The importance of customer testimonials

There's a multitude of elements to get right before anyone browsing your website will be converted into a paying customer, and ensuring the information that customers want and need to see to gain their trust is key to doing this. Authentic testimonials in particular are very powerful endorsements of your products and services and can increase online credibility significantly if applied correctly. There are three major reasons to use testimonials on your website and also on any other marketing tools for your business.

1. They help to build a strong bond of trust with visitors to your website
2. Improved credibility of your company by demonstrating an existing and satisfied customer base
3. They demonstrate your success.

This article will quickly show you how to get testimonials from your customers, what information to use and where on your website testimonials should be displayed. There are two types of testimonials, solicited and unsolicited, both are equally as important but the latter is far more rewarding. You will attain more testimonials by being as proactive as possible, whether you're face-to-face or on the phone to your customers always ask for a testimonial, if you don't ask you won't get.

Send your customers a thank you email after an enquiry or sale and provide a link from this to a concise online customer satisfaction survey. With all testimonials you should always get permission before adding them to your website as they should at least be accompanied by a name and business reference.

Choosing the right testimonials

Choosing the right testimonials is absolutely essential if you want to gain customer confidence and increase sales from potential customers. You want specific examples that talk about the return on investment, how reliable and dependable your company has been, what kind of response time you show, that you'll always be there for after-sale support, that you understand their business needs, and that you work within their budget and time constraints.

These are all aspects that will help to convert website visitors into actual paying customers. When selecting snippets for display on your website try to select snippets from testimonials that outline the definable benefits, like "Thank you, your product has made my job far easier..." or "Wonderclean halved the time it took to clean my kitchen...". Avoid using testimonials that simply read 'Thank you, your product was great' or 'Had a great time, I will be back next year'. Use a couple of sentences for the snippets and if you want to display more, link to the full testimonial on a separate page.

The best position for testimonials

Everyone displays their testimonies in different areas of their website to suit their content and layout. The home page of your website being the most viewed of any page is the most important therefore be sure to use the very best and influential testimonials here. If you have testimonials that relate to specific products or services make sure you include them on the exact pages they refer to, better still ensure a direct 'call to action' is displayed on this page, i.e. 'Buy Now' or 'Click here to register' in order to maximise the impact of the testimonials on your visitors.

As you are probably aware using testimonials on websites are not the only aspects that can help improve your credibility and profitability, but they an efficient and cost effective tool often overlooked by business owners. Furthermore using testimonials is a strategy that can be applied very easily, collecting them can be simple, either from an online form or easier still by asking your customers directly. For more information on how to use testimonials and more about effective internet marketing for your business phone us on 01458 253290 or contact us

This increase is largely due to technological improvements & greater broadband take-up, a wider range of devices with internet access (such as TVs, media centres and mobile phones) and improved consumer awareness and social acceptance of internet transactions.

Also, convenience, variety and ease of price comparisons are making internet shopping more attractive to consumers than traditional shopping mediums. In addition, internet shopping is not restricted to a small number of transactions. The influential IMRG (Interactive Media in Retail Group) predicts that the average web shopper will spend £1,615.00 during 2007, generating 860 million deliveries in the UK. This illustrates the increasing frequency and value of internet purchases.

The strong evidence is that if customers are not able to buy from your website you are losing the opportunity to capitalise on this trend and, worse still, consumers could be buying from an alternative supplier.

Learn Essential Tips for Trading Online

If you are planning to start selling online, or you already do, then a seminar being held in Taunton in October will help you to maximize your success. Retail on the Web - Essential Tips for Trading Online brings together an expert panel of industry professionals each offering practical tips that you can put to use immediately within your business. A series of energy-packed briefings will cover key aspects of making the internet a successful trading place for your business - helping you to gain a real advantage over your competitors.

Free from jargon and hype, this practical seminar delivers the facts to business owners, and provides the knowledge that will enable you to make your own informed decisions about trading online. The panel of experts will help you to discover the benefits and avoid the pitfalls of developing an online business.

There will be an opportunity to win some excellent prizes in a charity raffle, all the proceeds
of which will be donated to BIBIC, the South West based Brain Injured Children's charity. Details of the Charity's work can be found at www.bibic.org.uk

The Event was held at The Tacchi Morris Centre in Taunton from 6pm - 9pm on Tuesday 30th October. For more information on future events please go to www.retailontheweb.co.uk or phone us on 01458 253290 or contact us

The importance of research and planning

As a manager working for a website design and marketing company I regularly see businesses quite unprepared when considering a website, businesses who need only to carry out some basic 'market research' to determine the most important aspects involved in developing a successful website.

Most, I think would agree that if you were considering opening a new shop in a different town you would indeed invest in a degree of market research or at least have some finding to support such a business development. A website should be treated with the same level of importance, if not more. As a marketplace the Internet will access the largest concentration of consumers anywhere in the world, quite possibly making this business development your most significant.

Questions and considerations that need to be addressed are very simple, for example who's your target market and are they likely to use a website? What's the competition and why are they successful on the Internet? How will you drive business to your new website when it goes live?

There are of course many other questions, considerations and information you need to think about in order to plan for a new website, but these are certainly the most vital you should be asking way before approaching a website design company. In fact unless these questions are answered the chances are your website will not be 100% right and therefore its long term future will be put under unnecessary pressure.

From my experience, market research is certainly the most neglected aspect when businesses are looking at diversifying onto the Internet. Naturally it's not for me to discourage people, after all our industry in particular is the first to benefit from the increasing trends in online shopping. However it is in our interest to see that those who do take the information super highway make a success of it. It is from long term success that results in strong working relationships and continuing investment.

Remember, the Internet doesn't work in the same way as the 'real world'

The Internet is of course a minefield and often immensely complicated and confusing for those with little or no experience. Often business practices have to be adjusted, varied and even re-considered on the web to take into account consumer behaviour as well as the search engine environment that drives the Internet.

This said it is far from being rocket science, despite what many will lead you to believe and the same core principles are applied online as they are in any other business. One of the most common misconceptions I regularly experience from talking to people is that many still assume once a new website is set free on the world wide web that anyone and everyone will see it.

This could not be further from the truth, and in some respects somewhat short-sighted. As for any business unless you tell people about it through effective marketing and promotion they are very unlikely to know about it, this is no different on the Internet. Unfortunately a lack of effective Internet marketing and promotion results in the large proportion of websites becoming lost investments. Again this can be avoided, knowing that there will be ongoing marketing costs as well as the initial website investment before you get in too deep is a reality. Beware, many website companies may try to avoid mentioning this at the initial stages to secure design work!

Realising your aspirations

So what can you do to ensure that your Internet aspirations are realised. Firstly be sure of exactly what you want from your website, it's simply not enough to decide your business needs a website because everyone else has one, particularly if you're looking at investing in ecommerce. Get a second or third opinion, preferably one outside your business and one with a degree of Internet knowledge.

As for choosing a website company it's well recommended to approach an Internet company that not only offers website design but also website marketing and management services. Look for a company who can demonstrate long term relationships with businesses they have helped get onto the Internet. And avoid anyone who says that they will submit you to Google!

For more information and advice on diversifying onto the Internet phone us on 01458 253290 or contact us

He earned a Ph.D. in User Interface Design and Computer Science from the Technical University of Denmark. In 1991, when the Web was new, Nielsen correctly predicted that 'hypertext' was the future of user interface design and wrote a comprehensive book about it. He still regularly publishes research on web usability.Below are simplified findings recently published by Nielsen aimed at increasing sales and customer loyalty on websites.

1) E-mail Newsletters

Email newsletters work as the perfect companion to your existing website, enabling you to maintain customer relationships beyond their visits to your website, keep customers and business partners informed and in touch with your business.

If you do not publish a newsletter then publishing one is probably the single highest ROI (Return On Investment) action you can take to improve your presence on the internet. Additionally they also liberate your website from dependence on search engines.

2) Informative Product Pages

The product pages on eCommerce websites in particular suffer from information deficit. It's rare to see a product description that tells prospective customers everything they need or want to know in order for them to make a purchasing decision.

Do not assume customers will e-mail or pick up the phone to find out a detail about a product that isn't specified on your website. They are likely shopping online for speed and convenience so their unlikely to this, rather click straight and go to another website, just like you or I do!

Maximise content and prioritise it, meaning present the essential or the most appealing stuff first.

3) High-Quality Photography

One of the simplest ways to improve product pages and maximise sales is to show really good photographs. For product photos on eCommerce websites show a main photo, the one that representatives the product best with a selection of several additional photos that can be enlarged showing close-ups and different angles.

It cannot be stressed enough how crucial the quality of your product photos are in making your website a success or not. Remember on the internet no-one can touch or smell your product so the photos are more often than not the single most persuasive medium that will sell them.

4) Product Differentiation and Comparisons

Your website must work hard to alleviate user fears about buying the wrong product, or they'll likely delay or decline purchasing from you. If you have multiple products in the same category for example you must explain product differences so clearly that it's obvious to people without industry expertise why they should buy one product over the others.

5) Simplified Text

Better writing is probably the single most important improvement you can make to your website, however it often appears fairly far down the list because it's not a one-time fix. Effective website copywriting is a combination of minimising industry jargon as not to put off prospective customers and search engine optimisation.

Sitemakers Website Management team work hard to continually research internet development, keep up to date with trends and habits and maximise traffic to your website. For more informtion phone us on 01458 253290 or contact us

On Saturday of the August Bank holiday I had the misfortune of being taken critically ill with internal bleeding, nothing particularly unusual for those who know me but none-the-less an experience I'd rather have missed given the opportunity. I subsequently spent the month in hospital beds in both Dorchester County Hospital and later Kings College Hospital in London.

As well as plenty of other thought provoking issues this experience brought upon me it did highlight to me how I had unintentionally become dependant on the internet. What I found between being prodded, poked and injected was how much the lack of access to the internet effected my everyday life, albeit an everyday life in a hospital bed. Indeed one might say there's little difference between a hospital bed and an office chair!

