Monthly Archives: May 2012

Reading Level and SEO

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Jesper Astrom (@JesperAstrom, jesperastrom.com) has uncovered an incredibly useful piece of insight… Did you know that Google categorizes the text on your website from a level of basic to intermediate and advanced? Attempting to rank the most relevant content in the top of the search engine, Google provides search results that directly relate to the text category (or rather the ‘reading level’ of your website–basic, intermediate and advanced) and the reading level of a search query.

If a user can’t understand the search results that Google provides, the search results are useless.

The important thing, here, however isn’t the need to immediately go and change the ‘reading level’ of your website and its content. Instead, you need to know the reading levels of the demographic of your preferred/converting visitor. For SEO to be at its best for your online store, you need to evaluate whether or not the text of your website matches up to the reading levels of your ‘ideal or preferred customer.’

Simple enough… but there’s more! Visit Jesper Astrom’s article, Reading Level and SEO, and you’ll see just what we mean. Astrom’s intuition about “reading levels” is notable enough.

-Christopher Lin, lexity.com

Customer Retention Best Practices for Ecommerce

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Stressing about fostering customer loyalty? Robyn Keegan for @groovecommerce has a few helpful tips. The beauty of a loyal customer comes with their potential to save any business money. Marketing efforts to acquire new customers can cost nearly five times more than efforts aimed at retaining existing customers.

Something as simple as “requiring a login” can directly affect customer loyalty, both positively and negatively. Lengthy registration processes deter customers and “creating an account” can oftentimes be seen as too time intensive. Shorten the registration process and offer the option to save their account information for future logins.

You might also consider creating a rewards program for returning customers. Look to programs like Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards, where for each dollar spent, points are gained. Your points program should be enticing enough (both in points and actual rewards) to spark loyalty from your customers.

But, these aren’t the only ways you can improve customer retention. Robyn Keegan provides an extensive list of customer retention tips (including the two above) for online stores  in her article, Customer Retention Best Practices for Ecommerce.

-Christopher Lin, lexity.com

How Pinterest Drives Ecommerce Sales

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Mark Hayes (allsop8184) and his crew at Shopify.com (@shopify) have produced what might be considered one of the best infographics on Pinterest’s impact on ecommerce sales (click the image below to see the infographic in full). The infographic itself details Pinterest’s recent prowess and its rise to #3 social media platform. Their findings? Well, for one, Pinterest accounts for the highest “average order price” ($80.00 on average) in comparison to a whole slew of other social media and search engines.

Pinterest Infographic from Shopify.com/blog

But why?

We suspect that Pinterest serves more than less as a streamlined and culturally relevant catalog for an online store. Whatever the case, Pinterest is becoming more imperative for an online store’s potentialsuccess. Heed the advice of Mark Hayes and Shopify.com and set up your own Pinterest profile now! As you do, be sure to:

  • Set Pinterest pins with prices (pins with prices get 36% more “likes” than those without).
  • Don’t limit your pins to only images of your products. Post pins that are relevant to your store’s aesthetic! Personal branding is Pinterest’s best asset.
  • Focus your attention on all social media platforms. Using Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, etc. increases your chances of referral traffic when your social media presence is profuse!

To read more and see the amazing infographic in detail, visit Mark Hayes’s blog article, How Pinterest Drives Ecommerce Sales, for Shopify.com/blog! 

-Christopher Lin, lexity.com

Increase Website Conversion Rate and Turn Visitors into Customers

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A new article for @crowdshifter by Eric Tsai recommends 9 brilliant and simple ways to increase your website conversion rates (yes, we really do think that they’re brilliant and simple). But before you rush off to conduct a checklist of Tsai’s 9 tips, Tsai makes the following important distinction:

“Conversion rates typically depend on two factors: 1) Qualified Traffic… [where] the goal is to capture only traffic that’s more likely to convert; [and the] 2) Landing page… [where] it’s important that the links you use to send traffic to your website is relevant to what that person is looking for.“

Instead of spreading your resources thin by attempting to garner as many visitors to your site as possible, it’s perhaps more important to specialize in the demographic your advertising to. Here are just 2 of Tsai’s tips:

  • Cater to Online Reading Habits: ”What doesn’t get read doesn’t get clicked on.” Did you know that online readers view web content in an F-shaped pattern? “You should use attention call-outs such as headers, subheads, paragraphs and bullet points with words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-shaped behavior.
  • Leverage Image or Rich Media to Direct Attention: ”Studies have shown that people perceived websites as more ‘professional’ or ‘trustworthy’ when they had images of people on the site.”

Want to read more? (Because we’re willing to bet that you do!) Visit Eric Tsai’s article for crowdshifter.com, 9 Keys to Increase Website Conversion Rate and Turn Visitors into Customers.

-Christopher Lin, lexity.com

SEO: How to Amplify Keyword Signals

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With all of Google’s updates affecting search engine optimization and rankings (consider Google’s Penguin update), how can your online store fully optimize its keywords and content? Albeit, from Google to Bing and Yahoo, the importance of your content’s “signal” and “amplification” is impossible to deny. For better SEO, it’s crucial that your online store be linked to by external sources and include unique and strong keyword signals. 

But what do we mean?

Jill Kocher of practicalecommerce.com states, “It’s a common misunderstanding that the more visits a site has, the better SEO it must have, and it’s difficult to persuade those people that it’s links, not visits, that matter more to SEO strength.”

