This edition of eCommerce Marketing News includes tips on how to increase the average sale value on your eCommerce store, how to create great eCommerce photography, why Google Shopping is essential for eCommerce success and finally, an alarming forecast that online fraud may increase by 1.5-3x.
Expect a 3x Increase in Online Credit Fraud
If history repeats itself, a 1.5 to 3x increase in eCommerce fraud over the next few years is not an unreasonable projection. This increase will be gradual, although specific and more dramatic increases may affect some eCommerce merchants more than others. Those who are prepared and have good risk-management capabilities will be able to manage this risk appropriately.
You’ll by now be familiar with Chip and Pin credit cards, the industry’s efforts to reduce the opportunities for criminals to complete fraudulent transactions on the high street – in-person transactions. That difficulty doesn’t necessarily solve the credit card fraud problem, it just moves it.
More alarmingly, the changes in terms and conditions from October 2015 mean that Merchants will be liable for fraudulent transactions, not the card issuer.
Read: EMV – How Can This Impact My eCommerce Business?
Why Google Shopping is Essential for eCommerce Success
Shopping results are dominating the SERPS for shopping queries. If you’re not running Google Shopping Campaigns for your eCommerce site, you’re really going to struggle to continue to get traffic from paid search campaigns.
This post explores the evolution of Google Shopping, the different Stacks in Google search results and why Google Shopping is Essential for eCommerce stores.
The short version: Google Shopping (Google Product Listing) ads dominate the search results for shopping queries – very few paid positions are typically available for standard text ads. Product Listing ads include images and prices and are far richer, more helpful content for users to click.
How to Create Beautiful eCommerce Product Photography
This video post over on Shopify explores and explains some great techniques to help with your product photographs, an essential element in the user experience, especially for eCommerce stores selling fashion, jewellery and other visual products.
Customers need to be able to visualise how the product will look, how it might match other products or the room it might end up in, even how big the product is. In our earlier post, we explored simple ways to increase eCommerce sales, with photography among them. In particular, context is so important.
Those earrings might look amazing and you might even say how big they are, but pictured in a white box without the context of an ear or even a hand makes it very difficult to visualise just what they might look like when they’re worn.
Similarly, that piece of furniture might need several photographs from different angles to really help visualise what it might look like in the customer’s room. We love the Internet, but it does bring its challenges to overcome – particularly overcoming the ability offline of being able to touch, feel, try on or sit on the product you’re about to buy.
How to Increase Your eCommerce Store’s Average Sale Value
This post explores a number of different strategies to increase the average sale value achieved through your eCommerce store. Among the tips;
Product recommendations – creating opportunities for additional sales by pairing a viewed product with complimentary products. We’ve all seen the, “buy this with” option on Amazon – this strategy follows the same psychology to increase the number of products bought and therefore the average sale value.
Accessories and complimentary products – adding shoes that go with that dress, a cable or battery that goes with that product, a consumable that goes with the gizmo can all help increase the overall sale value from every customer.
Target order values for free delivery, a voucher or free gift – be really careful with free delivery. It’s one of the most important factors in eCommerce conversion rates. In a recent test with one of our eCommerce clients, we increased the conversion rate by around 50% by reducing the free delivery threshold, reducing the cost per conversion from Pay per Click campaigns in the process – the average sales value increased too!
Loyalty program – a bit tougher to implement and to manage, but can be an extremely effective strategy for eCommerce stores which sell consumable products or fashion products where frequent repeat purchases are common.
Product bundles and packages – like product recommendations, this strategy bundles relevant products together for customer convenience, switching a low value sale to a slightly bigger sale. Think of it as the “would you like fries with that?” strategy. The average sale increases dramatically with a low cost item.
eCommerce Marketing
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