5 Reasons Why People Aren’t Buying from Your Website
Did you know that 7 out of every 10 customers that start a shopping cart process fail to complete it?
Any online retailer or ecommerce website owner will know that cart abandonment is the one of the most frustrating parts of business.
The reasons why website visitors abandon shopping carts haven’t changed significantly over the years.
According to a recent study by Forrester, there are 5 reasons why visitors abandon their shopping cart, they include:
- Shipping and handling costs were too high
- I was not ready to purchase the product
- I wanted to compare prices on other sites
- Product price was higher than I was willing to pay
- Just wanted to save products in my cart for later consideration
What’s interesting is that all of the top five reasons for abandoned shopping carts have nothing to do with the checkout process itself. This is good news for website developers; there is no need to overhaul your shopping cart or the checkout process.
Let’s take a look at each abandon reason and how I believe you can combat it:
1. Shipping and handling costs were too high
The simple answer: Offer free shipping or make your shipping costs lower than your competitors. Chances are if your visitor wasn’t happy with your shipping costs then they will have chosen your competitor who offers the cheapest shipping.
2. I was not ready to purchase the product
Unfortunately this is a hard one to combat because it is out of your control. But you can influence the visitor by sending them a reminder email or a quick phone call to remind them of the items they left in the shopping cart. We send out an abandon email 2 days after a shopping cart has been abandon just to act as a reminder.
3. I wanted to compare prices on other sites
I’m sure you do this also when looking to make an online purchase, so what makes you buy from a particular store? The price, of course. Give the visitor a reason to stop shopping around by offering them a discount only valid for a limited time.
4. Product price was higher than I was willing to pay
Unfortunately, this is all too common. Like reason three above, offer the visitor a discount before they leave your website. It might take as little as a 10% discount to get them over the line.
5. Just wanted to save products in my cart for later consideration
This is good news, they haven’t actually abandoned for good. A simple reminder email or phone call could be all it takes to get them to purchase those products sitting in their cart.
Rene recently compiled a list of resources to improve your websites shopping cart conversion including links to other blog posts, videos, slide shows and more. The resource list is very comprehensive, so I would strongly recommend checking it out if your shopping cart conversion could do with a boost.
7 Hot SEO Tips For The Holiday Season Get Started Now!
You might think it’s too early to be thinking Holiday season marketing strategies, but consider these looming dates (as at 25th Oct 2010):
- 32 Days til Black Friday Nov 26th 2010 the official start of the holiday sales rush
- 35 days til Cyber Monday Nov 29th 2010 when online sales kick into over drive
- 60 days til Christmas Day Dec 25th 2010 End of the pre-Xmas sales rush
- 61 days til Boxing Day Dec 26th 2010 Start of the post Xmas sales
- 68 days til New Years Day 1st Jan 2010 The new year already
So while you might think all this talk of holiday sales is premature when you look at the numbers you’re quickly running out of time.
And this year the Google trend looks set to continue with record amounts of activity going to be driven by Google searches for products and gifts.
For you to be leveraging Google for free holiday season search traffic, you probably should have already started your SEO campaign. But if you haven’t, don’t despair Here are 7 hot tips to help you get your Google ranking strategy on track quickly.
1. Product Page Content and Titles
If your website isn’t new, your product pages probably have some SEO value already. So it’s a great time to leverage the SEO strength you have. Ensure all your product page optimization (titles, tags, keyword density etc) is up to scratch.
2. Create New Holiday Focused Product Content
The holiday period increases the search volume of seasonal keywords such as gifts, deals, presents, best buys etc.
There are often advantages to creating new pages or content on your site with a focus on these keywords. You can do this by creating new holiday specific pages (e.g. Christmas specials page) with optimized URLs, titles and page content, or even my posting new content on your site’s blog again optimized accordingly.
3. Holiday Season Product Media
Optimization of product media such as images and video can be a quick way to gain fast SEO results as it’s often under optimized by competitors. When people are looking for products; images and videos can be an important part of their buying decision, so make sure all your media has keyword rich file names and media tags (e.g. alt tags).
4. Internal Linking Strategy
If you have pages on your website that contain your strongest selling holiday season products it’s important to use internal linking to help bolster these pages. Where possible link to these pages from your other high ranking pages to give them a PR boost.
5. Link Maintenance
While building up valuable links can take time to produce ranking improvements, it’s important to ensure the links you already have pointing to your website are in good working order. Things to consider include:
- Fix broken links
- Ensure link text is optimized for the product related keywords
- Ensure links are point to the right pages
6. Content Marketing
When you’re looking for fast organic results, sometimes its better to leverage the existing ranking strength of other sites.
Content syndication sites are great for this such as article and press release sites. Create some keyword rich product related content and post it on these with links back to your site and products.
7. Google Place Local Listing Optimization
If you have a bricks and mortar business, there are huge holiday season SEO opportunities in your Google Places (aka Google Local) listings.
Now is the time to ensure your listing has a good list of the products you offer, any deals or discounts available and other important buying information.
Time is of the essence when it comes to these strategies. The quicker you get started, the morelikely they will generate results for you leading up to the holiday sales rush.
If you have any other handy SEO tips that product quick results for the holiday season, share them with your fellow readers below.
Yahoo! Plans to Mimic Facebook with Y Connect
Apparently Yahoo! wants to be the next Facebook! According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! will be launching a social networking feature this fall called ‘Y Connect’ which it hopes will drive more traffic to its site.
Sources say that Y Connect not only mimics the look but also the strategy of Facebook Connect to attract more traffic.
With a dipping revenue graph and dwindling number of advertisers, this move does not come as a big surprise. If successful, Y Connect Could help fill in the financial void while getting much needed traffic to Yahoo’s sites.
