In keeping with holiday traditions Shop.Org published the results of their holiday shopping survey. This year, many retailers and industry experts were hedging their bets that the slow economy would necessitate that retailers use extensive promotional offers to bring in customers and drive sales. What they found, however, was that savings didn’t top the list of what would drive purchase decisions this year.

Survey respondents were asked, “When choosing to make holiday purchases from a given online retailer, what is most important to you?” Their top five answers were as follows:

1. Being able to see the shopping cart total before checkout
   Surprisingly enough, consumers reported that the number one thing that would determine if they purchased from an online store or went elsewhere was whether or not they could see the total of their order before beginning to checkout.
   The ability for consumers to place items in their cart, and view their total after any additional fees (such as taxes and shipping and handling) before entering their personal information topped the list of factors that would make or break their purchase decision. This sentiment is likely due to the fact that being able to get an order total without having to enter any personal information makes comparison shopping faster and more secure for customers.
   Tip: If you’re requiring that customers sign up for an email list or register as a user before purchasing, you’ll definitely want to consider restructuring your checkout process before the holidays!
   
2. Clear product descriptions
   During the holidays consumers do not want to have to guess about the products they are browsing because they’re on a time schedule. They need to find which products will fit their specific gift-giving needs, order them, and get them in time for the holidays. If a product may not be exactly what they are looking for, they will not take a chance and order it anyway; they will go elsewhere and find a store that reassures them that they are getting exactly what they need.
   Tip: Try to include as many product specs as you can to influence customers that are looking for something in particular. Remember, product specs are not just limited to things like size dimensions and weight; they can also include things like age ratings for toys, size suggestions for apparel, type of accessories included, etc. (more…)
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Anyone running an online store knows the story- a potential customer visits your site, browses your products, places one in their cart, and then leaves without buying. The next thing you know, your admin area is littered with more abandoned carts than a super market parking lot, prompting you to ask “What do I do now?”

Don’t Let Them Go!

Recently one of our forum users shared his company’s method for dealing with abandoned carts: “We currently send out emails to all abandoned carts that have an email attached asking if they had a problem and offering options to fix that problem (such as flat rate shipping we do not offer normally). We find at least half the time it’s just a small error and they are eager to place the order. We convert probably 80% of the people we contact.”

Obviously this tactic isn’t going to work if the customer left before entering any personal information, but contacting customers that have abandoned their carts is a great idea if you have the information to be able to do so.

Make the Sale

When you contact the customer offer them an incentive to return and complete their order. (more…)

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Throughout the month of November we will be running our “SMB blog series.” While SMB traditionally refers to “Small/Medium Business,” here at Volusion it has come to mean something else: “Small Made Big.” This month we will be sharing resources, tips, stats, and inspirations to help you turn your small ecommerce endeavor into something greater- something BIG!

Many small business owners view a business plan as a necessary evil in order to get a bank loan, but Online Business Advisor reminds that it is much more than that.

“A business plan is a living document. That simply means that the words you put on paper have to mean something and they must be defensible. Too many people who write business plans are careless or simply do not place enough importance on the meaning and impact of the words they put on paper… Business plans also should be written annually to support and complement your strategic plan. A business plan is not only a funding document, but a very important road map that details how the business will function over the next year.” (more…)

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There is a whole sea of blog posts out there telling you how to tweet and what to tweet and when to tweet, but the common theme among them is that they rarely provide actionable specifics. In this post, we will try to give you an idea of what you should tweet about in a way that encourages your business to develop a plan of action.

What are Users Tweeting Now?

To get started, let’s look at what individuals and companies are already tweeting about. A recent eMarketer article revealed that all tweets on Twitter as of August 2009 could be broken down into the following categories:

• Pointless Babble (also known as the “Sitting in my chair now!” tweets*) 40.55%
• At Replies (@TwitterUser) 37.55%
• Retweets (RT @TwitterUser) 8.70%
• Self-Promotion 5.85%
• Spam 3.75%
• News 3.60%

Unfortunately the three types of tweets that give Twitter a bad name (the pointless babble, self-promotion, and spam) account for more than half of all tweets, leaving the beneficial and insightful aspects of Twitter (the replies, retweets, and news) in the minority.

What Should You Tweet?

As a business, you will need to make sure that you use your Twitter account correctly. But how? What should you tweet about? There is no one “right way” to approach tweeting on behalf of your company, but here is a good model to follow: (more…)

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With our modern reliance on the hard numbers of quantitative customer feedback it’s easy to lose track of the importance of qualitative feedback from customers.

Quantitative customer feedback usually comes in the form of a survey with multiple choice questions and rating scales to determine a company’s success on a number of clearly defined objectives. The data that is collected is then analyzed using averages and formulas and is boiled down into tidy stats that look great on a PowerPoint slide.

Qualitative customer feedback, on the other hand, can take many more forms. It can be as simple as adding your company’s email address to an order slip and stating “Tell us how we’re doing.” It can be emailing customers some open ended questions and asking for feedback. Lately, analyzing customer sentiment on social media sites has become a popular form of qualitative customer feedback.

A Volusion customer shared a story in our forums of how she used qualitative customer feedback to benefit her business. Her words are replicated below: (more…)

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