Nexternal Solutions eCommerce Blog – eCommerce News Articles

Google Base is a searchable online marketplace that consumers use to find and compare specific products. While this powerful tool is free and should be used by all who sell online, merchants need to be aware of changes that Google is instituting so that buyers are presented with a more complete picture of the true purchase cost. Although Google doesn’t yet include sales tax and shipping costs in its results pages, it certainly looks as if they are going to include this information soon. Merchants need to modify their Google Base settings to prepare for this change.

Within the Google Base control panel, merchants can now click on “Settings” and select the new “Tax & Shipping” tab to specify the appropriate value calculations. Shipping and tax calculations can take on complex forms and while Google’s settings aren’t going to accommodate every merchant, they should accommodate most.

Sales tax estimates can be set at the zip code level, state level or set to none. When set at the zip code level, Google uses the same sales tax database that Nexternal subscribes to which is owned by Tax Data Systems.

Shipping costs calculations are a bit more complicated. One option is to quote real-time shipping rates. This is the actual shipping rate that the carrier charges the merchant to deliver the package to the recipient. However, in order for Google to calculate the rate, it must first know the weights of the individual products. The merchant’s data feed should be updated accordingly to include weight if a merchant is to use that option. Shipping costs can also be set to a flat rate or set to vary based on price, weight, or number of items ordered.

While it’s impossible to predict exactly when Google will display the information and make it useful, the fact that they updated the merchant interface to include these settings leads one to believe it will happen soon. Taking 5 minutes to configure these settings will not only provide shoppers with the most complete information, it can also keep merchants one step ahead of the competition.

If you have been selling online for quite some time, it might be time to take a closer look at your payment processing statement. If you can make sense of it, you are in the minority. Many processors issue complicated statements which can work to their advantage. After all, it’shard to argue with something that you don’t fully understand. The purpose of this article is to help you make sense of your statement. When armed with knowledge, you’ll be better prepared to get the best rates.

First take a close look at the Visa and MasterCard charges. You’ll likely notice that charges for the month are broken down into three categories; Qualified, Mid-qualified, and Non-qualified. If you crunch the numbers for each category, you’ll notice that the discount rate that you are paying is significantly different for each (be sure to crunch the numbers, many merchant account statements don’t display their mid and non-qualified rates). A non-qualified rate might be 2 percentage points higher than a qualified rate! Why are they different? The type of credit card a customer has will cost the merchant different amounts. Have you ever wondered how credit card companies can afford to give people airline miles, cash back, or other rewards? The answer may startle you, but you as the merchant are picking up much of those costs. For example, a credit card that allows customers to redeem rewards may fall into the mid-qualified category. Corporate or foreign credit cards will likely fall into the non-qualified grouping (the most expensive one).

So what can you do about this as an online merchant? Since you can’t control the type of cards your customers use, not much. To make things more frustrating, it’s also likely that you have no way of knowing which transactions fall into which category anyway. However, you can utilize this knowledge when shopping around for rates. Most merchant account companies are going to advertise their qualified rates (the lowest ones). A wise merchant will compare not only qualified rates, but mid-qualified and non-qualified rates as well. Rewards cards have gained in popularity for obvious reasons so your mid-qualified rate is likely more important than your qualified rate. If you are mostly conducting business to business ecommerce, it’s likely that most of your transactions will fall into the non-qualified grouping which means you really need to get the best non-qualified rate. Before shopping around rates take a look and see what percentage of your transactions fall into each rate type.

Now, take a look at your American Express statement (typically a completely separate statement). American Express is actually much simpler. You are likely paying one standard rate on all transactions. Merchants obtain an account directly from American Express so shopping around for a better rate is not going to provide much benefit. The only fee you may be able to negotiate is the per transaction fee which is determined by your gateway and online merchant account provider. If you are doing any kind of volume, this amount is probably less significant, but you should find out what the transaction fee is to fairly compare providers.