The Wall Street Journals Amir Efrati said “With Y Connect, users could register with and log into media sites simply by clicking on a Yahoo button. Then, users’ activity on the media site can easily be shared with contacts on Yahoo. Content on non-Yahoo sites would be shared via Yahoo Pulse, a hub connected to Yahoo Mail accounts.â€
Y Connect will attempt to replicate Facebook’s marketing tactic of allowing internet advertisers, web developers and third party sites to track the internet activities of users that correlates to their service/product on the web and tailor advertising for these profiles.
The graph below shows why Yahoo! would be so desperate to try something new.
Yahoo! is in a battle with Facebook and Google for share of the display ad market. Both sites recently overtook Yahoo! in the number of minutes people spend on their sites per month.
So far, the only confirmed Y Connect partner is the Huffington Post, which for Yahoo! is great news. The HuffingtonPost.com is one of the biggest sites on the internet, so if its owners are happy with the success, then Yahoo! should find it easy to persuade other publishers in the future.
While there has been no official announcement from Yahoo!, it is expected that Y Connect will be formally announced and launched this fall in the US.
Though the product looks promising one does wonder if 500 million users of Facebook are really interested in trying out something similar from a not so popular service provider. What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts below.
Yahoo! Plans to Mimic Facebook with Y Connect
Apparently Yahoo! wants to be the next Facebook! According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! will be launching a social networking feature this fall called ‘Y Connect’ which it hopes will drive more traffic to its site.
Sources say that Y Connect not only mimics the look but also the strategy of Facebook Connect to attract more traffic.
With a dipping revenue graph and dwindling number of advertisers, this move does not come as a big surprise. If successful, Y Connect Could help fill in the financial void while getting much needed traffic to Yahoo’s sites.
The Wall Street Journals Amir Efrati said “With Y Connect, users could register with and log into media sites simply by clicking on a Yahoo button. Then, users’ activity on the media site can easily be shared with contacts on Yahoo. Content on non-Yahoo sites would be shared via Yahoo Pulse, a hub connected to Yahoo Mail accounts.â€
Y Connect will attempt to replicate Facebook’s marketing tactic of allowing internet advertisers, web developers and third party sites to track the internet activities of users that correlates to their service/product on the web and tailor advertising for these profiles.
The graph below shows why Yahoo! would be so desperate to try something new.
Yahoo! is in a battle with Facebook and Google for share of the display ad market. Both sites recently overtook Yahoo! in the number of minutes people spend on their sites per month.
So far, the only confirmed Y Connect partner is the Huffington Post, which for Yahoo! is great news. The HuffingtonPost.com is one of the biggest sites on the internet, so if its owners are happy with the success, then Yahoo! should find it easy to persuade other publishers in the future.
While there has been no official announcement from Yahoo!, it is expected that Y Connect will be formally announced and launched this fall in the US.
Though the product looks promising one does wonder if 500 million users of Facebook are really interested in trying out something similar from a not so popular service provider. What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts below.
Searchers Given More Control in Google Local Search
Google recently made a notable change to local search to give users more relevant results.
Google has added a “change location” link to the left panel on its search results pages, providing an accurate location setting so users can find more local businesses in their area.
This feature has been launched across the globe in 40 different languages and will be available to all Google users world wide very soon.
Google made the announcement on its blog, with the following statement:
Today we’re moving your location setting to the left-hand panel of the results page to make it easier for you to see and control your preferences. With this new display you’re still getting the same locally relevant results as before, but now it’s much easier for you to see your location setting and make changes to it.
For example, if you are about to travel to Sydney and you want to find the closest pizza restaurant to your hotel, simply type in the city or zip code and Google will adjust the search results based on that location. However, just in case Google fails to locate you correctly you can make changes in the settings on the left hand side of the search page.
There have been no changes to the back-end of location-based search, but Google has obviously noticed the widespread use of GPS mobile searches and the consequent role of location on local search results. This is likely the reason behind moving this feature out from its hiding place in “view customizations†to make it a prominent eye catcher on the front page of the search result page.
While this is only a minor change, the move of former VP of search, Marissa Mayer, to manager of Google’s geo/local products shows that Google thinks local search will be a major growth area.
Do you think this latest change will get more Google searchers to utilize location in their searches? Feel free to share your thoughts below.
Google Search Gets a Social Boost
According to Microsoft “search is not just about the connections between data but also about the connection between people.” Now it appears that Google has taken a leap in the same direction.
Google is reportedly tapping into your social network search results (search results on Twitter, Google Buzz and other popular social networking sites) and integrating them into their own search result pages.
It is being called as Google Social which will display buttons like “recent updates†and “Shared By†on their search result pages.
Google social results will appear something like “shared by 20+” below each search result. Here is an example of how it will appear:
Image Credit: Search Engine Land
Clicking on the ‘Shared by’ link will take the you to a Google’s Real Time search page which will show other users who are sharing the same piece of news on their social pages (twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more) even if these people aren’t in your direct network.
The “recent updates’ box appears in a blue box underneath the Google News section in the search results.
Image Credit: Search Engine Land
By clicking on the link you will be shown what others are saying on social networks about the search topic.
Google isn’t the only search engine to go down the social path recently. Just last week Bing starting including social updates from the users Facebook account on their search result page. Results for name queries and what your friends across the web just liked will now appear in a separate box below the search result.
Earlier this month Google was reportedly testing something similar with Twitter, where in the Google News results you could see updates from your Twitter friends only.
It’s not yet known if these features will be automatically implemented in all search results or even if you can turn them off. When we find out more, we will be sure to let you know.
We want to know what you think: do you like these new social features or are you likely to turn them off if they’re automatically implemented? Let us know in the comments below.
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