Consider the following 3 tips as excerpted from Jill Kocher’s article (trust us, it’s a great article):

  • Highly competitive keywords can essentially “mute” your use of the keyword itself. Use keywords that are unique, relevant and perhaps “one-of-a-kind” (in a very loose interpretation of the phrase).
  • If you intend to use competitive keywords, you must amplify the keyword signal by increasing the amount of links to your online store or page (if you’re going to use a popular keyword, make yours the most popular by way of others “sharing” links to it).
  • Use social media as a means to increase the likelihood of link-sharing. Social media platforms serve as broadcasters for your content, not necessarily increasing the keyword strength of your page but increasing its potential.

All this said, Jill Kocher provides a more in-depth explanation of keyword “signals” and “amplification.” Head to her blog post, SEO: How to Amplify Keyword Signals at practicalecommerce.com.

-Christopher Lin, lexity.com

Gain Trust of Online Shoppers

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A great looking site can be very pleasing to customers, but you need more than that to gain their trust so that they make a purchase from your store.  Here are few very simple tips (nonetheless, often overlooked):

  • Chat live
    • Live chat button on your website can be text based or you can even use a web camera. This gives customers an opportunity to view the person they are interacting with.
  • Act live
    • You can post a video of product reviews, demos etc on your website.
  • Speak live
    • Add a toll free/ contact number to your website so that your customers can reach you anytime.
  • Be social
    • Open a Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest account.

From more tips go to How to gain online shoppers’ trust? by Idris at retail-ecommerce.com

- Priyanka Jain, lexity.com

Bizarre Things That Influence Customers Online

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For an email promotion, which would any customer prefer? “Sale! 15-75% off!” or “Sale! Up to 50% off!”

It turns out, customers often take mental shortcuts when considering number ranges, focusing in on the smaller number in “percent off,” regardless of the actual best discount. Looking at the two sales above, 50% is seemingly more influential than even the possibility of getting 75% off. Why? The potential of getting only 15% outweighs the equal potential of getting 75%. The act itself is a softened realization of risk aversion, whereby the 50% is guaranteed and the 75% is a gamble. Seeing the potential of only getting 15% is an instant turnoff, so to say, for customers when comparing it to a larger flat-rate discount. 

For more bizarre things that influence customers online (and trust us, there are a lot), go to Linda Bustos’s blog post, 10 Bizarre things That Influence Customers Online.

-Christopher Lin, lexity.com

Tips For Presenting On Camera

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Introducing your product through video can humanize your website, gain customers’ trust and boost sales. As easy as it may sound, this can be a rather daunting task. Why? It can be little difficult finding someone who enjoys public speaking and at the same time is the right person to introduce your brand to the customers. Kenna Hurd provides few tip that can be helpful when you set out to do the task.

  • Search for the Hidden Gem
    • Look for the hidden gem in your own team. While looking, keep in mind that this person may not necessarily be an outgoing individual. Sometimes even the most introvert people turn out to be exceptionally good at public speaking.
  • In-depth knowledge
    • It is better to put a person who has in-depth knowledge about your product rather than a polished professional from outside in front of the camera.
  • Don’t talk too fast
    • When talking in front of the camera, take deep breaths and try to talk at a slow pace. This ensures that the viewers get enough time to absorb each important piece of information.

For more read 5 Tips For Presenting On Camera by Kenna Hurd at http://videoretailer.org/

-Priyanka Jain, lexity.com

How to Achieve Good Video Rankings on YouTube and SEO

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The importance of including a video in your marketing strategy can not be overstated. Once you have a video, it is important to post it on YouTube, the biggest search engine for videos. According to Pablo, there are few things that you can do to drive up the number of views:

  • Don’t leave out the keywords
    • Include keywords on your title and description. Do this as seriously as you do for your search webpage. A good title and description will enable your video to come up not just on YouTube but also on Google search.
  • Work hard early on to promote your video
    • Just like Google search, there is lot of competition on YouTube. YouTube algorithm works in such a way that if there are lot of views in first 24-48 hours, your video will rank very well in popularity. For this, post your video in your website, Facebook etc. Don’t forget to send them to your friends and loyal customers.
  • Rating and comments
    • Ask people to rate and comment on the video. People can either use like or dislike button or leave a comment below your video. To make it more interactive, you should try to answer some of these comments. This will get people engaged and drive popularity of your video.

Inspired by How To Get Best Video Rankings on YouTube and SEO by Pablo, www.fortune3.com

-Priyanka Jain, Lexity.com

Make Effective Product Video

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There are many things to keep in mind while making a product video. Some tips from 3dcart can help you do your job better.

  • Keep it short
    • Customers do not want to waste their time on extremely long publicity videos.  Most important thing they need from the video is information about the product, so make sure you get to that quickly without wasting too much of their time.
  • Demo your product
    • Don’t just hold your product; give your customers an interactive view of the product. Show it from different angles. Wear the dress, walk the shoes or cook in the pan.
  • The product should look its best
    • Use wide screen and shoot in high definition. Make sure that there is enough lighting and use a tripod to keep the camera stable.
  • Don’t talk the entire time
    • It is absolutely alright to show off your product with light music in the background for 30 second in a 2 minutes video. Don’t try hard to fill every second with commentary.

For more such tips visit 8 tips for making effective product video  @3dcart

-Priyanka Jain, Lexity.com