If you haven’t ever compared rates from different merchant account providers, now is a good time to do so. Getting a better plan in place before the holidays can really impact your bottom line for the year. One of Nexternal’s partners is currently offering a free cost analysis to those that are interested. Simply fill out this form
to see how you can save money.

When Facebook launched it was only available to college students. In the last year things have changed dramatically. People of all ages are finding Facebook and quickly realizing that it is a great way to connect with friends, both old and new. Facebook makes it easy to keep friends abreast of what is going on in your life. Facebook users love to specify information about themselves such as interests, employment, where they went to school, and even their current relationship status. This amounts to a marketers dream!

Other online marketing channels offer some level of demographic targeting preference, but not nearly to the degree of Facebook. Let’s say that I am an online wine retailer. I can specify that I want my ad to show only to people that specify that they have an interest in “wine tasting” or “drinking wine”. Better yet, let’s say that you find most of your customers are over the age of 30. No problem! You can also have your ads show up just to people over the age of 30. Demographic preferences can also be set based on location. If you are selling sun protective products, you might not want to display your ad in the state of Washington during the winter months. If you sell purses, no problem! You can have your ad display only to women. Never before has a marketer had so much control over who sees their ads.

Facebook also gives advertisers the option of paying per click or paying per view. Unless your sole purpose is branding, pay per click probably makes more sense. You only pay when someone clicks your ad and is directed to your landing page (similar to Google Adwords). As with all online marketing channels, it’s important that you have tracking code in place so that you can measure your return on investment from each ad campaign.

Setting up an advertisement in Facebook is easy. Advertisers can specify quite a few lines of copy in their ad (135 Characters) and even include a 110 x 80 pixel image. These ads give you more real estate than your typical Google Adword. Another nice feature is that as you change your audience preferences during the ad creation process, Facebook will show you how many people fit into that particular demographic.

The only frustration you might come across when creating an ad is that not all interests are available and there doesn’t seem to be a suggestion tool. For example, if you tried to create an ad for people interested in “ecommerce” but not enough people have specified “ecommerce” as an interest, you are out of luck. Consequently, it can take some time and brainstorming to come up with interests that are available.

Most online retailers are not yet advertising on social networks. However, that is likely to change soon as people realize the potential opportunity. When you put a compelling ad in front of the right targeted audience, good things are going to happen.

As the internet has evolved over time, marketing to customers via email has become more challenging. People and companies have implemented SPAM filters resulting in fewer messages being delivered to inboxes. When marketing emails are delivered, the messages still need to be opened. Email is obviously a cost effective way to market to existing customers. This begs the question, “How can I get more existing customers to see my email marketing messages?” One way is to put marketing material into order confirmation emails and shipped notification emails (emails that are sent when orders are placed and shipped).

These types of emails have a tendency to get delivered more often. Much of the content is unique (order number, customer’s name, items purchased), making the email less likely to be flagged by a spam filter. Additionally, customers are likely to open these emails to confirm their order has the right contents or to see when a package might be delivered. It’s a good medium to ask for an additional sale.

Should you decide to merchandise additional products in the email, consider putting them below the core data. For example, if a customer receives an email confirming his order, put the promotional copy and/or images below the invoice. Customers don’t want to feel like they are being deceived when opening emails. Also, make sure the email addendum contains links so that it’s easy for customer to get to the products that are being merchandized. Use clean crisp images that will pop and get the customer’s attention.

It’s an unfortunate fact of email marketing that fewer emails are reaching their intended recipients. However, merchants that seize the opportunity to market to their customers upon every touch point will have more success in generating repeat business.

Google recently released a new feature in AdWords called Conversion Optimizer. This new tool simply allows advertisers to specify the maximum they would like to pay for an acquisition or conversion. With that value and by looking at previous conversion history, Google then controls the CPC (cost per click) values for the advertiser.

If your initial reaction to this feature is skeptical, you aren’t alone. Why would you let the company you are paying control how much you are going to pay them per click? Not to mention that fact you may have managed CPC campaigns for years with great success.

