There are many forms of metrics to use, some are paid and some are free.  Here are some that you can look at for 2010.

• Adobe acquisition of Omniture will enable one to track their “Flash” driven website. In the past it has been a mystery, now Adobe has the power tools to track.   The ability to embed Omniture tracking capabilities within Adobe files will be extremely valuable to marketers, as they will finally have insight into how users interact with their websites and web properties. Measurement functionality will show interactions with the content (e.g., where people are abandoning within a PDF and what content is visible above the drop-off area), which will enable marketers to better optimize their efforts.
• Google Analytics offer free tools, that is an invaluable tool for everyone.  There are pros and cons with using free tools. The main downfall is a lack of privacy and control over tracked data. Depending on the company, free solutions will more than suffice, but for others, enterprise solutions are a better analytics solution.

Mobile Market

Mobile market is not to be dismissed, according to eMarketer.  From an analytics perspective, mobile is here! eMarketer reports that 42 percent of mobile users accessed the internet through their devices in 2009, 25% used their phones to update a social network, and 30% conducted online research on their phone.

Measuring and analyzing mobile behavior will be crucial in 2010 as marketers find new ways to utilize this medium. Mobile users are active and engaged; if marketers can connect here, they can expand these relationships across any number of platforms.

Analysis is an important part of what web analytics professional does. All the data in the world won’t mean anything if it cannot show a problem or highlight a problem. Once its confirmed then a solution is followed up and implemented. Tracking is big in the ecommerce arena because we have epoxy paint products to sell. But its even more important for a service as well, even if you’re in the Bathroom Remodel market.

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Does this signal that mobile shopping will be the end-all, be-all component of ecommerce?  Well, of course not - eight percent isn’t a majority.  And obviously, if eight percent is the predicted figure for 2015, mobile shopping isn’t a really huge deal now.

Still, senior ABI Research analyst Mark Beccue argued in a statement, “Mobile online shopping is reaching critical mass.  In the United States, mobile online shopping rose from $396 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2009.  While definitions of ‘mass market adoption’ vary, a more than threefold increase in one year indicates significant consumer interest.”

The statement also added, “Noteworthy is that even that $1+ billion turnover in the US is dwarfed by the size of the mobile online shopping market in Japan, which exceeded $10 billion in 2009 alone.”  So further growth isn’t beyond the realm of possibility.

This market segment is definitely something to which ecommerce experts should pay attention, then.

Why do clicks from Google Shopping (or many other shopping engines) convert better? Basically, the customer is pre-screened. When a product is uploaded via the Google Base feed (now via google.com/merchants) it includes information including an image, price, title, and brief description. Therefore, a potential customer who sees your product in Google Shopping is probably comparing what you sell with results from other vendors, and making a choice, then clicking through to your store. In this way, the shopper is “pre qualified,” and will end up landing on the page for the product that he/she has already selected. This pre-qualification, along with the trust afforded to Google by the customer, means that a click from the Shopping results is more likely to result in a sale.

Another reason that clicks convert better is that not every impression results in a click. A normal visitor to your site, whether acquired via natural search or PPC, will go through an entire shopping process on your site, visiting multiple pages. This visitor has a very high probability (90% or more) of leaving your site without taking any action. Shopping tools and price comparison services like Google Shopping, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, and Shopping.com allow the consumer to find items and make comparisons. If you have a shopping feed with Google, you can actually find out the number of impressions (views) a product got vs. the number of clicks that came to your site. If you have a high number of impressions but few clicks, you may want to adjust your images, description, or price to attract more buyers.

An even better reason to get on the Google Shopping feed is that the natural search results in Google will often show 3 matching product results for certain queries. Even though these results appear to be shown in a randomized fashion (sometimes your product will show, sometimes someone else’s) this still can represent a significant opportunity for exposure. For e-commerce merchants waiting on better SEO results, a presence in the shopping results and among natural searches can be quite profitable. Even better, having a higher number of available products (and part numbers) gives you a better chance of being found by customers who are shopping for specific items. Having lots of items on the feed also increases the collective number of clicks on multiple items which would otherwise have a low daily search volume.

Finally, it is hard to underestimate the value of “free” traffic, and having a shopping feed is no exception. Most shopping cart software packages have a tool that will distill product listings into the format required by Google. If not, a programmer can be called upon to extract the proper information. Many other shopping feeds will charge by the click, and still represent a good value. Once a feed is in place, it needs to be renewed every month, and if your product list hasn’t changed, you can upload the same feed every time. In an era when ecommerce companies can’t afford to leave money on the table, Google Shopping traffic may not always deliver spectacular results, but several of our clients can attest that the added boost in sales makes for a nice extra revenue stream.

