Published on December 10th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper
In this video I discuss 3 tools designed to help increase the conversion rate of your website.
First up is HelloBar which allows you to add a toolbar to your website which can encourage visitors to sign up to your email list, Facebook page, etc. You simply choose the color of the bar, type in the text you want to appear and specify the link. Dead simple but super effective.
Next is KissInsights which allows you to include a floating question box on your website to ask visitors questions at certain points during the checkout/browsing process. You can then take these questions and include answers in your FAQ page or use them to improve the flow of your checkout process.
Finally, Visual Website Optimizer allows you to run multi-variate tests on your website. Tests can be created using a simple point-and-click WYSIWYG tool and it’s not uncommon to improve your conversion rate by 10% or more simply by testing different headlines, buttons and banners.
P.S. BigCommerce.tv is now live. It’s a quick shortcut that takes you straight to my YouTube guru channel.
Published on November 30th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper
If I had to promote a brand new business and had $0, the first thing I’d do (besides social media marketing) is look to setup mutually beneficial (i.e. win-win) partnerships.
In this video I’ll show you a simple strategy for creating a joint venture contest from scratch. By partnering with companies who sell complimentary products to yours, you can have your products promoted to their customers and subscribers via email, Facebook and Twitter. Your only cost is a few hours to setup the contest and $1,000 in prizes.
The cross-company synergy you get from a contest of this type is huge, and best of all you can implement this strategy if you’re just getting started because all you need to do is come up with prizes to give away. You don’t need a huge brand or a marketing team either.
Well, the holiday season is almost upon us. As a way to say “thank you” for reading our blog (which now has over 50,000 readers a month – woohoo!) I wanted to give you a 27 page ebook that’s been 6 months in the making.
In Guerilla Marketing With Social Media I share the 7 social media strategies we’ve used to grow our business by 480% in the last 3 years (proof). And because these are all guerilla marketing strategies, you’ll learn how to reach a huge number of people for a very, very low cost.
This has been one of the most successful guides we’ve ever produced – it’s already been downloaded well over 5,000 times by people on our email list (sorry, they got it first!) so I’m confident you’ll love it.
Whether you want to increase sales, attract thousands of Facebook followers, launch a contest, partner with the big wigs in your industry or turn one-time customers into raving fans, it’s all here in this 27 page ebook.
Published on November 25th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper
In this video I’ll show you a dead simple yet super effective marketing strategy which involves using surveys, StumbleUpon and your blog to get extremely targeted visitors to your website for just 5 cents each. This strategy is infinitely scalable, which means if it works then you can get as many visitors as you need.
The basic idea is simple. You first build your ideal customer profile using a survey. Then, you create an ad campaign on StumbleUpon using demographic and geographic targeting. You setup your ad campaign to point to useful content on your blog (such as a “Top 10 Craziest Shoe Designs” post if you sell shoes) and at the bottom of your blog you include a call to action which directs visitors to your online store where they can buy what you mention in your blog post.
This is one of my many “under the radar” traffic getting strategies which I’ve recently decided to start sharing. Make sure you implement this before your competitors do.
Published on November 22nd, 2010 by Mitchell Harper
Length: 14:06
Overview: Today I answer questions about social media marketing as posted by clients on our Facebook page.
Description: In this, episode 9 of the BigCommerce podcast, I answer social media questions from fans on our Facebook page. Topics include how to turn email subscribers into Facebook fans, how to create value for your Facebook fans and how to turn your social media fans into actual paying customers. If you’re confused by social media and don’t know how to integrate it into your marketing mix then this is a podcast you won’t want to miss.
Published on November 19th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper
I was looking over our traffic reports in Google Analytics earlier today and saw that our blog now gets close to 50,000 unique visits a month! I was also able to pull posts in order of popularity, so here they are – the top 10 most viewed posts for 2010:
Presentation: Bootstrapping to Seven Figures – This is a presentation I gave just once to about 3,000 business owners via webinar. In the presentation I run through the guerilla marketing and positioning strategies we’ve used to grow our e-commerce platform, BigCommerce, to just under 10,000 clients without any funding or debt in just over a year. .
[Video] How to Spy on Your Competitors Keywords, Traffic & Visitor Demographics - In this video I show you how you can use two free tools to see how much traffic your competitors get, which keywords they rank for on Google and also the age, income, location, etc of their visitors. You can then use this information in your SEO, SEM and marketing campaigns. .
How to Write a Profitable Returns Policy – In this post I look at a few things which should be included in your returns policy. Returns policies are extremely important when selling online. If you sell expensive products or if you’re a new store looking to build up your customer base quickly, the best thing you can offer new customers is a lenient returns policy. .
Would You Spend 10 Cents to Almost Guarantee Repeat Customers? – By thinking outside the box it’s easy to impress the hell out of new customers. In this post I share one real world example that a crafty Australian tea company is using to get the word out about their brand – at weekend markets of all places. .
