Monday, July 22, 2013

Learn the secrets of a successful website - webinar - Bigcommerce Paypal July 2013

KEY TAKEAWAYS - "Learn the secrets of a successful website" - Webinar by Bigcommerce & Paypal.  23 July 2013

Key intakes from Troy Cox, Bigcommerce Australia

  • Create and launch a clean and modern website and homepage.
  • 90.000 australian websites using Paypal.
  • 37.000 merchants using Bigcommerce. They have learned what works well when selling online.
  • Ensure it showcase your brand your image. Make it easy and simple. homepage is the first impression of your website: . Not too cluttered.
  • Be careful when running multiple promotions. Put them in a carousel on homepage. The less promotions the more you convert. Imagine you enter into a shop and 6 sales assistant comes to you to sell you different products.
  • Make your website easy to navigate. Categorize your products on few categories.
  • Get a fresh perspective of your homepage. Run your website on different browsers and mobile phones and see how your homepage looks. It should be nice and clean.
  • Successful website have great product images. As people are not able to touch the product and really feel it, you need to have your products images from different angles. This will help improve conversions. The bigger the images, the less likely people will return your products. Bailey Nelson is a great example for nice, big, beautiful product images from several angles. They also have images of key features of the product: hinges.
  • Videos to drive engagement: Videos have a profound impact on conversions. it is not just about getting more visitors into shoppers. Videos allow to add value and get users to connect with your brand. Videos allow to lift that level of trust with your shoppers and visitors. People prefer to buy from companies they trust. You can showcase how your products work with other products. Video content can help you build that trust by showcasing the features, how products are being used or general information videos: how returns wok, how shipping work.
  • You do not have to be an expert videographer. Troy encouraged people to start with your smartphone and create videos to your products. Yeti coolers is a nice website that fully use videos to promote and educate users about their coolers. They use videos to help customers understand the capabilities and richness of of their products.
  • Product reviews: apart from increasing sales and conversions; it adds a "Social proof", that validation that a product is good, that works well. People start to distrust company product reviews so reviews have to actually be genuine. Customers like to see the both sides of the story. Product reviews are great for search engine optimisation SEO as products reviews are unique, timely and relevant content Google bot likes it. 
  • Social sharing is another advantage of product reviews. Allows people to add on reviews on social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.
  • Abandoned shopping carts: For many reasons people will abandon your shopping cart. (more than 70% of shopping carts are abandoned and within that 70%, 75% of those actually intended to buy. Reasons for abandonment:
  • Shipping costs: People do not like paying for shipping costs. Solution: offer free free shipping.
  • There is no guest check out: Some people do not want to create that "register" relationship. Solution: create a guest check out option.
  • Takes too long: do not ask questions you can ask later on. Questions like gender, others. 
  • Not having enough payment options: allow for different payment options. Add Paypal Express option. That will help you increase conversion. Bump my lock added Paypal Express and allowed them to increase conversion by 20%. Not bad.
  • Abandon Cart Saver: it is a great piece of software detects when a shopper abandon your cart and sends an email to shopper to invite them to comeback to site and complete purchase. Often there is a some sort of promotion to entice users to complete their shopping. Merchants can specify some rules and setting when using it such as offer limited time discounts (creating that scarcity of time), offer free shipping or any general offer.  A case study presented was Night Gear which recovered around 8.000 sales that otherwise have been lost by using the Abandon Cart Saver. I would have liked to know the average open and click through rates for those automated emails.

Key intakes from Dan Woodall, Paypal

  • Sounded like a product pitch requesting website owners to get Paypal logo on all key pages of your website.
  • Dan mentioned Paypal is the third most trusted brand in Australia and that four million people in Australia use it. would like to know the sources for those claims.
  • Mobile 1 in 4 transactions are done on a mobile phone. Create mobile versions of your key pages. Paypal already offers a mobile optimised payment process.
  • Cart abandonment: 70% of people abandon carts. In 2102 paypal conducted studies and a/b testing and some tips are:
  • Make sure paypal logo is prominent and visible. Leverage that Paypal brand trust.
  • Add Paypal on your product pages (smooth, easy, safe transaction with paypal)
  • Express checkout Paypal integration. It pulls customer payment and shipping details information.
  • Make it clear that you have Paypal Express option. It can increase up to 4% conversions.
  • Express Checkout: make sure you customised your Paypal Express Checkout flow with your logo and brand visuals.
  • Do not charge additional fees.
Key Intakes from Jonathon Allara, BicyclesOnline.com.au
  • Using Bigcommerce and Paypal has been beneficial.
  • Improve Customer Value proposition: improvements to supply chain, product quality, service and delivery.
  • Website started with very small range of bicycles, as they started to evolve, they presented more range and more features on the website.
  • Bicycles online uses analytical tools to help understand better users and customers: Visual Website Optimiser, Kampyle (Feedback form tool) Google Analytics and other tools.
  • Google Analytics: E-commerce reporting, goal reporting, conversion funnel reporting.
  • Visual website optimiser has helped bicycles online to create different variations of a page and run A/B testing in order to optimising conversions.
  • Bigcommerce search data has been also useful for bicycles online.
  • The Google on-page analytics tools helped bicycles online to know what call to actions features on homepage were not really fully utilised and they would have liked to. 
  • Results were improving the homepage and added some key call to actions on the header of the website( email, phone number, live chat).
  • Humanising the website has also been great. Adding images of people and employees and the key reasons why bicycles online sell just one brand.
  • Product pages have also been a/b tested. Bicyles Online added video content to each product page. This new video content resulted on a 60% increase on conversions by having this addition on product pages. it has also been created more trust, local feel and credibility.
  • They have also been using video to better communicate how the service works.
NEXT:
  • Call Mauricio - Digital Marketing, Social Media &  SEO Consultant Sydney on +61481 367 711
  • Check Mauricio Escobar Mármol LinkedIn profile.
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  • If you like the above embed Real time Australia hot searches box you can embed it on your blog or website by using the below iframe: <iframe frameborder="650" height="650" src="//hawttrends.appspot.com/?r=3&amp;c=3&amp;p=8" width="600"></iframe>
Happy Tuesday and thank you Bigcommerce and Paypal for the invite to this great webinar.

Mauricio Escobar Mármol
Director +eDigital 

About Mauricio
Mauricio Escobar Mármol (BBsMn & MCom) is eDigital Sydney SEO Consultant, Social and Digital Media Specialist. Mauricio posses over 10 years experience helping companies to earn new customers and prolong customer lifetime value by effective execution of structured Digital Marketing strategies and executions. Mauricio worked as Digital Marketing Manager for some of Australia's most visited websites. Mauricio expertise focuses on Website Optimisation, Social Media, SEO/Networks Acquisition Strategies (SEO, SEM, Affiliates, Display) and vendor reviews.