Mobile Commerce: iPad and Tablet Shoppers Buy More

New findings show that mobile devices continue to drive traffic on ecommerce websites. However, shoppers who use iPads and tablets convert to the purchase funnel more often and also spend more money compared to smartphone shoppers. Ability Commerce, a company that provides mobile-optimized versions of ecommerce sites for its clients through the SmartSite ecommerce platform noticed this trend within their customer's analytics. Among a sampling of retailer clients mobile traffic from August 2010 to August 2011, was found to be dispersed between the popular operating systems but revenues and conversions were consistently skewed toward the iPad. "We track analytics for our customers all the time," said Jennifer Tonisson, marketing manager for Ability Commerce. "This particular data was interesting because everyone talks about how much traffic is coming from smartphones…but the conversion rate is much higher on tablets," she said. Ability Commerce collected analytics data from three of its client retailers. Two had mobile traffic spread throughout the various mobile operating systems, but the revenues significantly favored the iPad.  For the third retailer, however, iPad shoppers generated almost all the revenue. In this case, the client offered an iPad-specific application. Why iPads Earn Higher Conversion Rates on Ecommerce Sites There are a number of reasons why the conversion rates differ so much between mobile phones and iPads (note: iPads have a much greater market share than Android- or Windows-based tablets that are just now entering the market). Tonisson said that a likely reason was because an iPad has a much bigger screen compared to a smartphone and the shopping experience is improved graphically. On an iPad, you can see more images in larger sizes, and with the bigger touchscreen you have better interactions with site elements such as hyperlinks. Or as Susannah Edelbaum, editor of The High Low, recently suggested in a post, the upswing could just be because people who have iPads have more disposable income. IPad Optimization Tips for Small Business Ecommerce Sites Using an iPad is more comparable to browsing on a computer, but there are many differences between a computer and tablet. Online retailers should be optimizing websites to provide a better user experience for the growing number of tablet users. Gavin Miller, lead developer and co-owner of RandomType Inc. has been developing websites and applications for both mobile phone and tablet platforms for the past two years. He said the biggest difference between using ecommerce sites on mobile devices and the computer is the reduced screen size and the limited capabilities of mobile device browsers. Another issue is websites that use Flash. "On an iPad tablet you don't have support for Flash, you have smaller browser capabilities and you have less processing power, so there are a lot of little optimizations that need to be made," said Miller. For example, your website shouldn't be heavy with JavaScript; and because tablets have touch screens instead of a mouse, you lose mouse-hover functionality and you also need to make sure that hyperlinks are bigger on the mobile version of your site. Miller recommends that ecommerce site owners consider the following strategies to improve the user experience for tablet users: Simplify It: Look at how people move through your website -- from initial discovery to purchase to checkout -- and "dumb it down" so every step is obvious. Make it Stimulating: Without mouse-hover effects and Flash, the user experience is not as stimulating. Make sure everything pops properly on its own without the extra visual stimulus a desktop browser provides. Use a Tablet Yourself: Look at the site using a tablet and test everything. Also find some people who aren't familiar with the site and who don't know how the mobile version is supposed to work. Ask them go through the shopping and checkout process so you can see how they interact with the site on a tablet. Free Tools to Validate Mobile Ecommerce Websites Since tablets have been around for only two years, Miller said tools are still being developed but there are a few free websites where you can validate your site. On a mobile validation site you do things like check for incompatible code on your pages, verify the size is tight for smaller or even select a mobile device simulator to see how your site looks to those users. Here are the testing tools that Miller recommends you try to see if your ecommerce website is ready for iPad and tablet users: Mobile WebPageTest allows you to enter your site URL and it loads your site onto various devices (such as iPhone, Android-based phones or iPads) and provides a screenshot of what your site looks like on that device. MobiReady is a tool that will give you an idea of how well your site is optimized for mobile devices. W3C Mobile Validator is a tool that developers can use to evaluate whether the site is optimized for mobile devices or not. It's a bit more technical than the others. LiveView is a tool that designers can use when creating mobile sites. Vangie Beal is a seasoned online marketplace seller, frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com and avid online bargain hunter. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com.

