One of the strongest pieces of advice I have for small business ecommerce siteowners is to make sure they have given their website the human element.

Doing business online is about building trust. There are many tactics for building trust on an Ecommerce website, including security call-outs, customer reviews, and visible contact information. But at the top of the list is giving your website the human element.

People respond positively to seeing other people who they can connect with. You can build a human connection on your website in a variety of ways:

• Include your own photo.
• Include an audio or video introduction.
• Weave your story into your website which, hopefully, will convey your passion for your business.
• Include photos of other people using your product and possibly talking about your product. (I don’t recommend using generic stock photos.)
• Create characters (people or animals) and weave them throughout your site. Clever characters will help make your site standout and create an image that visitors will want to come back to later.

If your goal is to build a loyal following of customers, the place to start is to meet them with a warm, personal greeting when they first come to your site. The rectangular browser window is not an inherently personal place, but with a little creativity, you can bring the browser window to life for your customers and help them feel great about doing business with you.

It’s a Friday afternoon in early November. You have all your holiday implementations in place on your website. (Ok. Maybe that is wishful thinking.) It’s time for a short breather, and here is a fun and constructive exercise for you to do.

Why don’t you take a moment to look at your web site with fresh eyes. Put yourself in the mind of a customer coming upon your site for the first time. They have just come from Google to your site and are deciding whether to keep on clicking through to place an order or hit the back button and visit one of your competitors. What could you offer on your site that your customer absolutely couldn’t do without? How could you encourage that customer to stay on your site and win them over for life?

As competition increases across the Internet, and there are so many venues for purchasing identical products, you really need to figure out how to add some value to set you apart. Here are a few ideas, just for starters:

• Preferred customer support forum or hotline
• An easy-to-access custom quote or consulting offer
• A downloadable planning guide
• Very rich and detailed product information
• A loyalty program that rewards repeat ordering
• A meaningful gift offer for the first order
• A new and unique add-on product offering
• A clearly stated commitment to care about the customer and what their needs are
• An assurance that the shopping experience is going to be simple (backed up by a simple shopping that is, indeed, simple.)

Perhaps you have already implemented some or all of these features on your Ecommerce website. If not, you could have a real opportunity to punch up your message, add functionality, and provide value to your customers.

If all you have on your site is pages of products with Add to Cart buttons, you are probably selling yourself short. A little brainstorming can be a great way to spark some new ideas. Be sure to write all those great ideas down and when 2010 comes around, you will be ready to take your site to the next level.

I expected to wake on this post-Halloween Monday to the sight of ecommerce websites, plastered with holiday splendor. Surprisingly, the holiday spirit seems quite subdued.

Many of the big-boxers – Amazon, BestBuy, and the like – seem to have sparse holiday messaging and specials. They are taking the scattered snowflake approach. Target.com is pushing their Christmas message more strongly.

I can’t believe it won’t be long before we are hammered with the holiday sales blitz -  uh, I mean, spirit.

If you are a “little box” retailer it is time to get on your game. In the words of GaryVee it is time to Crush It!

We won’t repeat all of our past holiday strategical offerings, but in this year of high unemployment and frosty revenue forecasts, do your best to make some low-cost, high impact moves and dress up your website with your best holiday cheer.

We have two quick suggestions.

Task #1: Make sure you do in fact have a holiday strategy.

If you just passively sit on the sidelines and hope that holiday shopping is just going to happen, you are likely to be in for a few lumps of coal and not much else.

Task #2: Start to tune  your site with some up-beat holiday cheer. Make it clear, when your shoppers arrive, that you are ready for them with the best you have to offer.

If you want some feedback on your site and your plans, let us know. We would be happy to talk.

I had a great conversation with a new Ecommerce customer, Ann Marie, yesterday. She was jazzed about launching into our new website project. And the first thing Ann Marie did was go out and buy a little notebook. Smart move!

Whether you opt for the virtual/electronic notebook or the good old-fashioned spiral bound, you need to put some organizational tools in place before you plunge into the Ecommerce world.

To put it a little more sternly, unless you can keep a handle on your various accounts, web presences, administrative pages, and key business relationships, you will be sunk.

