Which social media drive online retail sales?

Richrelevance carried out an e-commerce survey in the USA for clients of their personalisation technology evaluating more than 690m browser shopping sessions over a period of a year, to identify the impact of Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter on retail sales.

It's interesting if you are managing an e-commerce site, and seeking to understand which is a driver for conversion to actual online or in store sales, which generates referrals and brand awareness or the social media creating more engagement?

Their Infographic shares some expected results, which are mainly due to a variation in  demographics and content sharing features:

Facebook has a greater 'stickiness' and ' higher conversion rates'.Pinterest generates higher order values, though bear in mind the demographics are those who are well educated with high income.Twitter drives traffic into stores and retail sites.

…

Do colours really have an impact on conversions when it comes to web design?

Is there a 'British' web colour palette, or a Chinese one? Have web users from around the world adjusted to a Western led approach to colour and is it standardised? Within this blog, these and other questions will be assessed by GlobalMaxer’s cultural conversion expert Joe Doveton. [caption id="attachment_29592" align="aligncenter" width="531"] Source: Visibone[/caption] From feeling blue to shaking off a black mood, phrases can express a linguistic synaesthesia of emotions, commonly shorthand for an experience articulated through colour. By no means is this limited to English either, with most languages having their own such as the German’s 'blauer Montag' (a day off work), the French 'une peur bleue' (a morbid fear) and the Swedish 'sväva på rosa moln' (to be in love). So, how important are the cues of colour in web…

Some little-known tools and techniques we’ve used to grow our own business

When we began Conversion Rate Experts, we used a Prerequisite Tree like this to plan the stages of our growth. The technique was invaluable, and we have used it ever since. This blog post is a mix of great resources we’ve recently shared with each other (using Diigo) plus some tools and techniques that have been invaluable in helping us to grow our own business. We’ve been meaning to share them with you for a while. We hope you like them. A one-minute introduction to Scrum development (video) by Axosoft. We use Scrum, and find it very useful. You’ll probably find it useful too. If you can’t spare 10 minutes, just watch the final…

Examples of how the new Rich Pins in Pinterest are being used in retail

Value/Importance: [rating=3]

Recommended link: Pinterest releases Rich Pins

Pinterest recently released a new feature called ' Rich Pins' which allows companies to add Product price and availability information to their pins. We thought it worth alerting readers to, since it appears to provide a useful way to link Pinterest pins more directly to prompt purchase.

Ecommerce businesses, particularly in fashion and style categories are increasing their traffic and sales orders via Pinterest - according to this research from Shopify, visitors referred from Pinterest are 10% more likely to buy compared to other social networks.

Given this, it's common practice for retailers to feature products with the relevant URL to drive pinners back to their website to purchase.  This pin from HomeDepot shows this. The new Rich pins feature now adds pricing and stock information.

…

We've all seen those lists of the world's 'Top 10 converting websites' and  thought 'what could I do to get my site to those stratospheric levels?'.

This post explains why you probably wouldn't want your site to be on one of those lists, and how you can change 'conversion rate' from a not-very-useful-at-all metric into a tool to help improve your site.

The post covers 3 simple issues every business needs to review:

What is conversion rate?Why isn't it the answer to all of the world's problems?What can you do to make conversion rate more meaningful?

(more…)

…

Culture and conversion Part 1 : 5 tips for designing for the culture of site visitors from different countries

Ever wondered why your baskets are bulging in Belgium but spring a leak in Spain? Why your checkouts are chock-a-block in Chile, but empty in Egypt?

Whether you are B2C or B2B business, cultural preferences play a big part in how people respond to your web design. This blog looks at how culture affects your online performance and what you can do to effectively manage an online presence globally.

'Just as nine-tenths of the iceberg is out of sight and below the water line, so is nine-tenths of culture out of conscious awareness. The out of awareness part of culture has been termed deep-culture.' – Edward T Hall, Beyond Culture

Managing Global web design assets

Managing global web design assets is not an easy task. No matter…

Examples of easily avoidable design mistakes which damage conversion

As grabbing the attention of customers online gets increasingly harder with so much distraction, competition and so many forms of communication on the internet alone, you may be left wondering how to develop your landing page into that gateway which will attract customers. Creating a landing page that boosts your conversion is vital, especially when you consider the fact it costs your business every time someone lands on the page - your main aim should be to overwrite that cost. If your landing page converts it should successfully engage your visitor and convince them to call-to-action, making them to do just one thing, and one thing only I always see a lot of advice online advising me what I should do to develop a lucrative landing page, but I barely ever see guidelines on what to avoid. With this in mind I have summarised what…

7 metrics to calculate web store effectiveness

Lots of marketing techniques can be used to drive traffic to an online store. Marketers for webstores should define the right KPIs to understand which of them bring the most benefit and the highest ROI for the store and which should be reduced or optimised? Here are 7 measures you should consider, many of which are available in Google Analytics.

7 metrics to evaluate marketing channels and online store profitabilty

In this article we have gathered 7 key metrics which will help you evaluate effectiveness of different marketing channels and online store profitability. 1. Website conversion Conversion (from Latin conversiō) is the traffic (visits) to the website which ends with some kind of action beneficial for the website – for example, product purchase or subscription. Conversion Rate is calculated as the number of visitors who have made a target action (purchase, registration, a phone call) divided by the total number…

The art of rules based personalisation and how to make it work

You are charged with promoting an array of content and promotions within shifting parameters and evolving conditions. "Rules based personalisation is an effective way to re-engage with customers through your website. It empowers marketers to get the most value from their content. Personalisation decreases bounce rates and increases conversion. Providing relevant and engaging content through personalisation rules is a powerful tool in the marketer’s arsenal, you need to know how to use it". My first post, A practical guide to website personalisation gave you an outline of the three central types of personalisation: Digital Body Language, Digital Fingerprint and Marketing Automation. In my last post Using a Digital Relevancy Map to create more personalised website experiences. we covered the process of researching and preparing for personas and user journeys. It is now time…

A briefing on the options to turbocharge your Wordpress Blog

With more blogs and company sites hosted on Wordpress today, it's important for marketers and agencies to understand the options available to optimise Page Speed for this key platform. Marketers need to ask providers or their technical team about page download speeds and optimisations used such as content distribution networks (CDNs), caching and code minimisation. In this post I'll explain some of these concepts and give some practical examples of how to implement these features.

The need for a focus on Page Speed improvement

In a digitally connected world, the speed of websites is becoming increasingly important for consumers. In 2006, Amazon.com reported increases in revenue of 1% for every 100ms of page load improvement. Reports by the Aberdeen Group in 2008 stated that a one-second delay in load time…