Optimize Your E-Commerce Experience

Looking for answers to these questions? Keep reading as Theresa Packard with CommerceV3, offers answers and actionable strategies to start implementing in your business immediately.

How do I best optimize my website?

Optimizing your site should be done based on site metrics and usability, as well as site speed. I'll address how to analyze your site metrics and usability with regards to conversion, but for now, let's cover the bases of site speed.

If your site is not operating at an optimum speed, it may appear to be missing a few pieces to the puzzle. Measuring the site speed on your homepage and top category pages will allow to see if there are images or other code that could be significantly slowing your site.

Many site speed tools such as Google Page Speed Insights, WebPageTest and Pingdom, are free. A site is considered slow if it takes longer than three seconds to load. After running the site speed tools, you may find the top culprits that can affect website speed are often large images that need optimized, script that can be loaded at the bottom of the page versus the top of the page, and additional redirects on the page.

Increasing Conversion Rates

This is the million-dollar question— how to convert browsers into purchasers? When consulting clients, I have found the best place to start is to ask a series of questions. The following questions can help you identify any barriers that may be affecting your conversion rate.

What do your analytics tell you?

The first thing I tell all retailers is to take a look at their analytics (we use Google analytics) to see if there are parts of your site that show the best conversion and parts that show the worst. How do you get more out of the things that show high conversion and high dollars? What’s wrong with the worst parts? Is there something on that landing page acting as a barrier?

Are your customers getting lost?

Are there places on your site where customers may be getting lost? Do they have to think about their journey through your site or is it intuitive? If you have a customer service agent, this may be a good person to ask, since they’re likely the one fielding questions about how to navigate your site. If not, try asking a loyal customer about their experience on your site.

Can customers easily find the products they want through search and navigation?

When a customer reaches the product page, how easy is it for them to see the pricing, count or size and, then, add their products to the cart? A shortage of important details like these is a common pitfall, that can quickly turn potential customers away.

Are there product reviews on your site?

Many online shoppers make purchasing decisions based on other customers’ reviews. Be sure your website has a user-friendly reviews program.

Have you tried to checkout on your own site?

When moving through the shopping cart to checkout, how easy is it for a customer to proceed through each step? We suggest making clear, well-defined steps through checkout. Make sure customers can easily enter shipping and billing information and also have certain already-known fields pre-entered (such as their email address and shipping information when logged in). To help with ease of checkout, offer alternative payment methods like PayPal, Amazon, Apple Wallet, Visa Checkout and etc.— these are especially useful for individuals shopping on mobile devices.

There's a lot you can do to optimize your website and improve your conversion rates, sometimes the best way to identify hang ups is by test driving your site on a regular basis.

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Not a member? Click here to learn how RCI can help you build your sweet business.

Tip #319: Grow Your Email List

Even the best email campaign will fall flat if it is sent to an email list consisting of contacts that don’t have any interest in your brand or don’t generally buy candy—this can happen if you purchase an email list. Although purchasing an email list is certainly a quick way to gain volume, don’t expect quality leads. Building an email list of individuals who opt-in, or voluntarily give their email address, is always the best approach because it will ensure your list consists of consumers who have a genuine interest in your brand and value what you have to say. Keep reading as RCI members, Melissa Wedman with Mollycoddled Hashslinger and Jayni Wunderlich with Graham's Chocolates, share four tactics they use to build a quality email list.

POP-UPS

When used correctly pop-ups can be both effective and well-received by customers. Despite the bad rap these little attention-grabbing boxes have developed since Google started policing pop-ups deemed disruptive to its users, Sumo.com says “well-designed pop-ups have the potential to convert 9% of visitors that encounter them.”

When creating pop-ups for your website, messaging must be brief, relevant and add value to visitors of your website. If you use a pop-up to encourage customers to subscribe to your email newsletter, consider adding bulleted details about what they’ll receive such as special offers, new product notices, updates on special events you’re attending (like a farmers’ market or charity event) or maybe even holiday gift guides.

Melissa: A pop-up request appears after five seconds of opening any page on our website (the use of cookies, ensure it doesn't keep reappearing while navigating multiple pages of our website) that says, "Join Our Email List! Stay connected with us for promotions, recipes & more!" and includes a close-up of our signature caramels.

GIVEAWAYS

Everyone loves getting free stuff, right? That's what makes giveaways a great way to build your email list quickly. However, choosing the wrong giveaway can leave you with a large list of unqualified leads. Sure, giving away a new car is guaranteed to get you a massive list, but focusing on prizes that appeal to your customers will help ensure you gain contacts that are interested in your products and not just free stuff.

Jayni: We build our email list by having contests to win a free box of chocolates during the holidays and then collect their emails to use for future email blasts. Once gathered, we send email blasts out on occasion to promote holiday products. We use MailChimp and really like their service.

Melissa: We give away prizes at special events and pop-up shops we participate in. As an added opportunity to build our email list, our giveaway slips include a box for customers to check if they’re interested in receiving our monthly newsletter. We have found that the people who join our email list from these slips more actively read our newsletters and become strong followers through social media as we've had the opportunity to build a rapport with them in person. Comparatively those who subscribe directly through a social media platform or as a result of an online purchase or through one of our wholesale accounts do not seem to have the same level of brand loyalty.