Having been used to nine to five internet access on the outside I now found myself buying newspapers and magazines in some quantity to satisfy my appetite for current affairs and various hobbies and interests including photography, sport and the natural world. All of this came at some cost I hasten to add. I had become accustomed to the convenience of simply clicking onto News 24 from the BBC or searching for the latest digital cameras on Google.

One of the biggest headaches I found was having to deal with 'telephone banking' whilst I was away from a computer screen. Like so many of us I had been weaned onto online banking and, despite feeling somewhat bullied into it by the declining level of service from my high street branch, I have come to appreciate the convenience and speed of it.

I pined for my Facebook and iTunes accounts, missed reading the latest entries on my favourite blogs and forums and temporarily lost touch with the latest industry news. I began bleeping with anguish and required physio on my index finger as it began to sieze-up.

Looking back at this experience it demonstrates our growing dependency on the internet. National Statistics figures back this up, the most recent showing that 61% of UK homes, some 15.2 million households are now connected to the internet, up from 54% from 2006. A recent study by the OFT predicts that online retail spending in the UK is set to double in the next 5 years to over £29 billion.

What the experience and the figures above also illustrate for myself, working directly in the industry, is the absolute necessity for businesses to embrace the net. No longer should the question be, should we have a website, rather when will we have one? Achieving that all important foothold on the web sooner rather than later should be an absolute priority for those with little or no internet presence, particularly for those within the retail sector.

As a society our dependence on the internet can only increase, with an ever increasing selection of internet aware gadgets and the development of broadband and Wi-Fi connection the opportunities for those in business to reach their customers are clear to see.

For more information on taking full advantage of the internet for your business contact us today.

Under Regulation 6 and Schedules 1 and 2 a company must state in legible lettering on its business stationery, whether in hard copy, electronic or any other form including all its websites:

• Full company name
• Place of registration
• Registered company number
• Address of registered office
• If applicable whether it is being wound up

Whenever an email is used where its paper equivalent would be caught by the stationery requirements then that email is also subject to the requirements. The above also applies to Limited Liability Partnerships.

Please supply Sitemakers with this information so we may update your websites content, if you have any questions at all please do not hesitate to contact Tim Neal on 01458 253290.

UPDATE: from January 2007 Newsletter on 'TECHNOLOGICAL CONVERGANCE'

Last month we talked about the impact that 'Technological Convergance' is having in the mobile phone industry, specifically referring to the development in mobile television and mobile web which is seeing a revolution in direct advertising to the consumer.

This week saw The Online Publishers Association release an international study of how consumers are utilizing content and advertising on the mobile web. The study finds that the mobile platform is becoming an effective source for content and marketing opportunities because of strong growth and development in the mobile phone industry and that consumers themselves are paying more attention to advertising on the mobile web.

The study found that 76% of all consumers in the US and Western Europe have access to the internet on their mobile phones and or PDA's (personal digital assistant) and one third, 32% of them actively use it. The UK in fact leads the way with 54% followed by the US and Italy both coming in at 41%.

Online Advertising Spending Hits $4.8 Billion in the last quarter of 2006

Online advertising revenues continued to grow at a staggering rate in the last quarter of 2006, reaching nearly $4.8 billion dollars, according to The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and its independent research partner PricewaterhouseCoopers. As the highest reported figures for the quarter, up by 32% from the same quarter in 2005 the report illustrates the ever increasing importance of Online Advertising services such as Google's Pay Per Click search marketing to online retailers.

As well as major marketers investing more into online advertising much of the growth has been from smaller businesses realising the potential the internet has to increase their brand awareness and work cost effectively for them as a direct marketing and sales tools for their products and services. Many of these smaller businesses originally moved online to use websites such as eBay, now more and more of them are developing websites of their own and investing in online advertising such as Pay Per Click.

For more informtion Sitemakers services and to arrange a demonstration of LiquidShop phone us on 01458 253290 or contact us

So how can you get a slice of the pudding this year and drive targeted visitors actively looking for your products and services to your website. Below is our 3 Step Guide to Increasing Your Christmas Sales...

1. Pay Per Click Marketing

   Pay Per Click or PPC marketing is arguably the most targeted and quickest form of channeling Internet users who are actively searching for your products and services to your website.

   It works quite simply by triggering adverts to appear alongside the organic search results when we enter our search words and phrases into a search engine like Google. A cost per click is associated with the keywords and phrases and every time a Pay Per Click advert is clicked upon the advertiser pays the going rate.

   Crucially what Pay Per Click provides is the opportunity for businesses to achieve and maintain top search engine results and effectively target potential customers.

2. Optimise Your Website

   To ensure that Pay Per Click marketing works to its maximum benefit your website needs to be effective at converting visitors into actual paying customers. With this in mind it's well worth investing in optimisation services. In fact any company (worth their fee) offering you Pay Per Click services should provide this service to you, whether it be as part of, or additional to the Pay Per Click marketing itself.

3. Track Your Online Progress

   For any kind of coordinated marketing such as Pay Per Click it's absolutely crucial to track and record its progress. Christmas is a time when Internet professionals and website owners have the opportunity to gather a great deal of data as regards the usage of their website(s). This information not only highlights trends and provides information on visitor habits but can also highlight problems and failures in a website such as broken links.

Our recommendation:

There are any number of statistics packages available to us these days, but one, Google Analytics, is fast becoming an industry standard and due to its comprehensive and flexible offerings it lends itself to websites of virtually any size and complexity. For more information on setting up Google Analytics for your website call 01458 253290.

For those businesses new to Internet marketing this 3 Step Guide provides the ideal introduction. In its nature Pay Per Click marketing is flexible, not only in the way it's able to target customers but also the amount of financial investment an advertiser chooses to put into it.

At Sitemakers we keep up to date and track of current trends and habits to identify possible opportunities where we can further promote your businesses. For more information on how to maximise this years online Christmas sales phone us on 01458 253290 or contact us

Broadband

DSL broadband is available to 85% of UK homes and businesses and 41% of homes now have broadband using more than 4 million broadband connections. 56% of Internet users are now going online everyday and as people become more web savvy, they are visiting an increasing variety of websites covering a broader range of activities. Whilst the Internet increases its reach, diverse surfing habits mean that it is a highly effective medium for targeting niche audiences.

Broadband users are far more active online, spending twice as long online as narrowband users and viewing 3.5 times as many web pages. The profile of broadband users shows similar skews to those seen in the early years of Internet adoption. This will become more reflective of the total population as broadband usage continues.

Media Usage

People are spending as much time online as they do listening to the radio and twice as much time as they spend reading newspapers and magazines. Online is a great way to reach audiences in the middle of the day. The internet is having a significant influence on people's consumption of traditional media. Whilst online and radio form a strong synergy, other media are losing out as people spend more time surfing the web. Surfers find the internet to be a peerless aid when looking for information and trying to get things done. Online advertising is more effective if seen in the right context as audiences say they prefer advertising that relates to a website's content, thus paying more attention to it.

Ecommerce

Websites where people can buy products and services are the most popular destinations. Online information plays a crucial role in people's decision making process. The Internet is a valuable resource to consumers when researching products and services and is often more trusted than other sources. 74% of users believe using a credit card online is 'safe' with the average user spending £627 in the last 6 months. 47% have a household income between £25k and £50k. 41% are aged between 18 and 35. 46% have been online for over 5 years. 38% have shopped online more than ten times in the past six months.

Christmas Shopping

More and more people are shopping online, spending more money and making bigger purchases.

Shoppers spent almost £5bn online in the UK to the lead up to Christmas 2005, up from £3.3bn the previous year. Spending online is expected to reach £8bn over the run-up to Christmas 2006. In comparison, overall retail sales rose by just 4% year on year in December. There can no longer be any doubt that the internet is a major part of the retail landscape, and that it will dominate the retail agenda for the future.

150 Million Users online in Europe

Germany and UK continue to lead the market in terms of total audience connected, with 76 million users between them. High growth rates continue among most countries for 'at home' user population. People connected are also spending increasing amounts of time online. With the trend in social networking websites taking a hold in recent months these trends are set to continue.

For more informtion about online retail and to arrange a demonstration phone us on 01458 253290 or contact us

Our formula of combining website design with search engine marketing lends itself to achieving success on the Internet. The requirement to integrate search engine optimisation and marketing with the practical design and development of a website is becoming increasingly more essential for businesses looking to expand and generate income through e-commerce or to stimulate tangible business enquiries via the Internet.

Two innovative website design platforms

During the past nine months Sitemakers has developed two innovative website design platforms, LiquidWeb for regular websites and Liquidshop for e-commerce ; both systems offering a robust user-friendly content management system (CMS). As CMS platforms they allow owners to easily maintain the content of their website using advanced features, including the facility to edit, add or delete content quickly and conveniently without incurring additional maintenance costs.

The launch of these two CMS platforms sees an exciting development for the Sitemakers' Website Management Team who have been closely involved at all stages. In addition to creating a stable platform for new and different web browsers, the needs of website marketing and promotion has been foremost in their development, with search engine optimisation tools built in and search engine friendly design techniques used throughout. Research and data from our client portfolio and respected studies on Internet user behavior have been considered in the design and development of both systems.

Moving in synchronisation with the Internet is fundamental to the success of businesses online; this involves an immense amount of time, research, investigation and experience. Above all else, it requires the obligation to acclimatise to changes in the Internet arena involving regular updates across the Internet. The past twelve months has seen a run of extremely significant changes that have changed the way businesses market and promote their websites and, most notably, how Sitemakers designs and develops them.

LiquidWeb and Liquidshop enable Sitemakers to adapt seemlessly to the rapidly changing Internet matrix. They are the next generation in Sitemakers' development, websites that can be continually developed depending on Internet and customer demands, websites that are cost-effective and easily updated, that have marketing and promotion firmly embedded in their foundations and websites that provide effective solutions for your business.

