Wickedly Effective Laws for E-commerce Websites

E-commerce is a tricky beast, encompassing a variety of disciplines and approaches for finding, engaging, and assisting customers with their purchase decisions. You’ve got to know at least a bit about search and social and marketing and merchandising and a whole host of other skills ranging from the top of the funnel to user experience design to post-conversion customer service. And that’s before dealing with all the changes wrought customers’ shifting behaviors towards tablets and mobile and wearables.

I often find it’s helpful to start small. Instead of trying to do everything at once, focus on a few, critical elements of your plan and then execute against those elements.

Where should you begin? What are those “few, critical elements?” Well, happily, that’s the topic of my latest Biznology post, “The 5 Laws of Effective E-Commerce Websites.” Among the elements I recommend:

• Solve Your Customers’ Problems First. Your customers are busy people, with busy lives. It’s not that they don’t care about you; they’ve just got lots of other things to worry about. Help your customers accomplish their goals and they’ll help you reach yours.
• Focus on Key Metrics. Your sales represent the lifeblood of your organization, generating cash-flow and profit to sustain and grow your operations. Metrics serve as the “pulse” of your business, helping you measure your company’s health and directing you towards the right remedies when things aren’t going as well. Develop a data-driven culture that helps you identify what is and isn’t working so you can keep your business healthy. Utlimately, analytics and data aren’t about web metrics; they’re about business metrics.
• Improve Your Images. “A picture is worth a thousand words,” may be one of the oldest clichés around. It’s also true. Plenty of evidence exists to show you can measure what a picture’s worth in dollars as well as words. Customers rely on what they can see online at least as much as what they can read. Create clear, crisp, attractive imagery that highlights the benefits your customers will receive from your products and services to drive increased engagement and interest.

Of course, these three items are just the beginning. You can check out all 5 laws of effective e-commerce websites, as well as how you can apply them to your business over on Biznology

If you’re interested in learning even more about the future of e-commerce and marketing via the social, local, mobile web, register here to receive a special report I’ve produced in conjunction with hotel marketing firm Vizergy, “Digital Hotel Marketing in a Multiscreen World.” While it was originally written with hotel and resort marketers in mind, the lessons apply to just about any business. You can get your free copy of the report here.

You may also want to review the tips in my recent presentation Digital Marketing Directions: Three Trends Shaping 2014 Hospitality Internet Marketing. Again, though presented to a travel marketing audience, the talk covers many essential laws of e-commerce and digital marketing across industries:

Finally, you might also enjoy some of our past coverage of how the social, local, mobile web continues to shape e-commerce and business generally, including:

• What Your Customers Expect from Mobile and E-commerce in 2014.
• The Secrets Behind “It’s All E-commerce” for 2014
• Should Marketers Really Trust Google in 2014?
• The Zen of Digital Marketing Strategy
• 7 Steps to E-Commerce Heaven
• Today and Tomorrow: Mobile and The Changing Customer Journey
• Mobile Makes E-commerce Even More “Frictionless”
• Your 2014 Internet Marketing New Year’s Resolutions – Thinks Out Loud Episode 56