Tips, advice and news from Evolution Internet http://new.evolution-internet.com/blog http://backend.userland.com/rss ContentSuite v1.0 This is the final part of the online customer reviews series. if you haven't already, be sure to check out part 1 - why to include customer reviews in your site and why they work and part 2 - 10 ways to get reviews from your customers . To conclude the series, we'll be looking at the dos and don't of online customer reviews. Dos Thank your customer for taking the time to review Show the average score for product reviews Include a little bit of information about the customer posting the review... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/customer-reviews-part-3-dos-and-don-ts.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/customer-reviews-part-3-dos-and-don-ts.html This is the second part of three posts on customer reviews. Yesterday we started with why to include customer reviews in your site and why they work . Today, we'll be looking at 10 easy ways to get reviews from your customers. 1. Ask Them! The most important thing - ask them! Not everyone will complete reviews, but you may be surprised by how many do. If you don't ask, you don't get. 2. Make it easy A simple star rating takes only moments to fill out... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/customer-reviews-part-2-10-ways-to-get-reviews-from-your-customers.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/customer-reviews-part-2-10-ways-to-get-reviews-from-your-customers.html This is part one of a three part series on Customer Reviews on your website. Over the three parts, I'll cover how and why customer reviews work, how to best get them from your customers and dos and don'ts of customer reviews. So onto part one... What customer reviews can do for you The best way to attract new customers The best way to get new customers is for a referral from a previous satisfied customer... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/customer-reviews-part-1-why-to-include-them-in-your-site.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/customer-reviews-part-1-why-to-include-them-in-your-site.html How to use Facebook and Competitions to drive traffic and sales. Every other month we read some report about how Facebook are taking over the Internet. Generates more traffic than Google, or is becoming a Google killer. Now there is no way they'll replace Google or any other search engine. It's true, they receive a lot of the Internet's traffic and for businesses it's too much to ignore. Those that know me, know I think for most businesses Facebook is a rubbish marketing tool... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/facebook-marketing-you-have-to-think-creatively.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/facebook-marketing-you-have-to-think-creatively.html Site searches are always assumed to be a good thing. Many larger sites have them and virtually all ecommerce sites do. It's almost the 'done thing'. But are they such a good thing? A good search can work really well - Multibillion dollar businesses such as Google have based their whole business models around search. But most sites do not do search well. And they all work slightly differently. According to Jupiter Research , 85 percent of site searches don't return what the user sought and 22 percent return no results at all... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/site-search-good-or-evil.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/site-search-good-or-evil.html When 'About Us' really means 'about them' When a prospective customer clicks on your website, they make up their mind about your company in split seconds. You might think writing about your business should be intuitive process, and it is - up to a point. In fact, that's what makes it so hard. When you know that business inside out, it can be hard to step back and think about what your customers really need to know - not what you want to tell them... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/how-to-write-an-about-us-page.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/how-to-write-an-about-us-page.html I've been talking for a while about the growing importance of local search , but this week Google have made an announcement that makes it even more important. Shopping goes local Within its Shopping results, Google is now showing local results, called "nearby stores". Their idea is to make it "as easy to search for products in nearby stores as it is to shop online". What this means in practice is an integration of their shopping and local results as Google search goes ever more "universal"... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/google-helps-you-shop-offline.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/google-helps-you-shop-offline.html Well this is not strictly true, but a picture tells a thousand words. If you didn't already know, this is Google's Instant Previews . And it's having a few teething problems! As you can see, if your website is delivered using Adobe Flash you are probably going to see a click-through rate reduction. As this image shows, to someone who is not a developer or working in the web world, the site looks like it is broken... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/adobe-shares-fall-as-google-releases-instant-preview.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/adobe-shares-fall-as-google-releases-instant-preview.html Business is good and we are expanding our team. We are creating two new positions: SEO Sales Executive - £68,000 OTE+ Uncapped SEO Apprentice - £12,000 per annum If you're up to the challenge and want to join our hard-working team, or know someone who is, please send CVs to recruitment@evolution-internet.com http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/we-re-hiring.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/we-re-hiring.html The neglected revenue raiser There are 3 principal ways to increase revenue on any ecommerce site. The first two, increasing traffic and increasing conversions get the most attention from ecommerce site owners. Many ignore the third way - increasing your customers' average order value. Yet this can be a simple, low cost way of increasing your bottom line, which you can often do yourself. When customers come to your site, you want them to spend as much money and buy as many items as possible... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/13-ways-to-increase-average-order-value.