For further information about our LiquidWeb and Liquidshop website design platforms and to arrange a demonstration phone us on 01458 253290 or contact us

Online retail on the Internet continues to grow

It was far from a bonanza as regards overall sales figures, however competition for sales was firmly won by the Internet. Trading figures show a formidable increase over the festive period of more than 40% for sales taken online from the previous year, this is compared to a gain of just 2.5% from actual high street sales.

Tesco reported an increase of 30% in online sales and John Lewis reported a massive 60% increase in sales compared to a gain of 10.8% in their high street department stores. These are the businesses that have embraced e-commerce and are successfully taking advantage of a shift from our traditional reservations about online security and increasingly casual attitudes towards the internet and the way we interact with it.

Be a part of the online retail revolution

E-commerce is seeing a revolution and taking your business onto the internet can bring great benefits to its long term future. Competition for a first row seat and effective e-commerce website is stiff, Sitemakers have been hard at work developing our own e-commerce system, Liquidshop. Developed to the highest standards it has internet marketing and functionality firmly at the forefront of its development offering our clients a full service e-commerce solution for the successful development of their business on the internet.

The rapid spread of broadband, integration of internet aware digital television and the ever increasing sophistication in mobile communication technology is meaning that accessing the internet has never been easier. The need to establish your brand is crucial to taking full advantage of these growing technologies and changing consumer trends.

The new age of social networking

The way that we interact with the Internet is also rapidly evolving. Sites such as Facebook MySpace YouTubeFlickr and del.icio.us along with tools like Google Desktop offer an insight into the future of the internet.

Social networking itself and how it can be successfully utilised effectively has been well documented in the past year, it came to our particular attention as a result of bringing great fame and fortune to a little known music band from the north after they were propelled to number one in the music charts as a direct result of interest through the net. This may seem trivial at first but the simple fact that the viral nature of social networking where word of mouth itself and the like minded share information about their particular interests or subjects can have such an influence on a brand is particularly noteworthy.

Social networking is about the proliferation of information, more than anything its about the proliferation of information to people who want it. As opposed to pushing information about products and services you want consumers to know about it allows those who are actually interested in them to find it. Like good product placement Social Networking appears effortless in helping to increase your brand awareness online.

Social networking sees a shift in the power on the internet, consumers themselves have more control of what they choose to see and many of the advancements in search engine technology and browsers that we use to surf the net on is working to ally itself with these trends.

Sitemakers website marketing team are busy looking into these trends and how best to utilize them in increasing brand awareness on the internet. For more informtion about online retail and to arrange a demonstration phone us on 01458 253290 or contact us

What is convergance?

Convergance quite simply means the combining of several technologies within your mobile phone; notably television, PDAs (personal digital assistant) or personal organizers to most of us, and music players. Having cracked the internet; mobile phone operators and manufacturers are keen to offer television and personal computer functionality on the go!

But does it work, and what does it mean for mobile phone users and our businesses?

Slingbox over your mobile phone

With the use of yet another 'clever little box' called 'Slingbox' placed upon the mountain of hardware that you probably already have accompanying your television, you will be able to access channels straight from your television using the Internet. Slingbox technology itself isn't new, however the software that enables us to utilize it through our mobile phones is. You will be able to watch your favourite TV programmes anywhere you want to; whilst driving to and from work, operating heavy machinery or perhaps skydiving.

Other developments in convergance

Convergance will also enable us to access our home or office PCs via software called 'Orb'. We will be able to browse through documents and pictures, listen to our favourite music, check our e-mail and access files on our PC's hard drives. It will put the office firmly at our fingertips whereever we are, with no compromise.

Instant messenger applications such as MSN and Yahoo will also be made available straight through your mobile phone. Skype, the software that enables cheap international calls to traditional phones and free calls using the internet to other Skype users can also be taken advantage of.

For businesses, convergance in mobile phone technologies is a very exciting prospect; it opens up additional advertising opportunities. Businesses will be able to advertise their products and services, perhaps with special offers direct to the customers pounding the streets right outside. GPS software built into most new mobile phones will be utilized to target customers more effectively than ever before.

Targeted 'Pay Per Call' advertising

These advancements go hand in hand with the progression of Pay Per Call advertising on the internet where traditional Pay Per Click advertising is altered so that customers can contact advertisers by phone. This advertising can be utilized by those with or without websites and can be tracked as normal Pay Per Click advertising to determine its effectiveness. The process as a mobile phone user would be very simple:

1. I would search for a business, perhaps a restaurant on my mobile phone

2. Local restaurants would be displayed to me, the closest geographically to me at the top

3. I would click on an advert and it would ring the restaurant directly for me to make a reservation

This kind of advertising is about as targeted as it gets and as such potentially very cost effective. There are of course many other possibilities. Television advertising could work similarly where advertising breaks would only include TV adverts of local businesses and these adverts would change as you moved about the country. A possibility for low cost TV advertising for small businesses?

At Sitemakers we keep up to date and track of current trends and habits to identify possible opportunities where we can further promote your businesses. For more information phone us on 01458 253290 or contact us

None of this is any real surprise though, 'eCommerce' as a whole has some fantastic advantages for consumers and retailers. For consumers there are numerous benefits, better choice, 24 hour opening and the opportunity to find whatever you want from the comfort of your own home. As well as this there are also some serious economic benefits that are undoubtedly influencing the flow of online consumers, none more so than the recent increases in fuel costs. The prospect of Internet prices combined with further savings on petrol over the seasonal period led to record numbers shopping online over the recent Christmas period.

As for retailers themselves the benefit of selling online is patently obvious, the percentage of retail spending done through the Internet is growing (as a 76% increase in a year illustrates) incredibly quickly. Furthermore the increase is directly associated with improvements in our access to the Internet, for example 2007 saw a significant increase in Broadband coverage across the UK, as such this boosted Internet usage as a whole and accelerated online spending.

Thinking down the line a bit, it doesn't take a genius to see what may influence online shopping over the next year or so. The integration of our Internet connections with our mobile phones but more significantly with our television sets is quite likely to see the largest increase in Internet usage, period. Mobile phones are always likely to have limitations due to the size of their screen displays. Televisions on the other hand are not only unlimited in this respect but also have the benefit of having an established place in our lives and habits making them the ideal instrument to integrate Internet connections and services through.

How Do I Start Selling Online?

It can be a daunting prospect venturing onto the Internet for retailers, there are numerous software packages and eCommerce companies offering a variety of services from bolt-on shopping carts to build your own website packages, 30 day trial periods and everything you need for £20 a month offers.

The single most important point is that investing in an online shop is and should be taken with as much conviction as opening a new (bricks and mortar) branch.

Successful online retailers tend to have three things in common; Firstly they will almost certainly have a good working relationship with an Internet agency experienced in eCommerce. 2, they consistently invest in the marketing of their website as they would a traditional shop, and 3 they are pro-active in the development of their business on the Internet.

Diversifying onto the Internet obviously requires a degree of help, most notably from a company who can provide you with a website to start with. However the website is only where it begins and without the expertise to exploit the riches the Internet has to offer it can become an expensive and ineffective lead.

Getting the choice right when choosing your eCommerce provider is absolutely crucial. A 'full service' company is well advised, this is an Internet company that not only designs and develops websites but also offers a degree of backup services, such as marketing and management services to support their websites. Additionally a company that can show a proven track record of providing results through client testimonials or recommendations is very well advised.

Is 2008 the year for your business to go online?... For more information on taking full advantage of the internet for your business contact us today

Geoff Shickle, clearly delighted by the boost in business explained:

"The seasonal rush has certainly started early this year. Much of our business has stemmed from footwear4you.co.uk - our online company - maybe our Internet customers have just been looking to beat the Christmas post. But I reckon the cold weather has motivated some as certain brands of boots have been the clear winners in the last couple of weeks."

"In terms of developing our business footwear4you.co.uk has been like opening another shop, but the positive impact on overall numbers has been beyond our wildest expectations. After only 18 months our online sales are regularly outpacing those from the high street. In the last few weeks, aside from our UK customers, we've taken new orders from Argentina, China, Cyprus, Iceland and Israel - also from all over Europe. We don't pretend to be a John Lewis or an M&S, but it seems that we are experiencing the same online business boost."

For more informtion about online retail and to arrange a demonstration phone us on 01458 253290 or contact us

The Retail on the Web seminar takes place on the Future Trends Stage and will interest retailers who are considering selling online, as well as those who already do so. A series of short, energy-packed briefings cover key aspects of making the internet a successful trading place for business.

According to Nick Pratt from Sitemakers, “this seminar is delivered without technical jargon, it provides the key facts to business owners and gives them the knowledge they need to make their own informed decisions about trading online.”

Retail on the Web introduces the concept of multi-channel retailing, where multiple routes to market and both online and offline marketing activities are dependent on each other for successful retailing in the 21st Century.

The seminar is free to attend for all visitors at the Spring Fair; delegates will gain a clear understanding of the online trading opportunities that exist for their retail business and the steps that they should take to establish their own profitable ecommerce website.

Sitemakers Ltd is also exhibiting at the Spring Fair, and will be demonstrating their LiquidShop online retail services on their stand.

For more information about the Retail on the Web seminar at the Spring Fair: http://www.springfair.com

For more information about Sitemakers Ltd and LiquidShop: contact us today

Naturally as with any new business venture opening up an online shopping website requires a degree of investment, but unlike most marketplaces the Internet offers opportunities, many of which are free that can help you not only attract customers to your website but that also assist in the day to day running and development of your eCommerce business.

Google lead the way in their own inimitable fashion by providing a host of resources that can help business owners large and small navigate their way through the online minefield. These include their shopping index where you can list your products to be browsed by those that use their search engine, to Google Analytics, a comprehensive online statistics package that records and interprets data associated with the use of your website such as visitor numbers, keywords used to find your site and so on. These kinds of tools are fast becoming industry standards and more often than not require minimal or no investment at all depending on your particular requirements and expertise.

For those more technically savvy and familiar with the Internet there are many other opportunities to increase your brand awareness and lure customers to your business. The words 'social networking' may send you into an eternal coma or perhaps prompt you to torch your local Internet café, but they do mean something tangible. For every possible interest, hobby, activity or curiosity there is a host of social networking websites associated that offer potential opportunities to channel targeted visitors back to your business.