SIGNUP FOOTER

Adding a signup footer to the bottom of your website is a simple and less-intrusive option to build your email list. Many of your loyal customers may already be scrolling to the bottom of your website looking to easily subscribe to your email list.

Melissa: The footer of each page of our website includes a "Stay in the Loop" section with our social media icons/links as well as a place to input your email address. If someone is new to our website and declines the entry pop-up request to be added to our newsletter, the footer is always visible as they're spending more time on our website.

EVENT OPT-INS

If you’re already hosting events like tours, parties, classes or tasting events that require attendees to register in advance or purchase tickets, simply adding an opt-in box to the registration or checkout process will help you capture contact information for consumers interested in your brand. Offering the option to subscribe to your email list (or not) will help to more accurately reflect the success of your email messaging.

Jayni: We sell tickets to our special events online and collect email addresses along with those purchases. For instance, we host a wine and chocolate tasting every year during a wine festival in our town. By selling our tickets through our website, this allows potential event goers to visit our website, and sign up for our newsletter during check out.

Your email marketing campaign is only as good as your email list. Communicating with the right audience will help your business increase sales, generate new customers and retain loyal customers.

Crave more? If you like what you read here, look for the "Subscribe now" box on the right to enter your email address and start receiving weekly tips, like this, delivered straight to your email inbox. RCI's Tip of the Week blog is just one of the many resources we offer to help candy makers refine their craft and build upon their business and marketing practices.

Not a member? Click here to learn how RCI can help you build your sweet business.

Tip #313: Optimize Your Website for Mobile in 3 Steps

When it comes to your website, you don't want to get left behind! Blake Ellis, with CommerceV3, shares three steps to make your website mobile friendly and turn mobile shoppers into buyers in the process.

There are almost five billion mobile phones in the world. That’s an amazing number given there are only about seven and a half billion people in the world. Not all of these phones are smartphones, but the trends are clear: there are way more phones than computers, and that gap is just getting wider.

What does this mean for your online store? It means every year more of your customers will be using their phones to shop and order. You may have already seen the majority of your traffic move to mobile devices. So, what can you do to convert all these mobile shoppers to buyers?

Quite a lot actually, and it all starts with developing a “mobile-first” mindset. The next time someone asks you to review a design, a new home page promotion or the next email blast, just pull out your phone and check it out. It’s fast, easy and will get you and your team into a mobile-first mindset. If a team member tells you “that’s not really meant for mobile, we don’t get a lot of orders on mobile yet,” just tell them that’s what you’re trying to fix! Pretty soon you’ll start to see a lift as more efforts start with an eye toward mobile.

Reviewing and optimizing everything at once is a lot.

Let’s break this down into three simple steps:

Step #1: Start with Email

Most people read their emails on their phones first, so this tactic makes sense. Enter your own email into your site and open the welcome message on your phone. Test all your other transactional emails, from order confirmations to abandon cart emails to requests for product reviews. Make sure they all look great, are easy to read and perform correctly.

Then move to marketing emails. Have your team test new designs on their phones, and make it a priority to increase opens and click-throughs from mobile devices. Increasing email opens will confirm that your subject lines and preview texts are effective with customers on the go, and increasing click-throughs will confirm the layout and messaging is also working.

Step #2: Optimize Shopping

Once your inbound email metrics are rising, it’s time to get mobile users adding more product to their carts. During this stage you’re testing all your site designs and layouts on your own phone, and asking others to do the same. Designers need to wow you with beautiful, yet tiny layouts, hero images have to load fast and display well, and product detail pages have to present a lot of info in an easy-to-swipe manner.

Keep a close eye on metrics to guide you through this process. How many mobile visitors tap down through categories versus use the product search box? Can you set up filters and sorting to reduce taps and typing? Do products appear with default options so add-to-cart buttons work without any additional selections?

When in doubt, do some secret shopping at large retailers. They have the budgets to do extensive user testing and accommodate all kinds of neat features. Take a look at what they do and get your team to implement features that make sense for your customers.

Step #3: Streamline Checkout

Now that mobile users are tapping on your emails and adding product to their cart, it’s time to get them through the checkout. The key to securing more checkouts is to minimize the need to type.

Set up payment options that your customers already have stored in their phone like Paypal, ApplePay and Google Wallet. Most of these are easy to configure in most online stores, and mobile users love them because they don’t have to re-enter their credit card details.

If you’re already doing address verification, you can use this service to speed up shipping address entry on mobile. As users start to type their street address, your site starts autocompleting the entire address for them.

Finally, make sure every field in your checkout is absolutely required to fulfill the order, and that it pops up the correct style of keyboard for mobile users (alphanumeric, numeric, etc). An easy way to keep up with this is to place a test order on your own site once a week from your phone, and keep tweaking until the process is as efficient as possible.