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In reality, this list of mistakes could be very long. There are so many factors that affect the success or failure of an online store. Afterall, running an ecommerce business is not as easy as some make it out to be—but it could be with the right blueprint.

If I developed a complete list of all the mistakes I come across while working with store owners, it would likely span many pages and be difficult to determine where to start prioritizing your attention. So what I have done is taken that overwhelming list and broke it down into what I consider the top fifteen mistakes—in no particular order—that many ecommerce stores make.

Here are what I consider to be the top fifteen mistakes most ecommerce stores make:

1. Thinking that driving more traffic to your website will increase sales. This is one I see all too frequently and is one that just drives me nuts. It’s this simple, if your website is not setup to convert traffic properly (which means you must understand your target market, ideal customer demographics and profiles to speak to them properly) then it doesn’t matter how much traffic you drive to your site … you’re sales will not increase.

   Furthermore, if you are targeting the wrong traffic type but your site is ready to convert, your sales will not increase. More is not always better—that is, unless the right elements are in place to maximize sales from it.

2. Weak site design in relation to your target market. Do you design your for your market or do you design your site thinking that alone will sell your product?

3. Not marketing enough or properly. You can’t generate sales if nobody knows you exist. Marketing is critical but it must be done correctly to gain the maximum benefit.

   I get store owners telling me they have had a site in place for “xxx” amount of time and still no sales … what’s wrong? That’s a loaded question as there is often a list of things they are missing, but I’m amazed to hear some reply “No” to me when I ask them “are you performing any marketing for your site?” Sometimes you gotta spend money to make money.

   If you aren’t willing to spend money to advertise then your chances of success are reduced and you can’t expect to magically generate sales.

4. Not testing your site to find what really works. Continual testing is a vital component to reaching the upper echelon of conversion rates. Another question I get from store owners is “how do these other stores achieve such high conversion rates?” Once again, the question is loaded.

   There a many multiple factors that contribute to achieving higher conversion rates. One of the common factors across all successful ecommerce stores who see some of the highest conversion rates is that they test all the time. If you ignore your site, you can’t be disappointed when your bottom line reflects it.

5. Not optimizing your product pages for increased conversion. Your product page has a single overall objective with sub objectives that help support and meet that main objective.

   If potential customers can’t get past your product page they have no chance of ever entering the checkout process (for some reason store owners have a hard time understanding this.) An optimized product page (from a conversion perspective) takes advantage of multiple factors that combined help the visitor do their job to achieve the objective.

6. Inadequate site usability. Usability in a basic sense reflects the “ease of use” with which a visitor can interact with your website. Proper usability is all encompassing. It’s role it so provide your customer with an easy, smooth, un-interrupted path to their destination—a sale. There are a number of things that can help you determine if usability is a problem and then help you improve upon this.

7. Lack of comprehensive marketing plan. This is one of the number one reasons most ecommerce businesses are destined for failure before they even start. Without a marketing plan you’re like a ship set sail in open waters without a compass.

   It doesn’t take that long with the right tools to complete a marketing plan. Your marketing plan is your guide for moving business forward. It is essential to your survival and success.

8. Too many obstacles to shopping. This is very much a usability issue and could have been included in the point six above. Adhering by the KISS principle is crucial to helping customers do their job.

9. Poor customer service. Do you answer your customers questions before they ask them? Knowing what they expect and at what moment will improve your customer service.

10. Failure to prepare a proper foundation for success. Proper planning is the first step toward ecommerce success. A weak foundation yields weak results. A strong foundation results in great rewards.

11. Poor order fulfillment. This is self explanatory for most … for others the answer is not so clear. One of the fastest ways (albeit not the only one) to lose a current customer is with poor order fulfillment.

12. Not taking advantage of optimizing the Customer Experience your business provides from beginning to end. If you don’t know what that means, or how to do it then you are in real trouble.

13. Poor checkout procedures. Don’t think that providing a checkout alone will close the sale. Without the right elements in place you’ll find the only thing that increases is your shopping cart abandonment rate.

14. Failure to focus and specialize. You can’t be everything to everybody. Doing so will get you no where.

15. Failure to provide proper customer assurances at the right times and in the right locations. A few simple tweaks of your site can mean the difference between increased sales or increased frustration.