I myself am an avid wildlife photographer and as such regularly browse the numerous websites available to me on the subject, from industry news to equipment review sites and online galleries where I can post my very own photos for critical review and analysis by like-minded individuals. With every post or participation I have the opportunity to drop my own websites name or address in. This is word-of-mouth from your keyboard, the single most effective form of advertising we know of.

Recent years have seen the proliferation of RSS, "Really Simple Syndication" a technique which enables frequently updated content from one website to be published on another. Typically an RSS document, often referred to as a "feed" contains a summary of content, such as a news headline that is linked straight back to the original website to which the full article is published.

You may perhaps have an RSS feed on an industry related website which headlines the launch of a new product. As interested viewers click on your headline to read more they are instantly deposited upon your website... I could go on, there are numerous opportunities available to us on the Internet and as we become evermore tied to it they can only increase.

2007 was certainly a sign of things to come, as a record breaking year for the UK's eCommerce industry it saw 15% of all retail sales made online, up 54% from 2006, and despite recent fears in the economy 2008 promises to continue this trend. For retailers there has never been a better time to start selling online.

Is 2008 the year for your business to go online? If so for more information and advice on selling on the Internet contact Sitemakers Ltd and LiquidShop: contact us today

Sitemakers visit to the fair, one of the world’s largest retail buying events went down an absolute storm drawing capacity crowds of interested retailers eager to learn more about an area of their business experiencing rapid growth and development in the UK. Many were left watching the seminars presented by Sitemakers marketing director Nick Pratt and head of business development Ray Buckler on the big screens outside the Future Trends Stage where they were hosted.

Nick commented; “I'm not surprised by the interest in this subject, we are delighted to be able to help such a large number of Spring Fair visitors develop a plan to join the growing ranks of 21st century retailers.”

Sitemakers have produced a 32-page guide to 'Successful Online Trading' for retailers that was available to visitors attending this years Spring Fair, it covers all aspects of eCommerce that retail business owners and managers need to be considering when thinking of selling online, from choosing the right provider to successfully marketing a shopping website.

Sitemakers themselves have invested heavily in the development of their own eCommerce services including a cutting edge eCommerce solution called LiquidShop that they continue to develop and improve with the help of retailers currently using the system. With an already enviable reputation for marketing businesses on the internet Sitemakers are proud to able to offer a truly full service to retailers looking to diversify onto the internet.

Who can blame this years Spring Fair visitors being curious about all the buzz around eCommerce and 'multichannel retailing', 2007 saw a massive 76% increase in online sales in the UK to £53.3 billion compared to £30.2 billion in 2006. Furthermore on current trends it's predicted that by 2009 15% of all shopping in the UK will be done on the internet.

Is 2008 the year for your business to go online?... If so for more information and advice on selling on the internet contact Tim Neal on 01458 253290.

The location itself, in the heart of the Somerset Levels and a short drive from the main commuter routes of the M5 and A303 offers a naturally low stress working environment for the staff and more often than not a refreshing country excursion for visiting clients.

A combination of clean air, mild climate and breathtaking scenery makes this an ideal location for inspiring designers and marketeers to innovate and develop new technology for the rapidly growing online shopping sector. Sitemakers have already helped retailers in the South West of England sell millions of £'s since the launch of their much celebrated ecommerce solution, Liquidshop in early 2007, and continue to develop the system recent shops utilising the very latest V.2 Liquidshop software.

Sitemakers have been lucky enough to benefit from an abundance of quality IT staff available throughout the South West region and have successfully nurtured a team of designers, developers and marketing specialists that are able to offer clients a uniquely full service experience from conception through to the everyday running of a successful shopping website.

Sitemakers and its team of dedicated ecommerce specialists continue to help a rapidly growing portfolio of clients from private retail outlets to chain stores both within the region and all over the UK to tap into the fastest growing retail marketplace that is the internet.

For more information on ecommerce and selling on the internet contact us today.

For many retailers the internet is proving to be vital during these turbulent times, a combination of tumbling share prices, a decline of the housing market and the ever increasing costs on energy and fuel have resulted in a shuddering halt to a generation of growth in the UK and the tightening of purse strings is being felt everywhere. High street footfall continues to decline and with the prospect of continued economic slowdown retailers both large and small are set for a difficult future.

Apart from the traditional discounts associated with online shopping the internet offers the prospect of further savings for consumers hardest hit by the credit crunch, namely savings made at the petrol pumps. Indeed this way of thinking seems to be reflected in recent data from the European Interactive Advertising Association which shows that adults with children, a group particularly effected by the current financial climate are 40% more likely to use the internet.

Retailers who have already established themselves on the internet, particularly those who have previously relied upon their high street outlets are not only seeing huge growth in online shopping in general but are also seeing the benefits of offering an alternative sales channel to their customers at a time when many are cautious of opening their wallets.

For retailers both large and small the internet offers the unique opportunity to dramatically increase the catchment area of their businesses without the requirement of a physical building and as such the potential to increase customer numbers over and above those treading the streets outside their door. Furthermore diversifying online through an online shopping website is remarkably cost effective compared to the day to day running of a bricks and mortar store, not to mention cheaper to acquire.

For the eCommerce industry itself the continuing growth of online shopping during these times of economic uncertainty illustrate not only its huge role to play in the future of the retail industry but also its potential influence. Consumers choosing to spend for the very first time due to the savings they can make today may likely change their future habits.

For more information on eCommerce and selling on the internet contact us today

Unfortunately this seems to be more of a reflection on the state of our industry than anything else, website design companies have got used to simply handing over websites like apples to business owners who have little idea of how to make them become tangible assets for their existing businesses. More often than not this is down to a distinct lack of knowledge by website design and development companies themselves.

At present retail owners both large and small are flocking onto the Internet in their droves in response to a steep upward trend in online shopping over the past two or three years. Its been well documented in the press how the high street has taken a battering from competition on the internet which saw an increase of 76% in online spending in 2007 over 2006, furthermore predications are that by 2009 15% of all shopping in the UK will be done on the internet.

With the internet changing the way we shop and small to medium sized retailers feeling the pressures of the high street giants getting to grips with the internet for many retail owners is fast becoming an absolute necessity. As well as keeping up with the competition diversifying onto the internet also offers an extension to a retailers traditional high street sales channel.

Unfortunately though the internet is not the 'get rich quick' solution it's often made out to be. The net is a vast marketplace and unlike a high street store that aims to target consumers within its immediate vicinity the web provides the ability to target the masses nationally and even internationally. This in turn makes the internet not only the busiest marketplace anywhere in the World but also the most competitive.

The potential of the internet for all businesses is of course unquestionable and also its central lure, many a web designer, developer or associated sales rep will spout on about the huge rewards it can bring to your business, however buyer beware as many of these web companies have little or no experience of running online shopping websites and as such can land you with a website that simply drains your resources.

As with any business attracting custom is the key to it's success, and this is no different on the internet. A useful way to think when considering an online shopping website is that it's comparable in many respects to opening a new branch of your business, there will be running costs as there are with a bricks and mortar establishment.

One of the most significant costs that should be considered is marketing and advertising. Your business will be new on the internet and as such establishing its brand awareness within its new marketplace will be essential to its long term success. You may not have either the expertise or time to undertake this yourself and therefore relying on your website provider to offer services will be necessary. Again ensuring a provider with a proven track record for effectively marketing websites on the internet is essential.

Ultimately the question is how much does it take to run a successful online shopping website. Well alas there are no particular figures set in stone however the things to consider are this... Paying for the design and development of your website is very much the beginning. Additionally consider the marketing and advertising costs that you already know of, most of us have run ads in newspaper or magazines, printed flyers or perhaps indulged in TV or Radio advertising. Most importantly consider these costs at the time of website development, not after! If you can choose a provider that specialises in online shopping or 'eCommerce' solutions and ask them directly for them to give you an accurate idea of what they think it will take for your business to be successful on the internet.

For more information on ecommerce and selling on the internet contact us today

Compliance with the PCI DSS standards has officially been compulsory since 2005, although up until now has been loosely enforced. As the issue of online security has repeatedly hit the headlines and internet retailers have been hit by a surge of online scams payment card providers have insisted upon even more stringent enforcement of these rules, hence the 30th June deadline.

PCI DSS compliance in short is a single security standard supported by the major credit and debit card providers including both Visa and Mastercard that works to put into place a variety of procedures within your business to safeguard cardholder data, such as the use of anti-virus and firewall software and the encryption of payment card data.

As well as online trading PCI DSS compliance also reaches the offline practices of the retail industry taking into consideration the access of cardholder data produced from conventional high street retailing procedures that produce paper trails as well as electronic records.

It has to be said that compliance with the PCI DSS standards has been slow to say the very least, influenced largely by the hesitancy of banks to pressure large retailers into compliance. Furthermore targeting the masses had little to gain for them until the time came that card issuers had implemented the standards among the large retailers. Now implemented among the likes of Amazon and Marks & Spencer banks are now applying pressure throughout the retail industry to comply with PCI DSS standards by the end of June.

Despite scepticism among its critics PCI DSS compliance is likely to be a swift affair throughout the industry. It's often crucial, particularly when trading online to keep up with the standards required of you if not for your customers perspective of your business as from a regulatory perspective. This said implementing is far from straight forward and likely to cause headaches for smaller companies due to the fact that compliance, although based on size is still the same for smaller companies as it is for the corporate giants... Luckily though there is a 70 page manual to read that covers everything you need to know!

For online trading PCI DSS compliance is a far more straight forward procedure and for high street retailers there is of course help and solutions readily available. Systems such as 'tokenization of card data' can be relatively easily implemented as part of compliance, this essentially results in not having to store the data which is at the heart of this regulation.