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/13-ways-to-increase-average-order-value.html Start offering your visitors more than just persuasive product descriptions The aim of writing your product descriptions is to sell products, with persuasive copy to encourage the visitor to buy. The copy focuses on the product's benefits and how it fulfils visitors' needs. However, you can offer more. Create Engaging content As well as creating persuasive content on your product descriptions, you should consider creating additional engaging content... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/increase-sales-by-helping-your-visitors-use-your-products.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/increase-sales-by-helping-your-visitors-use-your-products.html A job all ecommerce site owners should do All ecommerce site owners know that you should optimise your products. It can increase search engine rankings, traffic and conversions. Yet it can seem a daunting task, especially when your store has thousands of products and you may lack technical skills. So where do you start and what do you do? The sooner you start... With thousands of products, where do you start... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/optimise-a-product-per-day.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/optimise-a-product-per-day.html Too big to ignore All ecommerce site owners should now be using Twitter as part of their overall marketing strategy. Many ecommerce site owners simply dismiss Twitter out of hand. 6 months ago, I'd probably have agreed with them. Yet with 75 million users, it isn't something that you can ignore. New accounts grew by 1,500% last year and although that growth is slowing, it is still growing. On top of that, Twitter posts appear highly in the search engine rankings... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/how-and-why-ecommerce-site-owners-should-use-twitter.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/how-and-why-ecommerce-site-owners-should-use-twitter.html See great returns with permission based marketing Of all marketing, permission based email marketing generates the highest ROI. It is relatively cheap to implement and run and highly testable. As an ecommerce owner, email marketing should be one of your top marketing priorities so if you're not doing it, start today; no matter how small your current list is. The main problem most ecommerce sites have is that it takes time to build their email list... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/increasing-your-ecommerce-mailing-list-and-open-rates.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/increasing-your-ecommerce-mailing-list-and-open-rates.html What is Google Product Search? Google Product Search , AKA Google Shopping, AKA Google Base, AKA Froogle is a Google search system. Similarly to the better known image and video searches, it allows users to search for a specific type of page - in this case, products for sale. Potential customers can search for products, compare prices, filter by price and other attributes and can click through to your site to purchase... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/how-to-use-google-product-search-to-increase-sales-and-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/how-to-use-google-product-search-to-increase-sales-and-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site.html This is where your customers normally leave your site Everyone's encountered a frustrating error page. You click a link, or type an address and then - nothing! The page that you were looking for doesn't exist. Or you click a button, the site errors and you lose your information. This is the point when most customers will simply leave your site and go elsewhere. Yet it doesn't have to be this way... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/how-to-use-a-custom-error-page-to-increase-conversions-on-your-ecommerce-site.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/how-to-use-a-custom-error-page-to-increase-conversions-on-your-ecommerce-site.html A well known problem Google Maps' merging problems are well documented and have been going on for a long time. Despite more and more businesses experiencing merging difficulties, Google are still not doing anything about the problem. There are a number of ways to unmerge your listing , but they aren't guaranteed to be successful. However, if your business listing is merged with an unclaimed listing and you aren't worried about the morals of removing the other listing, there is something that you can do about it... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/how-to-use-google-maps-merging-problems-to-unmerge-your-listing.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/how-to-use-google-maps-merging-problems-to-unmerge-your-listing.html Could offering your customers less choice increase your sales? We know from split testing landing pages and best practices that reducing the number of choices and distractions increase conversions. Can the same be said for the number of products displayed on pages or your navigation within your ecommerce site? Fewer choices has shown a 1000% increase in sales Over the past 50 years customer research has demostrated that giving your customers less choice will increase sales... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/do-less-choices-mean-more-sales.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/do-less-choices-mean-more-sales.html UK laws for ecommerce sites simplified Under UK law, you are required to include an enormous amount of information on your ecommerce store. The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 came into force on 21st August 2002 and they specify information that must be included on a website, but these are not the only regulations you must adhere to. You must also follow the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/is-your-ecommerce-website-breaking-the-law.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/is-your-ecommerce-website-breaking-the-law.html Before I start my rant I'd like to state that for some businesses - those that have been lucky enough not to have experienced my points below - Google Local is a great product. But for the rest of us it is a long way from being perfect. For businesses Google Local is a tool which can't be ignored, but I can't help but think that it not ready for mainstream use (in the UK anyway). I'm not going to throw figures about, but as you would expect, the number of people searching for local services and companies is massive... http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/10-reasons-why-google-local-is-failing.html http://www.evolution-internet.com/blog/10-reasons-why-google-local-is-failing.html