of the questions posed above. Or worse yet, companies that don’t think those answers matter to their overall bottom line.

Maybe you’ve seen these websites yourself. They’ve often plunked some decent money down on a flash animation splash page (yarg), undoubtedly scrutinized over which “business” stock photos to include and then spent oodles of time refining the bios of their corporate exec team (yawn). And like all things tedious and horrible, it probably took them a year to get there and no one wants to go through that hell for a very long time – so they settle for it. These are the types of online storefronts that make me wish Dr. Kevorkian would expand his services to include websites.

Don’t mistake this for a rant that is exclusively the opinion of a snarky web writer and marketer who deals with this kind of thing all the time. Audiences are now far more savvy that you probably give them credit for. They can spot a lame duck of a site (if they even ever see yours to begin with) a mile away. Is that really the impression (and it’s often the first and last one) you want to make?

Admitting you have a problem is the first step. If you’re not sure of what to do after that, contacting a web content marketing agency is the next one.

Today, ideaLaunch is at Internet Retailer conference at the Boston Convention Center. Jack Love, Publisher of Internet Retailer and Kurt Peters, Editor in Chief of Internet Retailer kicked Tuesday’s session off talking about the differences between the internet and the brick and mortar markets.

Peters talked about the recession, and how it positively affected internet sales. He gave statistics that while brick and mortar sales for companies like Macy’s, Polo, and others are down in the 10- 15% range, internet sales are up. “What does this mean for retailers? My answer is ‘get ready’,” said Peters.

To get ready, Peters said to focus on the fundamentals; bargains, convince and internet usage patterns. “How to achieve those goals is the focus of this conference,” said Peters.

Internet Retailer has 91 sessions, 178 speakers and 360 vendors in exhibit hall.