Whether or not the deadline for PCI DSS compliance is met it is of course a major step in the right direction for the improvement of both online and offline retailing as regards payment card security and as a result can only help to encourage our customers to do business with us. For more information on PCI DSS compliance and selling on the internet contact contact us today

2007 saw spending on online advertising surpass 3bn for the first time in the UK, accounting for a 16% share of the total advertising market. The research illustrates how this rapidly growing sector is taking priority from other traditional advertising formats such as magazines, newspapers and direct mail.

Press advertising is still the single largest sector with a 40% market share equating to 7.7bn worth of ad spend. However in contrast this sector saw a drop of 1.5% year-on-year in 2007 as opposed to online advertising which experienced an increase of 39.5%.

These shifts in the way advertisers are spending their valuable marketing budgets is undoubtedly a reflection of the continual increase in the online shopping industry, however they're also a reflection of how cost effective it is to promote your business on the internet compared with more traditional media.

So why choose online marketing?

Search engines such as Google are the driving forces behind today's internet, and they're designed and engineered with one thing in mind, to sell advertising. The main objective behind any advertising is to expose your business to the maximum amount of targeted consumers. Traditionally this has meant an ad in a magazine or newspaper, perhaps a billboard campaign or even a TV or radio campaign if your budget allows for it. However the main downfall with all these kinds of formats is that there still relatively inaccurate as regards targeting consumers, primarily those most likely to convert into actual paying customers.

With search engines the very principle to which they've been developed is what makes them such effective advertising platforms. By the simple fact that they revolve around consumers entering a search they give advertisers the unique opportunity to put there businesses right in front of those specifically searching for their products and services. Advertising rarely gets more targeted.

Marketing on the internet also has the added advantage that it can be measured and recorded particularly accurately compared to traditional marketing. You can literally track a customer from the advertisement to the point they exit your website, hopefully at your 'thankyou page' after they've made a purchase. Either way this ability to track and record results means that you can objectively alter and develop your online marketing campaigns quickly and efficiently helping to maximise your return on investment.

Of course the effectiveness of any kind of marketing relies upon the end product or service that you ultimately provide to the customer. If you advertise a free phone order line which never gets answered or fail to deliver products advertised as 'FREE Next Day Delivery' you'll probably deserve the return on investment that you'll get. Exactly the same applies with a website, potential customers should be able to find what they want easily, access the information they want to know whether it be product details or delivery information, and purchase with as little hassle as possible, all of which will encourage them not only to spend their money with you but also potentially return.

As we're all well aware there is usually more going on behind a successful marketing campaign than meets the eye. Technicalities behind what grammar engages consumers to act upon an advert for example is almost a science in itself. Equally ensuring that those who act upon your advertising are converted into paying customers whether via a website, by phone or other is crucial to being able to sustain your marketing and develop your business.

The prospect of marketing can seem overwhelming and undoubtedly internet marketing has its very own unique pitfalls. Google's Pay Per Click marketing for example, is in the right hands the most cost effective form of marketing available, equally it can be one of the most efficient ways of losing money very quickly indeed. So understanding the basics is your very first step, with this in mind it's well worth acquiring a degree of consultation on the subject before spending your marketing budget.

For more information on internet marketing and selling on the internet contact us today

High streets around the UK are experiencing somewhat of a desertion by consumers who are increasingly cash strapped due to the continuing rise of household bills and motoring costs, not to mention a summer which hasn't particularly encouraged people outdoors. But as well as sheltering from the summer storms, consumers are opting to shop online as a convenient and cost-effective alternative.

The UK's online grocery market has experienced significant growth in recent years due to the proliferation of broadband internet throughout the country providing our homes with faster and more reliable internet connections. The recent increases in food prices have driven this even further with consumers not only looking to save on their grocery bill itself but also make savings at the petrol pumps.

Supermarkets themselves have invested heavily in this important sales channel recognising its vital role in their long term success. Consumer confidence in online security combined with product selection and home delivery satisfaction has helped to convert and retain their online customers.

Advancements in website design has led to shoppers being offered a shopping option that is more efficient and convenient than having to get in the car and endure the aisles and checkouts at their local store. Furthermore it allows retailers themselves to advertise their promotions and special offers with a great deal more effect and without the need for costly in-store promotional material.

It is not only the high street giants that are taking advantage of what the increasing online marketplace has to offer, but also independent retailers and suppliers, many of which are suffering particularly badly from the challenging economic climate. Businesses that have perhaps relied upon trade sales as their primary source of income are opening up online stores to increase sales and secure their future growth and development. Of these, organic food suppliers, confectioners and farm shops have been among the first to recognise the internet's ability to target customers directly and increase their brand awareness, helping them to establish and retain a loyal customer base.

Our attitudes and the way we interact with the internet has undoubtedly brought about significant changes in the way we shop and this is clearly reflected by the continual increase in online shopping. Already during the first half of this year UK consumers have spent £26.5 billion with internet retailers, up from £19.2 billion in the same period in 2007. Furthermore internet shopping is expected to account for between 30% and 50% of all retail sales within the next five years.

Figures from the IMRG (Interactive Media In Retail Group) Capgemini Index.
In association with www.foodinternational.net

Website design limitations have up until quite recently meant that customers have often been provided with a poor and uninspiring experience when shopping for these kinds of products on the internet. However, recent advancements in website design and development driven largely by faster connection speeds has led to significant growth in online sales. Below are a handful of tips fundamental to selling clothing and footwear on the internet.

Product images

If there's one aspect of a website most likely to put people off buying it is a lack of quality product images. Astonishingly this fundamental part of an online retail website is also the one most often neglected by website owners. Selling clothing and footwear within a high street outlet is all about displaying the merchandise, and the internet should be no different. In truth it is even more crucial, as consumers are limited to simply viewing the products on offer as opposed to touching and wearing them.

Consumers access to increasingly faster broadband connections have provided online retailers with a host of new options to show off their products. These include the ability to add multiple high quality images, magnify images to show increased detail and even present interactive 3D views. Additional to these is the increasing use of product video clips.

Product options

An important part of buying clothes and footwear is, of course, ensuring that you order the right size. Shoppers need to be led through the process of choosing all the right options, and website design plays a vital role in ensuring the customer has confidence they have selected exactly the right product. Without this they are likely to abandon the purchase. For example, if a garment is offered in a variety of colours it must be shown in all of those colours as opposed to showing just a colour swatch or simply offering a menu option. For the sale of shoes, size options should be shown in both UK and European sizes.

Add-ons

For many products sold online there often isn't much opportunity to sell many 'add-ons', but this is certainly not true of clothing and footwear. Accessories may include belts and handbags, jewellery or make-up, not to mention a whole new outfit. These add-on features are widely used on the most successful eCommerce websites to significantly increase sales.

In association with  www.fashioncapital.co.uk

Within a number of sectors which include electrical goods and beer & wine, clothing and footwear has seen one of the highest levels of year-on-year online sales growth. Furthermore recent figures reveal that the bad weather appears to have driven this even further during the first half of this year, with clothing sales up by 32%, lingerie sales up 37% and footwear showing an increase of 38%.

For high street retailers the poor weather conditions have simply kept customers away, however these impressive online sales figures show that they appear to have ventured onto the internet as an alternative. This trend has been welcomed by online retailers, and is further supported by last year's figures when in July the country experienced torrential downpours. Again this led to a substantial 85% increase in online clothing and footwear sales totalling over £90 million during the third week of July 2007. 

Of course it’s not just the wonderful British summer that is driving this rapid online growth, but a combination of other influential factors. Improved access to faster broadband connections has been an important trigger to the recent explosion in online shopping, along with a rise in consumer confidence in online security driven by the banking industry and payment service providers.

Clothing and footwear sales have grown relatively slowly online due to the challenges of being able to offer consumers an experience that ultimately results in a purchase. Improved website technologies such as the ability to offer multiple images, magnifying tools and video clips to name but a few have all resulted in improved conversion rates for online retail websites encouraging retailers to diversify onto the internet. Young people are of course a key target audience for the clothing and footwear industry and this generation spends an increasing amount of time using the internet. Social networking sites such as Facebook work as effective organic marketing tools, and internet advertising itself can be particularly cost-effective due to its ability to accurately target customers and channel them right to the products they are looking for.

For those struggling with inconsistent high street performance the internet offers not only a viable additional sales channel but also offers the potential for long term growth. Online shopping accounted for 15% of all retail sales in the UK during 2007, and over the next five years this is expected to rise to between 30% and 50%.

Figures from the IMRG (Interactive Media In Retail Group) Capgemini Index.

In association with www.fashioncapital.co.uk

Retailers can be forgiven if they are confused about how the internet is fundamentally changing their business. In a desire to explain, industry commentators create ever more jargon to describe the increasing influence of online retailing. Over the past couple of years terms such as multichannel retail, cross-channel retail and now even omnichannel retailing have been used to explain these changes. But what does all of this mean practically, for you and your business?

Whatever you choose to call it; online retailing, ecommerce, or simply selling online is rapidly establishing itself at the centre of the most successful retail operations. It’s certainly where most of the sales growth has been seen during 2008. Online sales grew at 20-30% for the year, and this helped some of our larger retail groups to avoid major embarrassment when announcing their overall results this January. Online retailing has also given many small retailers the opportunity to out-manoeuvre their larger competitors, many of which have been struggling to adjust to a new, and fast-evolving retail model. Some of the high-profile retail business failures seen recently have doubtless been tipped over by a massive tightening of credit, but the majority of these were already compromised businesses without a well-defined and successful online operation. The downturn has merely exposed their weakness.

Most consumers now have a broadband internet connection available to them either at home or at work. And when you look at the peaks and troughs of daily online retail activity, it reflects the pattern of the average day with peaks mid-morning, lunchtime and mid-evening - times when people have time to shop online, fitting it in around their chores and other activities. The development of new technology has a large part to play in helping us to understand how online retail habits will continue to evolve. A point in time when most of us have an easy-to-use internet-connected device in our pockets is approaching fast. The phrase ‘easy-to-use’ is the key here; most current mobile phones will connect to the internet - but the experience is far from great, and most people don’t bother. With devices such as the category-defining Apple iPhone, and the coming of Google’s own mobile phone operating system, Android, we will see a vast array of new, user-friendly smartphones entering the market and seducing users to start using the internet on the move. The impact this will have on online retailing is huge, because if people start shopping online while they are out and about in town then this presents retailers with a fantastic new opportunity to build stronger, more active relationships with their customers.

