New Tools to Improve the Look of Your Store
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Your storefront is the first thing that your potential shoppers see and it is vitally important that it gives the impression to your shoppers that you are an upstanding, professional business who cares about your clientele. It is also important to give the impression that you have a solid, established base of pleased customers. With this in mind, the Version 9.03 gives you tools to help convey that vital first impression to your potential shoppers. As we've discussed in past newsletter articles, the 9.03 has an incredible wealth of new features which can help boost your business in many ways. For example, check out last month's article on tips to stimulate your business using the new 9.03 features, or January's article which is an overview of many of the important new features. This article focuses on the 9.03 storefront features and how they can be used to deliver a stellar impression to your shoppers. An important aspect that has great potential to inspire confidence in new visitors to your site is whether or not your site has had other shoppers and visitors in the past. If the new visitor gets the impression that you have several happy shoppers who have completed purchases with you, then they will be much more likely to continue exploring your website and possibly completing a transaction. How can you give this impression? One way to inspire this good impression is to utilize the new Testimonials on the home page capability. 9.03 has the ability to display your shopper testimonials on the home page. This gives the testimonials a more prominent placement which your shoppers are much more likely to notice. In a nutshell, here's how the testimonials work. A shopper clicks on the testimonials link on your website. They are brought to a page where they can type a comment about their experience on your website. You are then sent an e-mail alerting you that a shopper has left a testimonial. At this point, the testimonial is not yet visible on your store. Before the testimonial becomes visible on your site, you must grant your permission to display the testimonial on your store. If this testimonial meets your approval, then you will click the Display on Site checkbox. The testimonials will now be displayed on your home page as well as on the testimonials page. Below is close-up example of some testimonials that may be displayed on your home page:
Here is what the entire page will look like. Notice that the testimonials are situated in the left column.
Notice the first testimonial, which was left by a shopper named Bill Thompson. Since the text that he left is longer than the maximum allowed for the home page testimonials, a read more link is provided. After clicking on this link, the shopper will be taken to the testimonials page. On this page, the shopper can read the rest of Bill Thompson's comments as well as any more testimonials that are left on your site. The testimonials displayed on the home page offer a snapshot of the first three testimonials on your site. The shopper is provided with the read more links which direct them to the page that contains a complete list of testimonials as shown below:
Now that your site has the important capability to display your testimonials on the home page, your shoppers will be much more likely to gain the impression that you have a solid base of satisfied customers. This perception will greatly aid in your efforts to add to your client base. For more information on how to market using testimonials, read our Marketing with Testimonials article. Another important new feature which can greatly increase the vitality of your business is the fantastic new 9.03 storefront feature product reviews. The product review feature is perfectly suited to increase the perception that you have a solid client base. This feature allows shoppers to display a star rating of a product and also displays their comments about that product. Just like the testimonial feature, you have the complete control over which product reviews to display on your site. Choosing to display positive reviews on your website will definitely increase the perception that you have had many happy shoppers and will contribute to the sense of trustworthiness of your business in the eyes of potential new shoppers. For more information on how product reviews work, see our 9.03 features article or view our manual page on product reviews. Both of the features mentioned so far not only help inspire confidence in new shoppers by showing them the positive opinions of others, but they also give you features which are common on large retailer websites. The presence of these familiar features on your site will greatly improve the impression your business makes on Web surfers and prospective buyers. The more your site offers that are similar to major retailer offerings, the better you look. With that in mind, we have put a lot of effort in this 9.03 release to improve one of the most important pages on your site - the checkout page. 9.03 offers the new one-page checkout, which will streamline the checkout process and make it much more fluid and easy for your shoppers to complete their transactions. Take a look at the image below for a depiction of our new one-page checkout:
Notice that all of the necessary information is contained in one page. In fact, the only thing a returning shopper will need to do to complete their purchase is enter their three-digit credit card validation and click one button - Purchase! If the shopper has a coupon or gift certificate, they can enter these directly on this page without the need to go to a separate location. With the addition of this feature, there is no need for the Quick Checkout link, so with 9.03 this link is not available. The consolidation of this page greatly increases its ease of use and will most likely result in a greater frequency of completed transactions. Also, your shoppers will appreciate the ease and quickness with which they were able to complete their purchase. Notice in the image above that the bottom of the page contains a count of site visitors. 9.03 gives you the capability to set the number of this counter. While the site counter is designed to allow you to keep track of the number of hits your site receives, it is also a good indication to your shoppers how many times others have visited your website. Keep in mind that it is not necessary to start your counter at zero. Since you now have the ability to change the number of the visitor counter, consider setting this number to something higher, such as 5,000. In the image above, notice that the counter displays 5,394. In this case, you will know that your site has 394 visitors, but the number 5,394 will inspire much more confidence in your shoppers than 394. One more thing you may have noticed in the above image is the logo in the left column which says Secured by GeoTrust - Secure SSL Encryption. Since your Version 9 eCommerce website offers secure encryption, why not display this fact to your shoppers? 9.03 offers the capability to display this logo on all secure pages. This familiar and well-known logo will surely inspire confidence in your shoppers. These are only a few of the many features that have been added to your storefront with our latest release. In addition to these, your storefront is also equipped with social networking features, product zooming, product FAQ's, tag cloud as well as many more features and enhancements. For more information on these exciting new features, check out our article The Upcoming 9.03 eCommerce Release is Packed with New Features as well as the article The Upcoming 9.03 Tools Give you Even More Ways to Stimulate your Business. Keep in mind that maintaining a good impression on your storefront should be an ongoing effort. Repeat shoppers will want to see that your site is active and that your content is updated regularly. Stay tuned for future articles on additional ways to keep your shoppers interested and sustain the vitality of your website. 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. As always, if you have any questions please contact Technical Support via e-mail at techsupport@emerchantclub.com by going to Live Chat Technical Support at http://www.emerchantclub.com/support.html or by calling (877) 384-4691. Thank you, Your eMerchantClub Team
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