5 Easy Ways to Stimulate your Business with the Help of your Site Manager Tools
Click here to return to main contents page
Your Version 9 eCommerce site offers a multitude of versatile tools that can be used in many ways to improve your shoppers’ experience and your overall business. This article describes 5 simple ways to use a few of these tools in ways that can lead to increased sales and happier customers. Gift cards Gift cards can be an effective tool in motivating shoppers to provide their information or to make a purchase on your site. Your website has the option of including a Join Mailing List link in your navigation bar. When that link is clicked, the shopper is taken to a page where they can sign up for your mailing list. If the person who signed up for your mailing list adds a physical mailing address, then consider sending them a postcard with a gift card attached. A postcard can be inexpensively printed at a local printer or a web-based printer such as VistaPrint. A lot of web-based printing services provide easy-to-use tools you can use to design a simple postcard. The card can be something as simple as your business name in a nice font on the top with a sentence below it, such as, “Please accept this $10 gift card and feel free to shop at your leisure at [the domain name of your site]”. Here is an example of what the postcard may look like. Notice that a gift card is pasted into the center of the postcard:
Alternatively, if the potential shopper provided only an e-mail address and not a physical mailing address, you can send an e-mail which contains similar wording. Adding the gift card ID to the e-mail can be just as effective as pasting a physical gift card to a postcard. To inform the shopper that they will receive a free gift card for joining your mailing list, you can enter text on the join mailing list page which explains your offer. To enter this text, go to Appearance > Store Profile > Mailing List Registration in your Site Manager. In addition, consider offering a free gift card of perhaps $25 to any shopper who spends more than $30 on your site (or any other amount of your choosing). Remember, a $25 gift card costs you only around 1/3 of that price. If this motivates a shopper to spend more than $30 on your site, then you have definitely profited. By sending a $25 gift card to a registered shopper who has made a purchase on your site, you are showing that you care about their repeat business. You are also giving the impression that you are attentive to your clientele. Promotions on your Home Page The use of price promotions on your website is an extremely effective method to motivate shoppers to make purchases. The more visible you make the promotion, the greater the chance that a shopper will take advantage of that offer. There are several ways to make your promotions more visible on your site. For example, if you have a Version 9 site, then you have 10 layouts which have a built-in place to display your active price promotions. With layouts 76 through 85, you can display your active promotions on your home page through the settings on Appearance > Customize Storefront > Modules on Home Page. An example is shown below. On this particular layout (layout 80 default theme) the promotion on the home page appears above the featured products section near the top of the page:
You can also utilize the home page text to announce your promotions. Most layouts have a section on the home page on which you can add customized text. This text can be added in your Site Manager in Appearance > Store Profile > Store Name, Home Page Intro, Store Directory. This section contains an easy-to-use html editor. You can use the html editor to specify certain colors and sizes for the text that you add here. Another place to announce your promotions is on the bottom text section. Whereas the other sections mentioned only display on the home page, the bottom text displays on every page. Increased visibility of promotions on your site is a great way to make your potential shoppers’ experience more friendly. This reduces their need to hunt for discounts on your site, and increases the chances that they will find the promotions you are offering. Featured Departments You can use the featured departments functionality on the Version 9 layouts (layouts 76 through 85) to increase the visibility of certain departments on your site. This section can be used on its own or along with the method mentioned above to increase the visibility of discounts on your site. Another way you might use the Featured Department functionality is to place seasonal or holiday-related departments in this section depending on the time of year. Below is an example of how your home page might look after implementing these two ideas:
Home Page Items Many of the layouts offer the ability to add Featured Items on the home page. This feature is available on layout 66 and above. There are many great ways to utilize this section of the home page. For example, in the spirit of increasing promotion and discount visibility, you can use the home page items section to display your discounted items. Similar to what was discussed earlier with the featured departments, you can also use this section to place seasonal or brand new items. The header on this section can be customized with your own wording. Consider adding wording such as On Sale this Week Only! After adding this wording, place some new items on which you have manually reduced the prices. Each week, you can change the products which are featured here. Downloadable eCatalog While this feature is activated on your site, you have the ability to download your eCatalog into a digital format which can be used to market your site. This feature gives you the ability to carry your entire product line on a CD which can be labeled with your business name and logo. For more information on the uses of this feature, click here to read a newsletter article dedicated to this subject. Many of the tips mentioned in this article help to increase the visibility of certain products and departments. In addition to this, many of these tips will help to keep the content of your site fresh and non-static. This contributes to the sense that your site is up to date and live. Refreshing the content of your site is a recommended practice by search engines, and sites with live content are more likely to get a better ranking in search engines. It is important to know the functionality of your site and how these features can be used to benefit your business. The ideas mentioned in this article are only a few simple ways to increase the chances of making sales on your site. Feel free to experiment and try different combinations and methods that work for your needs. Also, this article only covered the tools which are currently available on Version 9 sites. As you may have read in last month’s newsletter article, we have several new features upcoming on our Version 9.03 release which will offer many more exciting ways to stimulate your business such as product reviews, abandoned shopping cart promotions, social networking features, and much more! The second article in this month's newsletter discusses ideas to stimulate your business using the upcoming 9.03 features. If you do not have a Version 9 or if your site does not include some of the mentioned features, give us a call at (888) 806-2081 for information on getting these features.
Thank you, Your eMerchantClub Team
Give us your opinion on this article by filling out the survey below:
|
