A blog about ecommerce marketing, running an online business and updates to Shopify's ecommerce community.

Marty Note
We agree with all 7 of these "product page best practices" such as:

1. Powerful product descriptions (tell a short story and use language from reviews). 

2. Clear Call-To-Action (CTAs).

3. Size Chart (we love the Johnny Cupcakes graphic).

3. Include Stock Levels (and use Amazon's only 4 left language).

4. Great Product shots.

5. Social Share buttons (with feedback loops for # of shares, look at SumoMe.com for the best social share widget).

6. Shipping & Free Shipping info clear and easy to find.

7. Relevant to what is happening now (Holiday theme).

8. Remove background (this one was new to us, but we get it).

& The forgot 2 of our favorites:

9. Reviews - voice of the customer is the most convincing and begins to create online community.

10. TEST - we've only beaten a red "Add To Cart" button once, but we only knew we beat it because we tested.

Marty Note
Solid tips here with a few caveats:

* #3 printing is a nice to have now not a must have. Printing just isn't as important, but, for some, a printed piece is easier to share.

* Reviews are now more important in their absence. Having hundreds of reviews is great as it shows the size and value of the tribe formed around a given product. A Customer's voice is always a tad different sounding too, so be sure to curate content FROM reviews.

* High res images is a good idea, but don't slow the delivery of your page down. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to help server your images and videos fast no matter who is looking at your content or from where.

* Product comparisons are great especially if they are social.

* Shipping = we would amend shipping to make sure your FREE Shipping triggers are easy to find / be aware of and set to maximize conversions.

An in-depth look at seller performance systems on eBay and Amazon. How they work, why feedback matters, and how to be efficient at managing your reputation.

Netflix data shows "binge watching" is up. How do we create content marketing to encourage a binge?

Creating Binge Worthy Content for Ecommerce sites helps master the New SEO, but the process is different than for B2B because:

* B2C ecom content needs more UGC (User Generated Content).
* Ecom content needs to tell great stories fast so VIDEO.

* UGC needs engagement support so gamification.

* Tribal key for ecommerce, so needs to be highly social.

* Don't like to pull attention away from HERO, so selectively visual.

* Need to curate more "binge worthy content" from UGC and social. 

That last bullet demonstrates the core difference. B2C ecommerce is an act of curation as much as creation. Customers trust each other often MORE than the websites they visit. The more UGC an ecom website has the richer it is.

UGC can take many forms on an ecommerce site such as:

* Reviews. 
* Profiles (MyAccount). 
* Comments. 
* Response to contests and games. 
* Review the reviewer (was this review helpful?). 
* Social shares.
* Blog or social commentary (use only with permission as you will have to rake into your website with an Online Reputation Management tool). 

Stories and content are no less important to an ecommerce website, but there are distinct difference in the type of content that will help and not hurt conversions.  

Ecommies - Identifying ecommerce trends, rate and review ecom tools and hold annual awards.

Holiday 2013 Awards
First Ecommies Holiday ratings are in. William-Sonoma & REI.com top the list in November and December.  L. L. Bean gets "most improved" award from November to December and several trends emerge:

* Free Shipping out and back is trending especially in December. 
* Free shipping all orders is trending. 

* Hiding free shipping behind either codes or triggers is declining.

* Deal of the Day is trending with majors like REI.com adding DOD.

* Standard credit card based loyalty programs prevalent. 

* Still many catalog and retail merchandising tactics such as "door busters". 

Ratings report card on Google docs: http://bit.ly/1bPhwz3 

Holiday ecommerce merchandising wasn't very inspired this year. December ratings went DOWN from November. Based on this year's performance ecommerce is clearly in a rut. 

It’s not even just e-commerce sites that allow reviews either. Local Directory sites allow customers to review businesses, whether the business encourages them or not.