Building relationships is a fundamental part of human nature, and it is second nature to all successful retail operations. The internet brings new ways to create and maintain relationships with customers. A consumer dealing with an agile retailer can often start a transaction in-store, and complete it at home on the internet, or alternatively find a product on the internet and reserve and buy it in-store. And we are beginning to treat this type of flexibility as a requirement to retain our loyalty. The relationship is simple - do what we want and we will buy from you. Allow an inflexible system to stand in our way, and we will simply side-step you and shop elsewhere.

The internet has allowed us all an unprecedented facility to find just about anything we want to know, almost instantly. As a result that Great British institution, the Pub Quiz, is now threatened by savvy contestants looking up the answers on Google as the questions are read out. This facility for instant research is one of the factors that is changing retail. Comparison shopping has become the norm across all retail channels. Physically going into four competing stores to compare prices, even in the same town centre, may take an hour or two. The same task can be completed in as many minutes and is merely a click away on the internet.

As customers become more cautious about their spending then research is becoming the norm for all but the most mundane and regular purchases. Visit your local branch of Comet and it looks like a reporters' convention; people with notebooks and pens jotting down product names and reference codes before rushing off to locate the best prices online for next-day delivery - maybe even from Comet. The potential threats from this behaviour are obvious, but the opportunities for the agile retailer are also there to be exploited.

Consumer research consistently shows that price is certainly not the only factor that determines an online retail purchase. There are many factors that make up the value proposition presented to customers. Speed of delivery, certainty of price - led by free or fixed price delivery, security of payment and overall confidence in the retailer all play a part. As with all retail purchases, consumers balance their needs, desires and expectations and make decisions about what to buy and who to buy from as a result. Many companies sell online at higher prices than their competitors and still make the sales where they can offer an overall more compelling value proposition to their customers. Quite simply - there is room for everyone but beware, opportunistic high prices are impossible to sustain in the bright glare of internet comparison shopping.

Core retail values have always centred on customer service - providing the customer with the products they want, when they want them and at prices they are prepared to pay. The values of online retailing are fundamentally no different from this and retailers who understand this are currently winning market share. The same customers who buy from you in-store also buy from you online. Studies into the demographics for internet shopping show very little variation across age groups and most of the social classes. You can be pretty sure that the customer coming through the door is the same customer who is also buying from your website. The agile retailer recognises this and treats them to the same experience and service, the same offers and makes sure they are aware of all of the channels available to them to browse and make a purchase.

The ability to collect and analyse customer behaviour is the golden goose of online retailing - and one that keeps on laying. When someone buys from you online you know who they are, their name, address, email address, what they bought and when. This level of intelligence is much more difficult to gather from store customers and should be used to present the customer with relevant offers and product information that will then bring them back to your business, either online or in-store. It also provides you with the vital feedback you need to develop the business.

2009 will doubtless see more retail failures, but these will not include retailers who understand and act upon the opportunities that the internet presents to them. Internet retailing currently accounts for less than 20% of all retail spending in the UK, but by 2020 it is expected that the internet will be the channel used to influence over 90% of all retail purchases. It is the agile retailers who will be the success stories over the coming few years.

Nick Pratt and Ray Buckler of Sitemakers will be co-hosting the events and each seminar will be structured into three sections followed by a Q&A session:

1. What’s all the fuss about: A topical introduction to ecommerce today
2. Developing your ecommerce presence: Essential information about how to set up or improve an ecommerce site
3. Delivering the customers to your site: Tips and advice for driving traffic to your online business.

Delegates will be given a workbook that summarises the key points and has room for them to add notes, and will also be eligible for a free copy of the companion book, ‘practical tips...’. The book, which consists of over 50 pages of simple, useful advice that goes into much more detail than can be delivered within the seminar and will be invaluable for retailers looking to develop an ecommerce service.

There will be more related seminars held at other times throughout the Fair, with IMRG and EMAP represented amongst the expert panel of presenters.

The Online Retailing Theatre will also be supported by an ‘ecommerce Surgery’, where visitors (and exhibitors) can book 30 minute sessions with ecommerce specialists to answer specific queries on their existing or proposed etail operation. The Surgery will be at the back of the theatre and will be operational during each day of Spring Fair International.

Sitemakers has plenty of experience presenting to retailers in an exhibition environment. After attending one of the seminars John Ryan, Stores Editor for Retail Week said: “The speakers presented an engaging how-to guide to making the most of the web as a selling vehicle. If you don't know where to start, the chances are you will have a good idea by the end of their session"

To book your entry to the Spring Fair go to www.springfair.com

My visit to Spring Fair International at the NEC Birmingham last week showed that there is still life in the retail market, certainly in the homewares and gift sectors which are the focus of the Show. Despite the terrible weather conditions during the early part of the week many exhibitors were reporting healthy order levels, in line with expectations and often exceeding those of 2008.

The Spring Fair is a barometer of retail sentiment at the beginning of the year as it is the time when buyers are looking forward and making their decisions about what and how much to purchase.

Online retailing was the theme for the Spring Fair International Online Retailing Theatre and, judging by the size and enthusiasm of the audiences we had for our presentations, there is a great deal of interest among both retailers and the exhibiting suppliers in how to make a success of selling online.

Many retailers have started selling online as an additional channel running alongside their high street stores and many others are looking to start or improve their online-only operations. Online retailing continues to grow at over 15% per year, and is set to be the most buoyant retailing channel in the coming few years.  The online retail market is worth a staggering £43.8 Billion in the UK, 15% of total retail sales. It is clear that retailers who can successfully integrate an online sales channel into their business look set to be the winners in the current changing retail landscape.

Alongside the Seminar Theatre we also ran an ecommerce surgery. Advice was on offer from IMRG, DHL. MetaPack, Royal Mail and Sitemakers, covering all the key aspects of setting up and running an online retailing operation.

Seminars take place in Hall 17 - Stand A28 at the following times:
Sun 15th February starting at 11.30am and 3:30pm
Mon 16th February starting at 12.00pm and 2:30pm

'Practical Tips for Successful Online Trading' is aimed at retailers who are considering selling online, and those who already do so. Delivered without technical jargon, the seminar provides the key facts to business owners and gives you the knowledge to make your own informed decisions about trading online. Delegates will learn the principles that make an online retail business successful. You will be shown the importance of research and planning, keeping the website within the law and the skills needed to maintain and develop profitable retail sales on the web.

The seminar highlights real examples of businesses that are successfully trading online. Every delegate will also receive a free copy of the book 'Practical Tips for Successful Online Trading', published by Sitemakers and providing retailers with a clear roadmap and detailed guide to all aspects of online retailing.

Running in conjunction with the seminar programme you can also book a short one-to-one consultation in the ecommerce surgery. Appointments are subject to availability on all days of the show. The surgeries will be staffed by online specialists and experts able to answer questions on all aspects of online and multi channel retailing. So if you have doubts about trading online; feel you should be getting more sales through your existing ecommerce site; are worried about the legal side of taking payments; are unsure of how you would get your products safely delivered or any other aspect of online retailing book your place with the experts.

Book your free place at the seminar or the ecommerce surgery online, or if you prefer call us 0207 099 1002 and we'll save you a seat.

When you embark on the journey of opening on online retail store you know the destination you are aiming for, but there are also many different routes you can choose to reach it. This article isn't the equivalent of sat nav, prescribing the route, but aims to give you the knowledge needed to assess the alternatives, helping you to take control and plot your route becoming a successful online retailer.

Few would argue that an ecommerce website is now a must-have sales channel if retailers are to compete in the rapidly changing retail landscape. Over 50% of all furniture purchases in the UK are now researched online, which means that if your products are not visible on the internet then, in many cases, you will not even be considered for the sale. In last week's article the concept of the agile retailer was introduced and it was highlighted that those who are able to adapt quickly to the changing demands of consumers will be the ones to
thrive over the coming few years. And nowhere is more agile than online.

Online retailing is still very much in its infancy but over the past 10-15 years we have seen huge progress as our understanding grows, technology develops and consumer behaviour evolves. As you embark on this project there is bound to be conflicting advice but this brief guide aims to highlight the key areas you
need to consider when starting to retail online.

Choosing your approach

There are broadly three different approaches that you can take to developing
your own website. You can employ in-house staff to do the job for you under
your direct control, you can contract with a web developer to build you a website
to your own specification, or you can take advantage of an existing online retail
system, known as an ‘ecommerce platform', and often provided as software-as-
a-service (SAAS).

If you are employing your own staff to build and maintain your website then you
will need to hire both web development and design skills. Ecommerce is a 24 hr
business and so you need to consider how you deal with out-of-hours technical
support, sickness and holidays etc. Together this can be very costly, and for the
vast majority of businesses it simply is not practical or desirable to choose this
route.

So, the chances are that you will be contracting with an outside company to
provide your website. In the early days of ecommerce, and before well-resolved,
cost effective ecommerce platforms existed, most web development companies
would build one-off ‘bespoke' ecommerce websites for their clients. This
approach still persists today, and one of the perceived advantages of this is that,
as the client, you can specify exactly how you want your website to work and
exactly the features that you want built in to it. The problem with this approach is
that you ‘don't know what you don't know', so it is often difficult for you to
confidently specify the features that you really do need. It is also important to
remember that, as the site is being built specifically for you, you will also be fully
responsible for the cost of any future changes that are required to keep pace
with changing technology and for any new features that you want to be added.

For these reasons it has become increasingly popular to use a pre-existing
ecommerce platform on which to build an online retail store. Many early
entrants to online retailing have migrated to these platforms and there are now a
number of good alternatives from which to choose. At their best they offer
feature-rich, reliable software supported by a development programme, giving
you a robust and up-to-date system with which to run your online business. By
taking this approach you are choosing a supplier who will manage the technical
side of your online business while you concentrate on the retailing aspects.