Ecommerce has evolved over the past decade. Success doesn’t hinge on just having a simple website. You need to also do some or all of these tasks: incorporate a merchant account, interface with shipping vendors, be on top of your domain registration, possibly manage social media accounts, and keep up with PCI security scanning.

A first step is to keep a list of all the mission critical accounts, usernames, and access urls that make up your Ecommerce business. You will also need to devise a system for tracking your passwords without actually writing down the complete passwords in a non-secure location.

I don’t mean to over-state the importance of good record-keeping, but we have seen too many horror stories of site owners who can’t get on top of the basics of managing their business.

The classic example is when site owners set up a new email address and neglect to change their original email address associated with their domain registration. The next steps in this saga: they don’t get their domain renewal notification, their site is off-line, and then they end up going through some heartache to get the situation resolved.

Get your Ecommerce house in order. You will be glad you did.

Those of you who know me know that I am pretty much of a Twitter fanatic. Our business is in the thick of the social media marketing world and it is a no-brainer for me to be fully wrapped up in the Twitter universe.

But a recurring question we get from our small business ecommerce customers these days is whether it makes sense for them to invest the time and effort in being engaged in online social communities such as Twitter.

I am going to put aside the direct ROI benefits that a small ecommerce business can realize from Social Media – which is a whole discussion unto itself -  and look at some of the other benefits, or, as I like to think of them, opportunities.

These are some of the opportunities that Twitter presents for you:

Take your conversations public. If you have expertise in your field, Twitter can give you a platform to share it. It takes a bit of a mind shift to move private conversations that you previously might have had with an individual customer into a public space, but when thousands of people can see you demonstrate your expertise, the payoff can be huge.

Interact and engage new people. Twitter now has tens of millions of users. Dang, that is a lot of people. A healthy percentage of those users are on Twitter specifically because they want to interact  and connect with like-minded people. You would be amazed at the connections you can make: potential customers, suppliers, or employees. There is a universe of people tweeting away. It would make sense to take a look and see if your target audience is using social media tools.

Interact with your users. Putting aside the untold masses for a moment, your current customer base could very well be on Twitter. And one thing can be said about Twitter (and Facebook) users. They tend to be die-hards. By jumping on Twitter yourself, you can meet with your customers, on their terms, and build a strong bond with them.

Listen and monitor. Twitter has a powerful real-time search functionality built into it. Getting a read on what people might be saying about you or what is happening in your industry couldn’t be easier. Of course, if you don’t have the popularity/notoriety of a Paris Hilton, there is not going to be much chatter about you. But Twitter Search is a boon to those wanting to tap into the public discussion on a large scale. You can actively seek others who are searching for the information and products that you possess and reach out to them. And, if by chance, someone is conveying a positive (or negative) experience they had with your company, you can respond to it.

Use as a tool to learn. Any new, cutting edge information is going to show up right away on Twitter. Whether you are talking about World news events, technology rollouts, ecommerce tools, or virtually any other kind of information on a local, regional, or national level, you will hear about it on Twitter. Although the potential exists to fritter away a lot of time on Twitter, the opportunity also exists to efficiently monitor the flow of information that is critical to your business.

My advice to any small ecommerce owner is to, at the very least, try Twitter, in earnest for a month. (I will define “earnest” by saying that you will follow 50 people and do at least the same number of posts.) It is free and easy and takes very little effort to get going. Twitter is not for everyone and is not necessarily going to help every small business owner out there make more profit. But once you get the hang of it, you might find it to be a powerful avenue of communication that will help you build relationships with current and potential customers and generate business.

More on getting started with Twitter in a later post.

I am working on a longer article right now about the successful characteristics of an ecommerce micro-business. I am talking about businesses with 1-3 employees that are deriving their entire income from their website.

In the past year – which will go down as an ugly one – we have seen some of these micro-businesses in our customer base flourish and some stagnate or fail. What separates the success stories from the horror stories?

Without giving away the whole article, one of the big factors is a simple one. Take a look at your site – from the perspective of a new user – and ask this question: Do I see anything useful?