Head to Head: Product Page Design From Top Online Retailers – In this post I share, compare and discuss screenshots of product pages from sixteen of the top online retailers. You will of course notice a lot of similarities on their product pages, but I’m sure you’ll also notice a lot of small differences. All of the best practices implemented by these top online retailers can be found in BigCommerce. .
[Video] 6 Tips for Designing a Beautiful Online Store – In this video I share six tips to help you design a beautiful online store which will attract customers and increase your conversion rate. If you’re not a designer but are thinking about hiring an ecommerce website designer then this video will help you make the decision. .
[Video] How to Build a Loyal Fan Base Who Buy From You on Facebook – In this video I explain why setting up a Facebook fan page for your business is so important. I show you the steps involved and discuss how Facebook’s viral effect can attract thousands of people to your business for no cost at all. I also discuss SocialShop, our free Facebook application. .
Our blog is now one of the 10 most popular e-commerce blogs in the world, so thank you to everyone who keeps coming back and also to everyone who takes the time to leave a comment. 927 comments were posted on the blog in 2010! If you’re new to the blog then make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, fan us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter so you don’t miss a post!
Published on October 20th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper
In this video I share my “Sales to Content” ratio which, if used correctly, can have a dramatic impact on the conversion rate of your online store.
The basic premise is simple: for every “sales” page on your website, you need to have at least two pieces of content that help establish trust, credibility and respect with your potential customers. Watch the video to learn which particular types of content work best.
If you haven’t already guessed, I’m big on educating people. A few weeks back I put together a presentation called “Bootstrapping to Seven Figures” which took me about a week to create.
Basically it contains the core ideas and strategies we’ve used to build our company to over 50,000 clients and high seven figures in yearly revenue. I shared my presentation with around 3,000 people on a webinar I did recently for one of our design partners and was blown away by the response – I even managed to score two marriage proposals before I was done!
Anyway, I wanted to share the exact same presentation with you, our loyal clients. If you’ve just started your business and you’re looking for a way to grow your sales to $1,000,000 within 12 months then this is it.
I’ve broken my presentation up into four videos, each of which is embedded below – the entire presentation runs for around 40 minutes. It contains absolutely no sales pitch (I HATE pitches) – just good, honest advice based on my experiences building Interspire (the parent company of BigCommerce) to what it is today with co-founder Eddie Machaalani and our awesome team.
The presentation I used in the video is also embedded at the bottom of this blog post.
When it comes to tracking visitors (including where they came from – Facebook, Twitter, a Google search, for example) and transactions for your online store, Google Analytics is king. It’s free and it’s an almost-enterprise-grade analytics package that already integrates into your BigCommerce store.
Here’s a quick video if you’ve never used it before:
… and here’s how to interpret and act on the data in Google Analytics:
Tracking visits and sales that originated from Facebook or Twitter (once you’ve integrated Google Analytics with your BigCommerce store) is easy. Here’s how.
Start by logging into Google Analytics, then click the “Traffic Sources” menu on the left:
Next up, click the “Referring Sites” option under the visitors menu:
Now on the right side of the screen you’ll see a few things:
A date range which you can click to change. Typically you want to look at your last 30 days of traffic to make any actionable judgements
A chart which plots traffic over the selected date range
A table which lists the websites that have referred traffic to you for the selected date range, like so:
Now in the example screenshot above, Facebook was the second most popular traffic referrer with 10,941 visits and Twitter was fifth with 1,190. If you don’t see Facebook or Twitter listed in your top 10 traffic sources then just search for “facebook” or “twitter” in the search box below the table, like this:
Finally, to track the most important metric of all – sales that resulted from Twitter and Facebook, you can just click the “Ecommerce” tab that appears above the list of referrers, like this:
Remember: you should have already integrated Google Analytics with your store, otherwise you won’t see the e-commerce tab.
You can then see visits, revenue, transactions, average value, ecommerce conversion rate and per visit value for each of your traffic sources, including Facebook and Twitter:
Pretty neat huh? No more guessing if all that effort you’re putting into social media is affecting your bottom line from now on
By the way: If you’re looking to get started selling online and want to track your traffic and sales from Twitter and Facebook then give our e-commerce software BigCommerce a try, free for 15 days.
As I was buying a book on Amazon.com as a present for one of our support ninjas, I noticed that when I clicked the “Add to Cart” button I was presented with an inline confirmation page instead of being taken to Amazon’s usual cart page. You can see the inline page in the screenshot I took above (click on it for a larger version).
In my opinion they may see a short term decline in sales because it breaks the typical buying process, but then again Amazon is Amazon – they run everything by the numbers so obviously they think this will increase their conversion rate.
Also, my guess is that 90%+ of people on Amazon buy just one item per order, so this is their attempt to get you through their virtual checkout as quickly as they can.
What are your thoughts? Have you seen this before? Like it? Hate it? Want it added to your store?
The BigCommerce blog is written by various members of our team and gives you an insider's view of how an e-commerce software company runs. We also share proven tips, tricks and strategies to help you sell more.
If you haven’t already guessed, 