Remember, this is just the tip of the iceberg in a long list of mistakes that prevent ecommerce stores from achieving success.

If you want to find out answers to all your questions, correct the mistakes you are making, and learn how to build a successful ecommerce business, I invite you to join me and the other store owners who have taken advantage of my online coaching system, Ecommerce Amplifier.

You’ll get instant access to a number of invaluable tools, resources, and expert advice, that help you maximize your online store—increasing conversion and winning more sales. Plus, I’ll also teach you the same six step blueprinted process I developed and use to help others build sustainable and successful ecommerce businesses—regardless of your level of experience.

Got any mistakes you want to add to the list? Post them in the comments section below, I’d love to hear them.

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Some interesting movement in a few areas—no surprise in others.

The rankings and findings are based upon the total number of Google pages reported for each program via boolean search methodologies at various monthly intervals combined over a period of time. So in essence this might tell how many “active” users there are of each platform (and even that could be false in some cases) but it doesn’t tell which of the carts performs best (which in my opinion is most important.)

By performs best I am talking closing the sale. A number of carts on the list I have seen or worked with and they simply lack the features (and support) needed for building a sustainable ecommerce business. Others on the list do a wonderful job of this. In my opinion, the ideal Open Source cart is rich with features that help it win the sale and is stable and friendly enough to enable scalability. I want a cart that has the features of some of the big guys yet is easy enough to understand for the end user.

A list of some of the features (a very small list mind you) I would see as important are:

1. The ability to cross sell and up sell products
2. Product reviews ability
3. Ability to run split testing with tools like Google’s Website Optimizer
4. Ability to conduct a recover cart type program for follow up on previously lost sales
5. Ability to easily integrate analytics (such as Google Analytics) into the framework—this includes ecom tracking and paid search conversion tracking
6. Ability to assign unique landing pages for targeting traffic to (outside of the catalog portion of the site)
7. Ability to control the checkout experience including the options of one page checkout, multi-step checkout and guest checkout.
8. Ability to integrate with and accept multiple payment methods easily including paypal.
9. Some type of sales reporting tool in the background
10. The ability to assign a unique home page apart from the design of the rest of the site
11. CSS Driven with the ability to easily change look and feel as needed without a lot of work
12. Complete customization of product pages including image rich features that rival the custom carts (zoom features, lightboxes, etc…)
13. Easily run and or automate promotions (both banners and coupons) on a pre-determined schedule that coincides with your promotional calendar.
14. SEO Friendly URLs
15. Ability to customize META Data, Titles, Descriptions, etc… down to the product level.
16. Integration with shopping comparison sites through automated data feeds

Again, this is just a small list of some initial items that come to mind off the top of my head.

Read more about the results of the year long review from Ecommerce Guide.

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Product Pages

Your product pages are the money pages in your site architecture. They are the ones you want to be in the absolute-most-search-engine-friendly format. Many shopping carts will place them in a category directory like this:

http://example.com/department-name/product-name/

However, I recommend a a different structure such as:

http://example.com/product/product-name/
http://example.com/prod/product-name/
http://example.com/p/product-name/

I don’t recommend using the department because most stores have a one to many relationship between products and departments. In layman’s terms, a product can be categorized in more than one department. For example, a set of plates could be in the “dinnerware,” “tableware,” or “entertaining” categories. It can also be in the “new,” “seasonal,” or “featured” category as well. When the merchandising side decides to change/add/remove departments, the URL is in jeopardy of changing, and that’s something to avoid at all costs.

Some stores are going completely flat and use no subdirectory. It’s a little risky: you have to watch for naming conflicts, and you lose a layer of control. But it’s not horrible.

I also recommend that you avoid using URL parameters at all on the product level pages. I prefer using 3-5 words for the product name, omitting stop words, and keeping the URL as short as possible. If your marketing or advertising divisions insist on using tracking parameters, write the info to a cookie and 301 to the proper page. Yes the new canonical meta tag will deal with a lot of it, but don’t ignore good site architechture because of laziness.

Unless you have a really good reason for using alpha/numeric ID instead of the product name, I’d always prefer the product name in the URL. Don’t stuff in extra words having the product name in the URL is almost always better than not. Just make sure it persists and doesn’t change if you go from a “blue widget” to a “cyan widget.” If you do change, handle the 301’s properly.

