Archive for the ‘Product Pages’ Category

How to Clean Your Retail Store Online

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011
cleaning a retail store online

Cleaning a retail store online

A retail store online isn’t all that different from a brick and mortar retail store — they both offer a collection of products, they both strive to provide an excellent customer experience, and they both need to be cleaned every now and then.

Just as you sweep and dust every aisle and every shelf of a brick and mortar, you need to straighten up your retail store online … not because customers are moving your product around, but because your product pages constantly need to be monitored for progress. If a particular product isn’t doing well, you need to take a look at what your options are in terms of bringing it up to par with your other pages.

Search Engines Optimization

Cleaning your retail store online usually comes down to a bit of the old search engine optimization. Because search engines are constantly changing and users are constantly changing the way in which they search for content, it’s crucial to consider search engines optimization at his point.

It doesn’t have to be much of a process if you have a professional optimization specialist at your side, but for those that don’t, the overall idea is to use the best practices (which change frequently) to get your product pages ranking better in the search engines index. Whether this means creating new content, improving your on-page link sculpting, focusing on the actual copywriting aspect of your pages, or a combination of a bit of everything is up to you and varies from project to project.

Creating New Content

Freshening up a page doesn’t have to be a major operation … adding some fresh content can go far when optimized for the right keyword. This works especially well for landing pages, which tend to focus on presenting a lot of optimized content.

In addition to focusing on the actual amount of content, you should focus on diversifying your content so the page is relevant and interesting. This might involve creating a list style article within your actual page, a few photos, info-graphics, and videos.

Link Sculpting

This technique involves reviewing every link on your website, no matter if it’s in the content body, the header, or the sidebar. The idea here is to optimize your links anchor text so it helps inform search engines your particular piece of content is relevant to the keyword you’re targeting.

Think of this like polishing your entire store — it takes time, but the end result will help create a better experience and maybe even attract new people to your retail store online.

Copywriting

Reviewing the actual copy of your page, headlines, and descriptions is an often overlooked segment of the retail store online to which you need to spend a lot of your attention. Because the copywriting involves the actual language people relate to and search for with search engines, the more relevant and universal your copy, the better your chances are of attracting customers through the search engines and persuading them to make a purchase or subscribe to your newsletter.

If one keyword isn’t working well, change it to something that looks like it might work well.

Creative Commons License photo credit: DanBrady

Every Product Page Is A Sales Page

Monday, May 9th, 2011

One of the most common mistakes retailers online make has to do with the actual selling aspect of their business. As a retailer, it’s your job to get people to your store and sell them what you have to offer — especially now that consumer can find products for less through networks like eBay and Amazon.

Though you’re not in a store, you still need to present the products you’re selling in the best light possible and inform the customer not only what the product is, but also why they need it. This is where the art of the sales person and pitch comes into play. Just as it comes into play during the experience in a store, the people browsing your products online require some sort of sales pitch and experience if they’re going to buy from you.

A few things to keep in mind while creating your products pages include the following:

Keep It Organized

Just as with all retail stores, you need to provide your customer with an experience they find pleasant and welcoming. Achieving this is as simple as keeping your website organized and helpful. Refrain from too many distractions, yet provide enough product on your site to attract potential buyers to purchase additional items.

The key is to make it easy for your visitor to navigate while still using the space you have to cross-promote products and lead customers toward that check out area.

Link It Up … In a New Window

Building links between your product pages, blog posts, and other pages is an important aspect of running a website. For  business owners, it’s how you send people to other areas or products on your website (much like telling someone something is on aisle 14, website owners can offer a hyperlink to that area). However, you have to be careful when interlinking between pages because often times a visitor will be set on buying something, then navigate away form the page. To avoid this, simply add the specification for the link to open in a new window. This will launch the web browser in a new window and enable them to view the new page, without leaving the first page.

In essence, this is a tool that enables the website owner to avoid losing the customer forever when they shut the second window.

This helps keep the visitor on your website, which in turn helps increase sales.

Make it Easy to Contact You

Another problematic area for a lot of online retailers is offering a way for visitors to contact them for more information about a product or special offer. This is absolutely crucial if you hope to persuade customers to buy from you. Without the ability to contact you, they aren’t going to trust you.

Providing your contact information or a contact form should be a part of every sales pitch, just as it is with retail stores offline. Phone number, email address, social networks, and a reminder of the website where they’re viewing the product — all of these will help increase the potential of visitors buying from you.

Combining these few tips will increase the potential your product page has of converting a visitor to a customer.What else do you find works particularly well on your product pages?