After hearing a success story based upon this feature, we decided it was worth a test. In getting started, we looked at our CPA (cost per acquisition) over a specific time period for a popular campaign and used that CPA as a starting point in Conversion Optimizer. We compared four days worth of data in one week to the same four days worth of data in the next week. The results were surprisingly pleasant. Our CPA actually decreased by 36% and our number of acquisitions increased by 49%! We spent less money in total and generated far more conversions. That’s a significant improvement and enough to convince us to leave the feature on.

In a non-testing environment, you might set your max CPA based upon business metrics rather than historical averages. However, if you want to quickly get a gauge whether or not this tool is right for you, setting your CPA based upon historical averages might make sense for a short test. Just because it worked well for us, does not necessarily mean it will work for you. Everyone’s marketing environment is different.

Unfortunately, not every campaign may be eligible for Conversion Optimizer. A campaign must have at least 200 conversions in the last 30 days. It goes without saying that you must also have Google AdWords conversion tracking enabled with your conversion code in the correct place so that Google can measure your conversions properly. In the case of online merchants, this is often the “Thank you for your order” page. Regardless of whether or not you try conversion optimizer, any merchant using AdWords should use conversion tracking. It should also be noted that there are certain features which are not supported when Conversion Optimizer is enabled.

If you find that Conversion Optimizer works well for you, one of the biggest advantages is that you’ll spend significantly less time managing bids. It is no longer possible, nor necessary, to go in and manipulate bids for every keyword. You just set your max CPA for the entire campaign or at the Ad Group level, and let Google take care of the rest.

So why would Google release a feature that has the potential to increase your conversions at a lower cost? Simple, Google AdWords is a marketing vehicle that enables companies to make money. If you spend X amount of money, you should make more than X in return. If one of their client’s cost per conversions goes down, it doesn’t mean they are going to spend less money with Google. In fact, they will likely allocate more of their marketing budget to Google because it is providing very competitive (if not the lowest) CPA of all their marketing channels.

It is widely believed in the search engine optimization community that the title tag is the most important on-page element for obtaining good search engine rankings. Despite this belief, it is amazing how many websites do not include title tags at all on their pages or use non-descriptive title tags such as TheirDomain.com or just the word “Homepage”. Although not thought to be as important, the meta description also plays in important role in obtaining organic traffic. Not surprisingly, many websites fail to include meta descriptions on many or all of their pages.

Loading up the title tag on a web page with relevant keywords and phrases will help that page rank better in the search engine results pages when someone queries those words and phrases. It is also important to keep in mind that most search engines display the title tag in their results as the linkable element. Most search engines will bold keywords in the title if those keywords are used in the active query. This draws the user’s attention to those listings and further increases the chances of a click through.

Before you add every keyword related to your industry into your title tags, you should know that Google will currently only display up to 66 characters in their listings and Yahoo 120 (note: these numbers can change at any time). Also, if the title looks spam to you, it probably also looks like spam to the search engine. If you limit your title tag to less than 120 characters and keep the keyword relevant with the content of the page, it is unlikely that you will have any page penalization problems. Also, consider putting your most important keywords near the beginning of the title tag. As an online retailer, this means putting the brand or manufacturer of the product that you are selling as one of the first keywords in your product detail title tag. Brands are widely searched and ranking well for them can be a boon. Finally, as another best practice, make sure each page on your site has a unique title.

Meta Descriptions are often, but not always used under the linkable portion in the search engine results pages. As with the title tag, it’s a good idea to include many relevant keywords in the description as those are also often bolded by the search engines. Putting compelling copy in your meta descriptions can also increase the likelihood that your result will be clicked. As with title tags, make sure every page on your site has a unique description.

Title tags and meta descriptions are often overlooked because they don’t display in the content area of the browser. Although they are just one piece of a well optimized page, taking the time to add them can have a profound impact on the amount of organic traffic you receive from search engines!