It doesn’t matter what file extension you use (.html, .jsp, .asp, etc) but I prefer to omit file types so you can change programming languages without remapping URL’s or needing to maintain legacy hacks in perpetuity. Rip off the band-aid once, get it over with, fix it right, and move on … ’nuff said.

Try to keep  HTML title and page header/titles similar unless you can work in variations. Keep your titles as unique as possible and make your product descriptions as unique as possible. Copy/pasting or importing and using a feed without any re-writing is a  bad idea. Reviews or other UGC are a great way to do that. Just don’t be a faker.

Always use a site map with links to your products. If you have a lot of products, use a dedicated HTML products-only sitemap(s). If you have at least 100 products I’d also go the XML sitemap route as well and ping all of the services.

When a product goes out of stock, keep the page up and display a message saying that it’s not available for purchase. The only exception is if you are never going to have the item again and there is no replacement. Serving a 404 is a bad idea. Going back and forth between a 404 when it’s out of stock and standard page when it is in stock is worse than a passive aggressive ex-girlfriend and should be avoided at all costs.

Department and Category Pages

Department and category pages in shopping carts are perhaps one of the biggest SEO obstacles in any ecommerce package. Probably the most important question you need to ask is whether there is any value to the department/category page? If there is no editorial content (text and picture) then there probably isn’t any need to have the page indexed. You just want the spiders to pass through on their way to the product pages, so use a noindex, follow meta tag and matching robots.txt setting and you are all set.

If you do want your department pages indexed, you need to be careful with filters and parameters. If you offer filters for sorting by price, size or any other attributes, you want to do it in a way that doesn’t append parameters onto the URL, this is actually where it makes sense to use javascript or ajax. If you have to use parameters, put in the rel=canonical tag and hope the engines get it right. If you have multi-page displays,  avoid adding parameters onto the URL; instead, use the # sign, ajax, or add a fake directory underneath like:

http://example.com/department-name/2/

You also want to be careful how you handle the “show all” if you offer that functionality. I’ve seen some experiments in which people feedithe search engines the “show all” version with the rel=canonical tag, but there are no solid answers about how well it works yet (be aware search engines have said they take that as a suggestion and reserve the right to override it). If your department pages do paginate you want the most important items on the top of the first page to ensure maximum crawlability.

I recommend having the title as one link to the product, the image as a second separate link, and the description as third and separate/optional link. I recommend breaking it to give the search engines a nudge to take the title. Use the title as the alt tag for the image (another nudge). I recommend linking all three just as a usability thing. You can test it with a service like crazyegg (disclosure: they are an advertiser, but I’d recommend them even if they weren’t). In every test I’ve seen they always click the pictures and almost always get some clicks on the text under the image. I also recommend putting the price under the image/description (again just for usability purposes).

To recap here are my shopping cart optimization 101 techniques:

• Keep things as simple for a search engine to understand as possible, especially in the URL.
• Keep as much extraneous information as possible out of the URL, writing the extra bits into a cookie if you absolutely need them and performing a 301 redirect.
• Keep URL’s short as possible by including only the keywords that are absolutely necessary.
• Give them the clues they are looking for about what information to attribute to the products through internal anchor text and links.
• Keep product titles and descriptions as unique as possible.
• Rewrite or add content if you need to make it unique.
• Only include department category pages if there is some editorial value.
• Use an HTML and XML sitemap to increase crawlability.

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• Among the top 500 Retail Web sites, the percentage of U.S. visits were up 4% on Black Friday 2009 versus Thanksgiving Day 2009. Year-over-year the visits were down 9% compared to Black Friday 2008. The U.S. traffic to Black Friday sites on Black Friday was up 9% compared to 2008.
• The top visited Retail Website on Black Friday 2009 was Amazon receiving 13.55 % of U.S. visits among the top 500 Retail Web sites. This is the second year in a row that Amazon was the top visited site on Black Friday.
• Wal-Mart was the second most visited with 11.18 % of visits followed by Target.com with 5.65%, BestBuy.com with 4.62%. followed by Sears with 2.95%. (Attached are the top 20 sites for Black Friday 2009).
• Among the top 20 sites visited on Black Friday 2009, The Apple Store saw the largest increase in visits compared to Thanksgiving day 2009 with a 110% increase, Staples saw a 47% increase YoY and Dell saw a 40% increase. Amazon had a 9% increase.
• Wal-Mart was the top site to receive traffic from Black Friday sites on Black Friday 2009 with a 32% increase in traffic compared to 2008. BestBuy and Target received the second and third most traffic from Black Friday sites. Among the top 10 sites to receive traffic from Black Friday sites on Black Friday, Target received the largest increase in visits YoY with 110%.