Whichever route you choose to take, it makes sense to review a shortlist of
potential suppliers and, as part of that process, ask to talk to some of their clients
so that you can understand how well their services work for them. It is important
to agree the features that are required within your website and formalise the
budget and timescale at the outset.

Ecommerce design

There are certain conventions that have now become established for the way
that ecommerce websites are expected to function. As more people are
shopping online, buyers expect to see particular features in particular places on
the page. For example, product should be featured on the home page, a
summary of the shopping basket should be visible at all times, navigation
should be clear, usually in a column on the left, with categories, styles and
brands etc clearly visible so that the customer can find their purchase quickly
and easily. And just as someone will search to find your website, they will also
search within it. A keyword search will be used by around 60% of people visiting
your website. Just as car design has evolved over the past 130 years so that
now the controls are positioned in familiar places, the same has been
happening with the design of ecommerce websites. By making the design and
layout familiar to the user, more people are likely shop on your website. Take a
look at the most successful ecommerce websites and you will see that product
information is laid out in similar ways. They look familiar, albeit retaining their
own unique identity.

Managing website content

The most successful ecommerce sites tend to be operated by people with retail
experience, who understand about product, pricing, and service. A good
ecommerce website is one that gives the retailer control of the features needed
to operate the store, without exposing them to the technology that lies behind.
This is achieved with a content management system (CMS). This is the
interface between your website and you, the retailer. It should allow you to have
full control over all of the content of the website; the products, images, pricing,
special offers, discount vouchers, stock control, and information pages. In
addition there should be an order management system. All orders received by
the website will be recorded here, and at best this will provide a comprehensive
system for handling communication with customers throughout the transaction
and beyond.

Content management systems are usually controlled via a web browser,
allowing you access to the controls of your website from any internet-connected
computer. It is important to see a comprehensive demonstration of your potential
supplier's CMS to satisfy yourself and your staff of its suitability before making a
decision to buy their system.

Payments and legal considerations

There are two specific pieces of legislation that need to be considered when
starting an online store. They are The EU Electronic Commerce Directive 2002
and the Distance Selling Regulations 2000. These both concern your
obligations to customers. You should take legal advice to draw up the terms and
conditions of sale for your website as some consumer rights can be limited
within these.

In respect to taking payments online, you need to be aware of the Payment Card
Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). This puts certain obligations on to
you as a merchant when handling credit card information for online
transactions. You can limit your exposure by using a recognised card payment
processing service, such as Protx or similar, to handle your card payments.
There is also evidence that using a recognised payment provider does increase
customer confidence in an online retail store.

Support and training

You should expect your ecommerce provider to provide you with adequate
training and support in the use of your website. If you are the expert in retailing,
then they should be the ecommerce specialists, and have the knowledge to
guide you in the set-up and ongoing management of your online store.

A completed website should really be only the start of your relationship with
your ecommerce supplier, and next week we will look at how you can work with
them to attract and retain online customers.

While Paul Bishop brings us his view on 21st century Arabia and the challenge of interior design and Karen Howes gives us the synopsis of her presentation on international trends, Sitemakers give out practical online retailing tips – The web and ecommerce is a rapidly expanding market and crucial to finding new business during the recession - something that is essential to all our businesses at the moment...Click here for the full details (and how to get to Interiors UAE 2009)

One important distinction is that when people shop online they tend to be searching rather than browsing. This means they often have something clearly in mind that they are looking to buy. If you want your online store to be one of their options then you need to make sure your website is easy to find. There are many ways to achieve this, but outlined below are some of the key methods you should consider.

There are two marketing techniques that will be familiar to anyone who has ever worked with a web developer; search engine optimisation, and pay-per-click advertising. They are often the mainstay of website promotion, and in many cases the only promotion that is carried out to bring customers to an online store. We will come back to these in more detail as they merit more explanation, but firstly there are many other, often overlooked but effective, techniques for promoting an ecommerce website that do not involve search engines.

Email newsletters

When someone buys from your website you know their name, email address, what they bought, when they bought it and how often they buy from you. This is much more information than you would normally gather from an in-store transaction, and can be used to promote relevant offers back to existing online customers. Email is relatively inexpensive and by sending timely and interesting offers to customers you will keep them coming back to your website to buy from you. Depending on your products and the frequency of purchase it may be appropriate to send a weekly, monthly or quarterly email. You should use software that manages subscriber lists and allows recipients to unsubscribe if they wish.

Printed catalogues

One of the weaknesses of an online store is that it is waiting to be found. Unlike a high street store with a physical presence you need to work much harder to attract attention. Printed mailers that land on the doormat and highlight product offers and remind customers of the website's presence are very effective in generating a repeat purchase.

Customer reviews

A system within your website that allows customers to review your service and products is a good way to build confidence among new shoppers. If you have a nationally known brand then maybe this is less important - but if you are less well known then the positive experiences of existing customers can be a strong influence.

Advertising banners

When someone enters your physical store you don't abandon them at the door - you use signage to direct them to departments or to products that you wish to highlight. Exactly the same should happen within your ecommerce website using clickable banners that direct visitors to relevant offers and seasonal products.

Social networking

There has been huge growth in online social networks, and just as word-of-mouth recommendation spreads offline, it spreads so much faster online. As a technique it is not an easy marketing option, and you need to be careful that promotion of this type is not seen as a cynical ploy and therefore counter-productive.

Price comparison websites

There are some well-know price comparison services that you can use such has Kelkoo and Pricerunner. By their very nature, the focus of these services is on price, and they appeal to a consumer looking for a bargain. If you are the cheapest online then these can work well for you; if you are not then the results can be less satisfying.

There are many more options for website marketing your website, but let's return to search engine promotion in more detail, and the techniques that can build visibility and bring customers into your ecommerce website.

Search engine optimisation

Search engine optimisation (SEO), describes the techniques used to encourage search engines to rank your website highly for your chosen keywords. For this example we will use Google as it accounts for around 70-80% of all search engine queries. SEO delivers what are referred to as natural or organic results within search engine listings. These are the websites that feature in the main part of the results page, sometimes below a tinted panel containing sponsored links. Google decides where web pages will be positioned within the natural results, and it aims to put the most relevant results at the top of the list. Nobody pays for their website to be featured within the natural search results, but there are techniques that you can use to influence your positions. Google looks for relevance, and therefore the more closely matched your website is to your chosen keywords, then the more likely you are to gain good positions.

There are three main elements of search engine optimisation that influence your positions; the coding of the website, website content, and external links.

The coding of the website

Search engines read billions of web pages every day, and the easier you make it for them to read information within you site, then the more of that content will be read and filtered through into the search engine database. A website that is coded to comply with modern standards and meets accessibility guidelines is one that makes it easy for the search engines to read, and is likely to perform better as a result. Information about website coding standards and simple tests to assess your own website are available at www.w3.org. A lot of the work in this area of SEO should be carried out by your ecommerce provider and it is good practice to comply with web standards both for search engine performance and for the usability of your site by customers. There is also what is called ‘meta data' that should be present within the code of your website. This includes page titles, keywords and text attached to links and images.

Website content

Whereas you may not be confident working on the code of your website, one area where you can have a significant influence on natural search engine performance is the text content of your website. Search engines read words, and so the words you use within your web pages will have a profound effect on your search engine positions. Customers use keywords typed into a search engine to find relevant websites; if the content of your website matches the words being used in the search then this increases your chance of being found. Choosing keywords is often a case of listening to customers - how do they describe your products. Use these words to describe products within your website. A good ecommerce system should also allow you to add additional keywords to a product page, so that you can include mis-spellings and slang words without having to show them on the visible page of the website. There are many theories about how keywords should be used within the pages of a website in order to optimise search engine performance but, in essence, using the most popular and accurate phrases to describe your products is likely to result in a good performance

External links

The third key element of developing strong natural search engine results is building a network of inward pointing links to your website. There are many good directory websites where links are either free or available for a modest fee. The search engines view inward-pointing links as a vote for the popularity of your website they can have a significant effect on search positions.

It is important for any ecommerce website to have a strong search engine optimisation strategy. Work should be carried out regularly on the website and results should be constantly measured to assess the effects. This process should be continuous in order to build strong natural search positions over a period of time.

Pay per click advertising

One of the weaknesses of search engine optimisation is that it cannot be guaranteed to deliver results. For this reason it cannot be relied upon as your only search engine strategy. Pay-per-click advertising helps to cover this weakness.

Pay per click advertising (PPC) is a form of advertising that delivers links to your website within the sponsored links section of the search results. These appear down the right hand side of the Google results page, and sometimes across the top of the page as well.

The main features of PPC are that you choose your keywords, and you choose the wording for the adverts that appear when your keyword is searched on. The more you are prepared to pay, then the higher your advert appears in the listing. When someone clicks on your advert then a sum of money is deducted from your account with Google. The exact amount that is deducted is dependent on the value of other bids received for that keyword, so even if you submit a very high bid, you will not pay much more than the second highest bidder at any time. PPC is effectively a constant auction between advertisers. Advertisers who are most successful are those you choose their keywords very carefully to make sure they are targeted towards buyers, and specific to the products they sell. They ensure that their advert wording is accurate and honest so as only to attract genuine buyers, and they manage their PPC accounts carefully to ensure that each advert is converting visitors into customers, and not simply wasting money with visitors coming into the site and not buying.

The internet is going to continue to be an area of significant retail sales growth over the next few years and the ecommerce businesses that will be successful are those with an effective and easy-to-use website, a clear understanding of their customers needs, excellent service combined with effective marketing to develop new business and breed customer loyalty.

Web savvy businesses are increasingly realising the vast array of opportunities that social media and networking websites are providing them with.

What is social media and social networking?

People are often unsure of the difference between social media and social networking, although essentially they refer to the same subject. Social networking refers to the act of communicating with others, whether with work colleagues via instant messenger or Skype, communicating with like-minded people in web forums or keeping in contact with friends and relatives on Facebook.