Loyalty Programs Reward Sales and Social Contributions

Rewarding customers through a loyalty program is a great way for a retailer to acquire, engage and retain customers and also to increase sales.  Rewards and loyalty programs were once seen as something that only the corporate big-box retailers could afford to offer, but today, even the smallest ecommerce business owner can afford to manage a loyalty program. Rewarding Customer Participation and Interactions Traditionally loyalty programs were all about the money and getting customers to come and spend more money. The incentive, of course, was to earn rewards based on dollars spent.  This has changed in that online, a loyalty program can move beyond your ecommerce checkout, and you can reward more than just the purchase. Ecommerce site owners can use loyalty programs to reward customers for content-focused contributions that serve to establish a deeper relationship between the customer and your business. This includes things like submitting a review, sharing a blog post with friends, Liking your Facebook page or Tweeting your URL. Ranjith Kumaran, PunchTab's founder, said these are important customer actions that should be rewarded. “The check-out funnel starts way at the top,” said Kumaran. “It might be a Twitter mention or recommendation down through mobile where you can take that in-store and finally to the cash register.” PunchTab, which currently powers more than 2,000 loyalty programs, is an instant-loyalty platform that allows website owners and brands to create a social and mobile-enabled loyalty program for free in minutes. PunchTab: For Any Business of Any Size An ecommerce business owner could use a service like PunchTab to reward paying customers with a reward currency and also reward them for participation in a discussion, for writing a review and sharing content on Facebook or Google+.  “These social actions would typically reward in micro-credits,” said Kumaran. “An online purchase might reward 1,000 credits but sharing a blog post or a review might earn the customer 100 points for participation.” According to Kumaran the combination of rewarding for online purchase and rewarding for recommending your business or product, nearly covers the full checkout funnel, but there is still another piece to fill -- which is the offline piece for businesses with a brick-and-mortar stores. The full-service reward covers offline, mobile, social and the ecommerce presence. But if you don’t have all those elements a small business could still uses PunchTab to drive a loyalty program. “PunchTab is designed to power what you have,” said Kumaran. For a small business that could be just an online blog and the checkout. For small business ecommerce site owners looking to get started with a customer loyalty program, Kumaran recommends planning and choosing the best type of reward for your customer to create a successful program. “Typically an ecommerce store or large community would provide their own rewards. We do offer a limited catalog of stuff we make available, but the most successful are the ones who offer their own incentives,” he said. PunchTab, which currently powers more than 2,000 loyalty programs for business owners, is free for up to 1,000 members. The service is available in two flavors; an ongoing loyalty program that you can use to encourage your users to visit every day or as a one-time promotional giveaway widget that encourages users to spread the word about your site in exchange for entries into a prize raffle. More Small Business Ecommerce Tips Looking to get a better handle on managing customer interactions for your small business? Try these tips and guides for small business ecommerce sites: Is Social Media a Waste of Time for Small Business Ecommerce Sites? Reward Ecommerce Customers with Loyalty Programs Merchant Secrets for Conversion - Part 2 How to Add Facebook Like to Your Ecommerce Site Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

5 Social Media Tools to Track Ecommerce Marketing Efforts

5 Useful Social Media Tools for Ecommerce Site Owners In Internet marketing, using social media services like Facebook and Twitter is a great way to help you talk about your ecommerce business and connect with your customers. However, it can be difficult for small business ecommerce-site owners to determine whether anyone is noticing their social marketing efforts. The following social media tools will help you get started on the right path to tracking your social media success. 1.  Social Media Management with Argyle Social Argyle Social is a social media marketing dashboard that lets you view publishing, engagement and social analytics. From this single platform, you can manage all your accounts and passwords, publish to a number of popular social sites, create custom short URLs, and even create follow-up posts and schedule them around initial posts. To track success, Argyle Social provides you with a social stream that monitors all conversation around each one of your social properties, including retweets, mentions, likes and so on. The conversations are stored in an inbox so you can take action when someone communicates with (or about) you. Argyle Social also provides you with analytical data so you can easily track Twitter Follower counts, Facebook fan counts, engagement tracking from a URL shortener and conversion metrics from Web analytics. 2.  Ice Rocket: The Social Search Engine IceRocket is a search engine that lets you search Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news and images for any phrase. Using this free online service you can search for your Tweets, your brand, or your company or product name. When you choose to search Twitter results you will see who tweeted the message, how many followers that person has and how long ago the tweet took place.  The Blog search will allow you to narrow down results by day, week or month. You can also subscribe to an RSS feed based on your search query. 3. Sysomos Offers Business Intelligence for Social Media Sysomos tools helps you listen in on social conversations from blogs, social networks and micro-blogging services to forums, video sites and media sources. You can access metrics to measure and track campaigns in real-time, and identify the conversations and influencers to build your social relationships. Sysomos offers a number of social media products including Sysomos MAP to effectively listen, measure, understand and engage; Sysomos Audience to measure your social media ROI; and Facebook Page Central a professional tool to manage Facebook Fan Pages. 4. Discover How Far Your Tweets Go with TweetReach TweetReach is a social analytics tool that helps businesses measure the impact of social media conversations. Using TweetReach you can discover how many users received your tweets, how far your message has traveled, and who is influencing the conversation about your brand or product. From the search box on the TweetReach main page you simply enter a search term (e.g. a URL, your company name or a phrases you tweeted etc.) to view the reach and exposure data for those tweets. The free version will search a maximum of 50 tweets. In the search results you can click the Twitter name of a person who tweeted your search query to view their Twitter profile and follow. 5. TwentyFeet Offers Social Aggregation TwentyFeet is a social media service that will aggregate your social statistics from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, bit.ly, Google Analytics and Myspace in one convenient location. You can use TwentyFeet to compare your metrics from different social services, see how your key performance indicators develop over time, and if the service notices any change in metrics -- you'll automatically be notified. More Social Media Small Business Ecommerce Tips Looking to get a better handle on integrating Twitter into your small business ecommerce marketing plan? Try these Twitter tips and guides for small business ecommerce sites: How to Use Twitter as an Online Marketing Tool A Beginner’s Guide to Twitter Terms BrandConnect: Social Media Tools for Brand Awareness How to Twitter for E-commerce Success Social Media Analytics for Small Business Ecommerce Sites Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