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In 2008, Cyber Monday spending hit a record high, with consumers spending a whopping $846 million online. The good news for retailers is that Cyber Monday is only the start - with strong online sales expected to continue right through until the New Year.

So the big question is: Are You Ready?

The key to improving your sales during this period is to focus on mediums that can deliver instant results. In the online world, this typically includes:

• Google AdWords / PPC Advertising
• Local Search Listings
• Featured Listings on smaller search engines

Google AdWords (PPC) Advertising
Google AdWords advertising would definitely be the number one way to target holiday shoppers. It offers pinpoint targeting and instant exposure enabling you to get on the first page of Google when customers are searching for your products and services.

Key Benefits:

• Campaigns can be live within hours.
• Ability to target customers via keyword and location.
• First page placement on Google.

Learn more about Google AdWords Advertising.

Local Search Listings
If you’re targeting local customers, a local search listing across Google, Yahoo and Bing is another way to get on the first page of organic search results. It’s simple to setup and there’s no limit to the number of people who click on your listing.

Key Benefits:

• Once verified, listings are live almost immediately.
• Can be included on the first page of results.
• Free organic traffic.

Learn more about Local Search Listings.

Featured Listings
If your customers use a search engine besides the top 3, there’s no harm in being found there either. Top 10 featured listings can help boost the efforts of your PPC and Local campaigns.

Key Benefits:

• Listings are live within 48 hours.
• Traffic is free – no click fee’s.
• Keyword targeted traffic.

Learn more about Top 10 Featured Listings.

This year, Cyber Monday falls on the 30th November, so there’s only a few weeks now to get prepared. Don’t leave it to the last minute!

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Indeed, all of these updates should prove useful to developers, who are the folks who make the online world go ’round (or parts of it, at least).  Their apps have helped ensure the popularity of Facebook and the iPhone, and can make or break other different sites and services.  Thanks to this stuff, individual developers are more likely to “make” PayPal.

Then there are the corporate endorsements to consider.  At a conference yesterday, AERS, Carlson, FIS, FundRazr, MedPayOnline, Payvment, Playspan, ShopSavvy, Storenvy, Super Rewards, Sun Microsystems, S1 and Zuora all announced solutions built with the PayPal X platform.

That’s quite a collection of companies, and it’s even more impressive since they all took action at once, rather than over a period of time.

So again, it may be smart for ecommerce sites of every type and size to provide a PayPal option to their users.  Those that don’t are liable to wind up looking a little behind the times and odd.

So why would you “add” another step for them to “buy your product” especially when that step includes a pop-up (blocked by most browsers now)? Well, strangely enough, I have seen it on many Zen Cart sites. Store owners making their “potential customers” click on an “estimate shipping button” in order to get the shipping rates.

It not only adds another step to the process, but it adds one that could very easily turn your customers away.

Why it Hurts

Hiding shipping in a pop-up hurts because it not only makes the visitor “think” (and you don’t want them to have to “think” to order … it should be “automatic” with all of their questions being answered at exactly the right time.

Of the many factors online shoppers look for to “satisfy their need to buy”, one of the top items is the price of shipping. So, logically, seeing that is the case, why would we try to hide it from them (which is what the pop-up effectively does). We should not only “plant” it right in front of them, but put links to it in as many “decision making spots” as possible so as not have cause them to even think about it. It should just be a matter of fact that they can easily access shipping rates for their order.
Many e-commerce studies have shown that customers find it annoying to say the least when they have to “search for” shipping rates. And, in many of those instances, customers said “had they been able to find the shipping rates before, or during (NOT AFTER)” adding items to their cart (on their way to checkout), they would have continued with the purchase and completed it.

This holds especially true if you are in a competitive industry or one that sells merchandise that can be bought at the “local brick and mortar store”. The harder you make it on your customers to checkout, the less sales you will see.

How to “Fix” it

Zen cart comes built in with a feature (Accessible from within the Admin by going to Configuration > Shipping / Packaging > Shipping Estimator Display Settings for Shopping Cart). Do yourself, and your customers a favor … set that value to “2″.

This example shows you how it would look.

Until next time … keep your customers happy, and your pocket book will be too!

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