If all you have on your website is your products, your odds of being successful start to plummet. At the point, you have articles, seasonal tips, instructions, product reviews, suggestions, and easily accessible help, your site has a chance of standing out.

It takes work to create good content. But as the level of sophistication and expectation of the average Internet shopper rises, your site also needs to rise to the occasion.

Even if you are not ready to take the full social media plunge, it is crucial that you use your site to build a relationship with your customers. By providing useful and interesting information, related to your product line, you stand a good chance of beginning that relationship in a positive way.

Recently, Microsoft unveiled their new search engine – Bing.com.  Actually, they prefer to call Bing a “decision engine.”  It’s designed to help visitors weed through all the search overload that other engines give you, and help you make real decisions about what your searching for.  They have designed Bing with three goals in mind, to “deliver great results; deliver a more organized experience; and simplify tasks and provide insight, leading to faster, more confident decisions.”

Early indications show that most people are having positive experiences with Bing, and Microsoft is using an almost $100 million advertising campaign to promote it’s rebranded search engine as well.  So how can you, as an ecommerce professional, take advantage of this new source of visitors and potential sales?

First, test out Bing for yourself.  And don’t just do a one-time search for some random item like shoes or your name.  Instead, make it your default search engine for a while.  Get accustomed to some of the useful features like refined categories and related topics on the left-hand navigation plain.  Bing also does a great job with integrating shopping results and local retailers in your area.  The idea is to get used to how people will use it and hopefully find your website.

Next, make sure your website is listed using their Webmaster Central tools.  If you have a physical location for your business, get your information listed on their Local Listing Center.  And if you want even more exposure, directly upload your products for free with Product Upload.  Microsoft also has a pay-per-click program called adCenter, which they have also made improvements to.

Bing’s initial rise to #2 was probably from the hype and introduction, so only time will tell if they can sustain any growth.  They may not take down the all-powerful Google, but they could certainly lower it’s market share.  With a good redesign and early positive experiences, it looks like Microsoft has finally found a worthy competitor.

“Green” Consumers want to know; is shopping online good for the environment?  If you’re trying to make environmentally responsible choices, you may have wondered whether you can shop online with a clear conscience. What is the net effect of shopping online and having items shipped right to your door? You already know that it is incredibly convenient, saving you time and money, especially when you factor in the astronomical price of fuel. But is shopping online really a good choice for the environment?

You might assume making a ten-minute trip to the store would use less fuel and energy than having the same product shipped hundreds of miles straight to your door.  I was surprised to find the opposite to be true, and to find out just how many ways eCommerce helps the environment!

Dr. Joseph Romm, Lead Author and Executive Director for The Center for Energy and Climate solutions reports, “Internet shopping uses less energy to get a package to your house. Shipping 10 pounds of packages by overnight air – the most energy-intensive delivery mode – uses 40 percent less fuel than driving round-trip to the mall. Ground shipping by truck uses just one tenth the energy of driving yourself.”

The energy efficiency and emissions control potential of online shopping is growing exponentially.  I cornered the delivery man in our office today to ask if there had been recent internal policy changes to improve fuel and energy efficiency.  I’m glad I asked!  He reported substantial changes in the way UPS manages deliveries. In addition to their recent policy of “No left turns”, which conserves fuel and controls emissions, UPS recently bought 500 alternative fuel vehicles. According to UPS, the switch to alternative fuel vehicles will save 176,000 gallons of fuel per year, which is roughly the equivalent to taking 100 UPS trucks off the road. Moreover, the trucks powered by compressed natural gas will reduce truck emissions by another 20 percent. Fedex quickly followed suit, announcing plans to replace 30,000 trucks with hybrids.  When the largest fleets in the country start competing for the title of “Greenest Carrier”, everyone wins!

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, in terms of the potential impact of increased internet sales on the world’s economy.  According to Dr. Romm’s report:

• The Internet decreases our need for commercial building space. The resulting energy savings from operations and maintenance alone were estimated to save a total 53 billion kilowatt hours and 67 trillion BTUs worth of natural gas per year by the year 2007.

• The avoided construction would save the equivalent of 10 more power plants worth of energy, and another 40 million metric tons of greenhouse pollution.