Have you ever been on a website only to ask yourself, “I wonder if the owner of this site has ever visited the site himself?” Obviously this is a question you don’t want your prospective customers asking. In the “old days” of the web, people primarily used two internet browsers, Netscape and Internet Explorer. Many web developers wished that everyone used the same browser, since they often rendered pages differently.

As time has passed, the number of internet browsers used has actually increased. The use of Mozilla’s Firefox has grown rapidly over the last couple of years. As Apple continues to gain significant market share with their operating system the numbers of Safari users is also on the rise. Data from the www.nexternal.com website over the past 30 days showed the following usage:

After looking at this data, it should be clear that aside from viewing your site in Internet Explorer on a Windows machine, it is also important to view your site in Firefox and Safari. Better yet, if you have access to different versions of browsers, check your site on those as well. Although Internet Explorer on Windows is used by the majority of web surfers, usage based on version is still quite fragmented with 64.1% on version 7.0 (IE7) and 36.6% on version 6.0 (IE6). Some code (both proper and improper) may render slightly different in each operating system/browser combination. With some combinations, your site may look unprofessional, causing your customers to lose confidence.

As an online merchant, it’s important to check all pages and not just assume that if your homepage looks okay, the rest of the site will as well. If you purchase products online often, you have no doubt come across the pop-up message, “This page contains secure and non-secure items. Do you wish to display the non-secure items,” upon checking out. Usually such a message means the page is referencing an image or tracking code insecurely while the rest of the page uses the https protocol. Although this message may not bother everyone, to many people this is a red flag and will result in them leaving the site.

Assuming that every customer uses the same operating system and browser as you is unwise. Merchants serious about online sales will often find it time well spent to check their web presence on different platforms with different browsers. Online stores that don’t work well for even 4% of the population are missing sales opportunities. For larger online retailer this can be a significant amount of business lost.

When online merchants evaluate new content management or ecommerce software for their websites, they are often concerned about transitioning from their old website format to a new one. This concern is legitimate for multiple reasons. First and foremost, online merchants don’t want prospective customers that have bookmarked a page or linked from another site to end up at a dead end. The preferable result is to have the customer land on the new page. The second concern relates to the search engines. If a page on the merchant’s existing site ranks well on the search engines, they do not want to switch platforms and lose that page’s ranking. Fortunately there is a way to redirect those potential customers to a new page while still maintaining page rank. The solution is a 301 redirect.

A 301 redirect’s status code means “moved permanently.” A 301 redirect does two things:

1. If a customer attempts to visit an old page (http://www.yourdomain.com/YOUR_OLD_PAGE), she is automatically redirected to (http://www.yourdomain.com/YOUR_NEW_PAGE)

2. It lets the search engines know that they should now index and display the new page without compromising search results.

There are other ways of redirecting pages including but not limited to using a META Refresh, Javascript, or a 302 Redirect (this is a temporary redirect). While these redirects will handle the customer scenario well, they fail at handling the search engine ranking concern. Therefore it is best to use 301 redirects when transitioning to new ecommerce or content management system.

How does one go about implementing 301 redirects? Then answer depends upon the platform that a website is on and to some degree, access to the controls of the web server. When in doubt, a merchant should always ask their website hosting company what they recommend. The two most common ways 301 redirects are created are:

1. Using Server Side Scripting – This assumes that the pages on the old site use a server side scripting language such as PHP or ASP. Following are two examples of code that you would put into the old file:

ASP

<%

Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”
Response.AddHeader “Location”,”http://www.yourdomain.com/YOUR_NEW_PAGE”
%>

PHP

<?

Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );

Header( “Location: ://www.yourdomain.com/YOUR_NEW_PAGE ” );

?>

2. Using a .htaccess file- For this method to work, the web server must be running Apache. Essentially, the merchant can add lines of code to the .htaccess file such as:

Redirect 301 OLD_DIRECTORY/YOUR_OLD_PAGE http://www.yourdomain.com/NEW_DIRECTORY/YOUR_NEW_PAGE

If the old files do not use server side scripting and the web server does not support .htaccess files, there are other ways to create 301 redirects, but again, merchants should contact their web hosting company for more information.
After implementing a 301 Redirect, it is important to make sure the redirect is working properly. Also, if by chance a merchant happens to miss a file or two, a well designed 404 (File Not Found) page is also a good idea.

Often times we will talk to online merchants that are not actively marketing through pay per click channels. When asked why, they will often state that they are not getting a positive return on investment. However, we also find that often those same people do not have a mechanism in place to track the success of their pay per click campaigns. In reality, they do not know if their campaigns are successful or not as they rely more on a hunch than on hard data. In fact, there is a good chance that some of their campaigns are very successful while others are not. The purpose of this article is to encourage you to implement a tool to track your return so that you make educated marketing decisions. In this article, we are also going to focus exclusively on Google AdWords because it has the potential to drive the most amount of traffic to your site at this time. There are other pay per click engines with their own tracking features in place which we also encourage you to use.

The first step in successfully running a Google AdWords campaign is setting up conversion tracking. To do this, first login to Google AdWords account. Next, click on the Tools link and then Conversion Tracking. Finally, click the “Get Conversion Page Code” link. As an online retailer, you’ll want to select Purchase/Sale for the conversion type. By default, Google will set the value to $1, however it is very important that you use a dynamic variable since your net order amount will be dependent on the actual order generated. Nexternal clients can click here for a sample of what the code should look like. Once you have that code, it is important that you put it on the order confirmation screen (the screen that appears after the order is placed). Most of the code is JavaScript which is not going to be visible to the customer. It is simply used to pass data back to Google.

Once this code is in place, conversion data will begin showing up in your Google AdWords campaign interface. On the Campaign Detail screen, you’ll see valuable information such as Conversion Rate and the Average Position of the ads for each Ad Group. While this information is good, we recommend that you take it one step further by creating a custom report which is accessed by selecting the reports tab at the top of the page. Following are some report parameters that we often select:

• Report Type: Ad Group Performance
• Settings: Select relevant time range and Campaigns that you want to analyze
• Advanced Settings: Choose columns Conversions, Transactions, Conversion Rate, Sales Value
• Templates, Scheduling and Email: Name Your report and save it as a template so it is easy to recreate a similar report

Now you can look at each campaign and easily see how much money was spent and how many dollars in revenue were generated from that campaign. If you spent $200 on a campaign and generated $1400 in revenue, your margins do not need to be through the roof for the campaign to generate a positive return on investement (ROI). In fact, if you have campaigns that have a high revenue to cost ratio, take a close look at the ad position metric in those campaigns. It’s very likely that you can increase your minimum bid and have that campaign generate even more revenue for you by increasing your average position. Of course if your average position is close to one, you don’t need to increase your bid.
If you have campaigns that aren’t performing well, pause them. However, before you do, double check your campaign settings. You might be able to adjust some settings to make them work better for you. Following are some things worth trying:

1. Networks – choose to only show your ad when users search for your keywords on Google.

2. Target Audience – If you are a US based merchant that primarily targets US customers, English would be the appropriate choice.

3. Ad Scheduling – Many merchants get more orders during business hours as people tend to shop online while at work. Tune your ad scheduling to reflect this pattern.

4. Ad Serving – Select Optimize which will show better performing ads more frequently.

Often times tuning a campaign can make an ROI go from good to great. Keep in mind that with the above suggestions, you’ll also receive less traffic. However, the percentage of “good traffic” will be much better.

We believe that every merchant can benefit from pay per click marketing. It’s just a matter of tuning your campaigns to have them work more effectively. Do not look at pay per click marketing as a whole and conclude that it either works or does not. Looks at it on a more detailed level and tune accordingly. Your botton line will thank you.