Review: Campaigner's Smart Email Builder

Email marketing is no easy task. Getting subscribers to open your email is only half the battle. Once prospects open the email, you still have to provide an engaging design that encourages them to read and click through to your site and landing pages. Unless you have experience with graphic design and HTML, creating a professional-looking email can be a challenge for most small business ecommerce site owners who manage a mailing list. Campaigner's Smart Email Builder offers more than 700 professional templates for email marketing campaign design. (Click for larger image). Campaigner's newest email-marketing tool looks to remove the rocket science aspect from email marketing by automating the process developing professional emails with a new tool called Smart Email Builder. The Smart Way to Design an Email If you're unfamiliar with Campaigner, it's an email marketing service that small businesses can use to create and send email communications to subscribers and customers. Campaigner is a hosted service that takes care of storage and reporting, email list subscribes and unsubscribes, and it also helps you to meet email regulations like CAN-SPAM.  The company also offers Campaigner Free for very small and individual ecommerce marketers, providing the service completely free as long as you maintain a contact list of 500 or fewer contacts. Since we last reviewed Campaigner Free, the company has released a new email editor tool that's designed to help those unfamiliar with design and code to create and send professional-looking email communications to list subscribers.  The tool is not an extra add-in and no additional subscription fee is required to use it. You simply start building a new email campaign using the Smart Email Builder instead of the Full Email Editor when logged in to your account. When the Smart Email Builder loads, you are presented with a number of basic options to get you started. This is the main design area (called Smart Templates), and you choose a layout and design for your newsletter. For example, choices include single column, two columns or right side bar. In total there are five options for layout, but each layout offers a number of theme templates with placeholders for graphics, headlines and the content you will include in the email message. Each template and theme combination can be customized in different colors.  After choosing a template, you go to a full-screen edit mode where you provide the content for your email communication. In total the Smart Email Builder provides more than 700 templates, themes and color schemes to help you design an email newsletter to match any type of content, promotion or seasonal newsletter you want to create and send. Why Campaigner’s Smart Builder is an Easy Builder The Smart Email Builder interface is designed to provide you with a lot of design options with minimal work required to create the email. For example, when you upload images they are the right size, and you have a simple “resizing slider” that maintains image proportions so your email images are never dithered and unsightly.  Smart Builder's template-based, drag-and-drop interface makes creating your email newsletter an easy task. (Click for larger image). You can also drag-and-drop blocks of content around on the page. Depending on where you place a block of content in the template, the Smart Email Builder automatically designs the text according to that area's pre-defined format. The workflow process makes the Smart Email Builder to use. The template display automatically updates on-the-fly as you add your text and make changes.  As you work on putting your own text and assets into the email, you can also go back and change any aspect of your layout, theme or color template if you decide your content doesn’t quite look right in the one you initially selected.  This is useful for getting the right look and layout for your marketing communication without a lot of fuss. Working in a live design mode and seeing how the email will look as you create your copy saves time compared to saving changes and going back screens to make basic template layout and color changes. Available for free Smart Email Builder is available in both the Campaigner Free version and in subscription-based paid versions. It’s a handy tool for people who find it difficult to create nice, professional looking email newsletters -- but at the same time anyone with a little more experience can still choose the Full Email Editor when creating an email marketing campaign in Campaigner. More Email Marketing Tips From beginner guides to expert tips, our selection of email marketing tips and articles can help you to better manage your small business marketing tasks.  Email Marketing Tips: Segment Lists for Targeted Campaigns Ecommerce Conversion, Email and Other Marketing Words to Know  A Buyer's Guide to Remarketing Services How to Find an E-Mail Marketing Service Provider Review: Campaigner Offers Free Email Marketing Service Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.