The Internet saves million of tons of paper every year.  The American Forest & Paper Association reported paper production has experienced a steady decline since the year 2000, an average of .7% annually, according to an article published by Recycling Today Magazine.  Newsprint production is sliding even faster, decreasing by 28.7% since 2000.  For the first time, in February of 2008, the Whitehouse published it’s 3000+ page annual budget online, saving roughly 20 tons of paper, or 480 trees.

In the second quarter of 2008, the US Census Bureau reported 34.6 billion dollars in ecommerce sales, an increase of 8.9% over 2nd quarter of 2007.  Apparently, consumers agree, online shopping makes sense!

Ecommerce is reaching new heights of convenience and affordability.  Major retailers like Gap, JC Penney, and Target are focusing on internet sales, which are growing as fast as in-store sales are declining.  The Gap recently re-organized their website to include Old Navy and Banana Republic, one convenient shopping cart for all three stores.  JC Penney took bold steps, offering an improved rewards program and discounts to internet shoppers that compare with their in-store sales.  Target offers free shipping on orders over $50, and let’s face it, it’s easy to spend $50 at Target.

Check out a few of your favorite retailers online, chances are, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see better sales and shipping deals than in the past, not to mention increased availability.  I used to hate clicking on a product only to read “Only available in stores.”  I’m happy to report the imminent demise of that particular caveat, I haven’t encountered it in months!

Affordable hosted shopping cart solutions like MightyMerchant’s ecommerce platform make it easier than ever for small business owners, local artisans, manufacturers, and tradesmen to market their unique products and services online. Vendors who couldn’t afford to open a brick-and-mortar store are able to reach a huge and ever expanding audience, on the internet.  This is a major step toward sustainability in local markets and toward helping small businesses and mom and pop shops thrive!

It’s never been easier or made more sense to “Go Green.” Energy, resource, and fuel conservation have quietly slipped into our collective social conscience.  Americans are going green in record numbers.  The good news is, going green saves green, and we all appreciate money in the bank.

Tags: environmental, ecommerce, shopping, green, business, shipping, conservation, economy

People often ask why they should invest in a hosted web application. Paying a monthly fee for someone else’s software doesn’t sound like a very good deal at first. I recently joined MightyMerchant’s team, and I can tell you from personal experience, hosted web solutions are a very good deal! I wasted thousands of dollars and hours trying to get an expensive desktop application to do the job I wanted before finally giving up. A little research led me to web-hosted applications, and I quickly realized the benefits of having a professional team of programmers and developers at my disposal. Web-hosted solutions absolutely make the most sense for business owners who want a profitable web presence.

There are a few people who seem to have an innate knowledge of the mechanics behind those glossy webpages we love to surf. They don’t mind spending the extraordinary amount of time and effort it takes to get professional results. Those are the people who’ll tell you you’re better off buying the software. Without their training and experience, you’re treating your business like a DIY project. I’m going to give you the same advice you’ve heard from friends the world over. “Save yourself the headache and hire a professional!” Personally, I’d rather enter a few dozen lines of copy, download an image or two, and go to lunch. I’m happy to let the professionals do the work for me. At the end of the day, I’ll total the sales and smile. Teh nice.

I shared my experience comparing hosted web solutions and desktop applications in detail on the MightyMerchant website.

Paige Pryor joined MightyMerchant in June as the new Account and Project Manager and self-appointed Environmental Coordinator. Her background and experience in marketing, sales, and database administration led her to web-hosted solutions as a convenient and cost-efficient method of relaying products and services to customers.

Following Black Friday we have Cyber Monday, a day online retailers hope will help push them into the black for the year. Industry analysts spend their lives trying to figure out what consumers will do, and we’re told 46 percent of Americans in the workforce were expected to shop online today while at work. (Source: PBS Nightly Business Report)

Since you are the workforce and are probably online all the time, I’m curious about how you shop. If you’re reading this and you’re an online merchant, do you shop online or do you hustle around looking for the best deals from your local shopping centers?

. . . Tell me, did you buy anything online today?

Tags: online, shopping, ecommerce