Most online business owners have heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but there’s also another optimization going on specifically for online merchants called e-commerce shopping cart optimization. Much is made of it and for good reason, as the cart is responsible for the sales of products and ultimate profits.

The better the cart experience, the more products can be sold, but carts are useless without having any consumers to fill it so acquisition (getting customers to the cart) and retention (keeping them coming back) become the key focus of any smart online store owners.

How can merchants advertise their online stores?

Search engine optimization (SEO), affiliate programs, performance-based advertising, email marketing are just few ways to drive your customers to your cart, yet historically, one of the top acquisition strategies for e-commerce retailers has been paid search where you pay directly for ads to display based on keywords the users search for. There are couple ways to pay for ads, two most popular are CPM and PPC.

CPM- Cost per Mille (Mille= thousand) counts how many times your ad was displayed regardless of user’s action). PPC-Pay Per Click – counts actual instances of users clicking your ads, regardless of how many times the ad was displayed on the page.

Tip:
User review websites are important to every business online in both consumer acquisition and retention. Do you know where your business is being reviewed? Below are just a few of the obvious places:

1. Social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Yelp.com, and Google Maps, Bing, Yahoo Local, City Search and Local.com.

Depending on the industry, products and services, here’s a small sample of sites your company might be reviewed on:
InsiderPages.com, MerchantCircle.com, Judysbook.com, angieslist.com, Tipadvisor.com, OpenTable.com, BBB.org, Buzzillions.com, Epinions.com, Wize.com, PowerReviews.com, SiteJabber.com.

Note:
According to recent research done by comScore, Retail E-Commerce was up 14% from a year ago, whopping $37.5 billion dollar in spending in Q2 2011 to be exact. It is also interesting to note that the top-performing online product categories are: Consumer electronics, computer hardware and software and Event Tickets with each category growing at least 15% from a year ago. Click here to read their press release.

In addition, Email remains one of the best tools for every e-commerce merchant in both customer acquisition and retention. Connecting directly with your customers gives you an opportunity to customize your offerings, plus don’t forget the email goes with them everywhere including mobile and social channels.

Acquiring customers through email can be done with making offers such as 10% off your first purchase. Other ways include offering loyalty programs, early bird discounts, product tutorials, ebooks, whitepapers and more. Over time we will write articles on each to offer tips and advice on how to get attention and keep it.

We help our clients determine which tactics to implement, competitive strategy is the key to your online success. We also help design the online marketing material to match client’s branding and marketing campaigns, develop whatever technical infrastructure is necessary to facilitate successful execution and than help with marketing and data collection to improve results. Curious how we can help your e-Commerce business? Click here to email us with your questions.

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