No matter what your business model, understanding these four questions and thought-provoking discussion points will benefit your company. From SEO to Reputation Defender, from Analytics to A/B Testing, these points should be addressed at all levels of your company.
We hope you consider these tips. And if you need assistance, please give us a call.
1. How well are you dealing with the technical side of your business?
• As you grow, are you using technology to improve the efficiency of your processes (shipping, inventory, CRM, warehouse management etc.) or are you throwing more bodies at the problem?
• Are you using custom tools to make your site more valuable to customers, improve search results and create competitive barriers to entry?
• Are you doing enterprise ecommerce hosting or are you still trying to do it on the cheap?
2. Are you making yourself visible to all potential customers?
• How good is your SEO?
• Are you doing the basics for On-site SEO? How about beyond the basics?
• Off site - are you getting quality links? Do you have a strategy?
• Are you using the shopping engines and are you optimized for them?
• Are you optimizing your Google Product Feeds?
• How well is your PPC performing? Did you try it and give up on it?
• Are you in marketplaces like eBay or Amazon?
• Should you be on them? (it’s not as simple as you might think)
• How much can you really sell there? (a ton)
• Are you using RSS product feeds?
• Are you using trigger-based emails?
• Are you doing things like “deal-a-day” promotions?
• Are you blogging?
• What’s the health of your affiliate programs?
• Have you looked into creating micro sites that appeal to different segments of you marketplace? Would you like to become you own competition?
• Are you working at increasing international business?
3. How well are you converting traffic and maximizing your profit?
• How can you increase your Conversions?
• Trust – Are you doing all the basics to show you are trustworthy?
• Is the checkout process easy and re-assuring? Do you have a way to re-engage abandoned carts?
• Analytics - What’s the score? i. What are you tracking? ii. How are you making it actionable?
• Optimization – Are you doing multivariate testing for your important/profitable pages (i.e. home, product & checkout)
• How can you improve the User Experience?
• Information Architecture
• Is your navigation simple and clear? Where are people getting confused?
• Do you offer multiple filtering capabilities?
• Does on site search work really well?
• Are you merchandizing your products in an appealing way?
• Are you using ratings & reviews?
• Are you providing educational guides, product recommendations and customization tools?
• Do you have multi-media? How-To Video’s?
• What are you doing to increase your average order size
• Up Selling
• Cross Selling
• Promotions
• Are you testing which are most profitable?
• Are you getting your vendors to support you?
4. Repeat Customers are the cornerstone of a successful ecommerce business.
• Are you finding ways other than price to compete?
• Can you customize products?
• How can you improve customer service and self-service?
• What can you do to be seen more as a trusted resource than just a store?
• Have you created custom tools?
• Word of Mouth works for you or against you. Are you doing reputation management?
• Are you using sophisticated email methods or just a “mailing list”?
• Are you finding creative ways to build community?