There’s a lot you can do to improve revenue from mobile, but it all starts with a mobile-first mindset. When it comes to reviewing your own efforts, turn off your computer and pull out your phone. The more you do this, the faster the transition will occur, and the sooner your order volume on mobile will really start to explode.

Crave more? If you like what you read here, look for the "Subscribe now" box on the right to enter your email address and start receiving weekly tips, like this, delivered straight to your email inbox. RCI's Tip of the Week blog is just one of the many resources we offer to help candy makers refine their craft and build upon their business and marketing practices.

Not a member? Click here to learn how RCI can help you build your sweet business.

Tip #306: Optimize Your E-Commerce Experience

Looking for answers to these questions? Keep reading as RCI member, Theresa Packard with CommerceV3, offers answers and actionable strategies to start implementing in your business immediately.

HOW DO I BEST OPTIMIZE MY WEBSITE?

Optimizing your site should be done based on site metrics and usability, as well as site speed. I'll address how to analyze your site metrics and usability with regards to conversion, but for now, let's cover the bases of site speed.

If your site is not operating at an optimum speed, it may appear to be missing a few pieces to the puzzle. Measuring the site speed on your homepage and top category pages will allow to see if there are images or other code that could be significantly slowing your site.

Many site speed tools such as Google Page Speed Insights, WebPageTest and Pingdom, are free. A site is considered slow if it takes longer than three seconds to load. After running the site speed tools, you may find the top culprits that can affect website speed are often large images that need optimized, script that can be loaded at the bottom of the page versus the top of the page, and additional redirects on the page.

INCREASING CONVERSION RATES

This is the million-dollar question— how to convert browsers into purchasers? When consulting clients, I have found the best place to start is to ask a series of questions. The following questions can help you identify any barriers that may be affecting your conversion rate.

What do your analytics tell you?

The first thing I tell all retailers is to take a look at their analytics (we use Google analytics) to see if there are parts of your site that show the best conversion and parts that show the worst. How do you get more out of the things that show high conversion and high dollars? What’s wrong with the worst parts? Is there something on that landing page acting as a barrier?

Are your customers getting lost?

Are there places on your site where customers may be getting lost? Do they have to think about their journey through your site or is it intuitive? If you have a customer service agent, this may be a good person to ask, since they’re likely the one fielding questions about how to navigate your site. If not, try asking a loyal customer about their experience on your site.

Can customers easily find the products they want through search and navigation?

When a customer reaches the product page, how easy is it for them to see the pricing, count or size and, then, add their products to the cart? A shortage of important details like these is a common pitfall, that can quickly turn potential customers away.

Are there product reviews on your site?

Many online shoppers make purchasing decisions based on other customers’ reviews. Be sure your website has a user-friendly reviews program.

Have you tried to checkout on your own site?

When moving through the shopping cart to checkout, how easy is it for a customer to proceed through each step? We suggest making clear, well-defined steps through checkout. Make sure customers can easily enter shipping and billing information and also have certain already-known fields pre-entered (such as their email address and shipping information when logged in). To help with ease of checkout, offer alternative payment methods like PayPal, Amazon, Apple Wallet, Visa Checkout and etc.— these are especially useful for individuals shopping on mobile devices.

There's a lot you can do to optimize your website and improve your conversion rates, sometimes the best way to identify hang ups is by test driving your site on a regular basis.

Crave more? If you like what you read here, look for the "Subscribe now" box on the right to enter your email address and start receiving weekly tips, like this, delivered straight to your email inbox. RCI's Tip of the Week blog is just one of the many resources we offer to help candy makers refine their craft and build upon their business and marketing practices.

Tip #158: Break Into the Corporate Gift Market

Providing corporate gifts is a competitive game. Not only are there other local merchants competing to be the gift of choice for your local businesses, but you are in competition with the best in the world. The internet has given local businesses the world at the end of their fingertips. You are competing with the likes of Harry and David, Amazon, Wine Country Gifts, Godiva, Pro-Flowers, 1-800-Flowers, and hundreds of other internet gift companies. You are in competition with all of the above for the budget corporations have set aside for gift giving.

To even compete with these corporate giants you must portray a professional image to your targeted corporate client. This includes your company image, product and packaging. If you are designing an advertising piece it must reflect the same quality as the customer you are attempting to lure to your product. More than likely they will also shop your website. Go to your webpage and see if you are on the same level as your competition. This starts with professional graphics, photography and presentation. You must appeal to their eyes before they even try your product.

 

Running a small business is no easy task. As we know, we live, eat, and sleep our businesses. However, one of the best ways to increase your corporate business is through community involvement. Rub elbows with the decision makers in your area. Join Rotary, Kiwanis, Chamber of Commerce, or civic boards, and attend events and fundraisers. This is no quick fix, but as you get to know more people in your area, many of these decision makers will think about buying from you personally more than just your company. My father always said “sell yourself and they will buy your product.”

This is an excerpt from Kettle Talk, 2nd Quarter 2013, page 12. Click here to view full article on corporate gift giving (including tips on personalized gifts) written by Terry Hicklin of Candy House Gourmet Chocolates in Joplin. Images are the property of Candy House Gourmet.