Social media itself refers to the technology we use to network with each other. The media allows us to transmit and share our information whether it be our thoughts and ideas on Twitter, articles distributed via RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, diary entries on blogs or perhaps videos posted on YouTube.

Utilising Social Networking for eCommerce

For eCommerce businesses social networking provides an opportunity to engage not only with existing customers but also with a wider audience on a uniquely personal level. It enables you to communicate on a customer level, to find out their needs, identify trends and even find out what they think of your brand.

For example if you're perhaps a buyer for a clothing company, the ability to be able to communicate directly with your customers via perhaps fashion forums or Facebook groups provides you with a gold mine of information, all of which is completely free and as up to date as possible. Furthermore communicating in this way gets your brand out there in such a way that customers don't feel their being given the hard sell, in fact it gives them the opportunity to get involved with the companies they regularly buy from... How best to increase customer loyalty than to make the customer feel they're involved in the way the company makes decisions.

The businesses that profit most from social networking tend to use an individual person to represent the company. This makes for a more intimate relationship, the customer feels valued, that they're connecting on a personal level as opposed to feeling as if the brand is simply trying to sell their services and products.

Networking with your customers relies upon finding out where they hang out, what sites do they visit and where can you get their attention. As well as the social networking giants like Facebook, Bebo and Twitter it's well worth targeting networks specific to your industry. Try searching for the terms ‘forum', ‘network', ‘group', ‘social networks' followed by your industry sector in Google. If your business has been trading online for sometime it's highly likely that customers have already commented on it, in which case enter a search for your own business name in Google to see where they've done this.

Ultimately the key to successful social networking is keeping your target audience engaged, to this end it's crucial that you give them a reason to keep participating in your network, say a company blog or Facebook group. See below some tips on how you can utilise and maximise the effect of social networking for your business.

• Provide advice on the products that you sell, for example fashion if you're a clothing retailer
• Upload ‘how-to', ‘tips' or tutorial video clips on the products and services that you offer
• Provide the latest industry news via a company blog, where your special offers can also be promoted
• Entice new customers with competitions where they can win vouchers redeemable on your website
• Post pictures on photo sharing websites related to products or services that you offer
• Promote upcoming events, perhaps conferences that your company is attending
• Gauge consumer opinion and compile feedback on your products and services
• Identify new trends by participating in online forums and Facebook groups
• Ask your customers what they want to see on your social networking profiles!

Written by Geoff Jackson

The economic environment, as we are all too aware, is constantly changing; as is your marketing environment, with new competitors entering, others leaving, new routes to market becoming available (for example EBay, Amazon, price comparison sites, etc.), and many other unforeseen factors happening. Due to all these reasons, and more, it is imperative that you keep your Marketing Strategy under constant review.

However, there has to be a starting point, so there are some initial questions that you must find the answers to:

1. What do I want to achieve? This must lead to you setting clear, realistic objectives, which must be "SMART (i.e. Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound)
2. What are our strengths and weaknesses?
3. What customers would it be best to target? What are they looking for? What are their needs?
4. What changes are happening in the market place? Are these threats or opportunities?
5. How can I tell if my marketing is effective?

If you are reviewing your existing marketing or have just got around to producing an Action Plan (and, believe me, you are in the company of many businesses if this is the case), you should also conduct some initial market research by carrying out a survey of your existing customers to find out:

• What they think about your products.
• Why they bought from you and not a competitor.
• What they think about your prices.
• How they rate your customer service

Now, armed if this information, you are ready to start on the next stage of production of your Strategic Marketing Action Plan.

PEST and SWOT Analyses:

You must fully understand the environment your business operates in; so the two analyses you need to undertake are PEST and SWOT.

PEST ANALYSIS:
What effects could the following have on your business and the market you operate in?
Political and legal changes, such as new legislation that is in operation or is due.
Economic factors, such as interest rate changes, exchange rates and consumer confidence.
Social factors, such as changing attitudes and lifestyles and the ageing population.
Technological factors, such as new materials and the growing use of the Internet.

SWOT ANALYSIS:
Strengths - what are your company's specific strengths?
Weaknesses - what are your main weaknesses?
Opportunities - what opportunities are there that will play to your strengths?
Threats - what threats do you foresee?

By carefully studying the results of these two analyses you should have a good indication of who your target market should be, and also a basis for formulating your sales and marketing objectives.

Competitor Research:
Whatever market we are in, there will always be competition, be it direct competitors, new competitors who have just or are about to enter the market and indirect competitors, who offer a substitute for your product/s.

We need to know about them all, so you need to do some basic research to cover:

1. Exactly who they are (in all three categories)
2. What they offer.
3. What their pricing policy is.
4. Who their customers are.
5. How they promote themselves.
6. Who their suppliers are.
7. How financially secure they are.
8. What kind of organisations they are.
9. What their strengths and weaknesses are.
10. What their business strategies are.

Apart from gathering as much information as possible about your competition, the other benefits of this research are that you can:

• Evaluate your performance against them.
• Identify and exploit your main competitors' weaknesses.
• Address their strengths.
• Identify new customers
• Improve your sales forecasting
• Keep your business planning focused

Your Strategic Marketing Action Plan:

The work you have done so far gives you the foundation of your Strategic Marketing Action Plan. Having completed the analyses and the research you are now in the position to market:

The right product to
The right person at
The right price in
The right place at
The right time

Your Action Plan will be based on the 7 Ps of Marketing, which will enable you to plan your actions carefully:

Product - You need to define exactly what your offering is and also highlight your Unique Selling Proposition - this is how you will differentiate yourself from the competition.

Price - How you will price your offering. Will you be promoting yourself as a "value retailer", a "quality supplier", etc? To a large degree, your product offering will dictate your price offering.

Place - How and where you will sell, be it in the high street, on the Internet, by catalogue, etc.

Promotion - How you reach your potential customers - will it be via the Internet, advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, personal selling, etc?

People - It is crucial that all your staff reflect the marketing image you want to project - to use a little marketing jargonese "You must all be singing off the same hymn sheet".

Processes - Have you got all the right processes, such as logistics, administration, etc. in place?

Physical Evidence - This is not just your physical store, it is how you present yourself in all marketing communication channels. Your brochures, in-store displays, Internet site, stationary, etc must all be of the same standard, sending out the same message to customers, suppliers and potential customers.

You have now finalised your strategy and have laid down the actions you are going to take to achieve your sales objectives. However, this is just the start , as I said at the beginning, your Action Plan must be a "living document", the economy is always changing, your market is always changing and your competition is always changing; use your Plan as a basis to ensure that you respond positively to the changing environment.

Conclusion:

A well known statement quoted in marketing circles is:
"Customers are not passive receptors, but can and should be active participants in marketing."

It may sound like a cliché, but it is a fact that the more you listen to your customers the more you will be able to gain their loyalty and - more importantly - their business. Carry out regular customer surveys and act on the results, if you believe they are worthwhile and realistic.

The development and updating of your Strategic Marketing Action Plan will provide you with a wealth of valuable information and a map of how you are going to meet your sales and profit objectives. It is hard work, but the positive results will make your efforts worthwhile.

Written By Allan Duncan

To help you review your existing site, or when planning for your new one here are a few examples of how to make sure customers will enjoy shopping with you.

Customers do like these online features:

• Ratings and reviews
• The ability to zoom up close to see details of the products
• Multiple product images with different views
• The ability to view products in multiple product variations
• Images showing the product in use (when applicable)
• Product comparisons
• Well maintained, written and presented customer service areas

Two other things to bear in mind:

• If faced with a choice between a product which is being offered at the same price in two stores, the majority of consumers cite free delivery as being the most important factor in their ultimate purchase decision.
• Nearly a third of UK shoppers said that they would go back online and complete their purchase if something as simple as a small discount or free postage and packing were offered to them.   You could set up “trigger emails” to be sent to potential customers who abandon their shopping cart.

It is not my intention to suggest that you must offer free delivery or give discounts.   It is simply to bring to you attention some extra marketing tools you have available to you.

Having told you what customers like, you should also be aware of what they don’t:

• Customers will leave your site if the web functionality is too complicated or if you have a lengthy registration process
• Customers do not like being made to sign in before they can enter your site
• You will lose customers and credibility if extra charges, such as delivery or tax do not appear until checkout
• Late delivery and expensive and lengthy returns procedures will deter customers from making a repeat purchase from you.

Another series of articles will give you help on being found on the Internet, giving you a detailed look at Search Engine Optimisations, Organic Search, etc.   This is an outline of other aspects to bear in mind when you want potential customers to find you on the Internet.

Online shoppers are using more methods to find products as well as search engines – including market places, comparison shopping engines, social recommendations and more.

Additionally, the use of Twitter, Facebook, Bebo and other social networks are growing almost daily.   You need to be involved in all the methods being used, you should be looking to engage with your customers on the social networks and investigate the opportunities of market places, etc.   Successful online retailers are putting their products where people are looking – in other words meeting potential customers where they are, rather than expecting shoppers to go to them all the time.

Two final thoughts about being found on the Internet:

• Whilst Google has nearly 80% of the search engine market, do not forget the other 20% such as Yahoo, Ask, MSN etc.
• Use coupons as an effective landing page as there has been and still is a massive increase in searches for “coupons”, “coupon code”, “discount coupons”, etc.

When the Head of the British Cycling Team asked why they were so successful at the Olympics, he replied that it wasn’t a major change that brought in the team’s success; it was a culmination of minor incremental changes that produced the gold medals.

The same basic principle applies to ensuring your website produces the right results for you.   Too often the eretailers who fail do so because they are not continually working at and reviewing their websites – please do not be one of those.

These questions are aimed at highlighting the fact that uncontrolled use of emails and newsletters can definitely cause you more harm than good. In fact there should be a "health warning" - ‘the overuse of emails and newsletters can seriously damage your company's reputation and lose you existing and potential customers".'

The importance of permission based email marketing

It is important that you use "permission marketing" prior to launching an email campaign or embarking on the production of newsletters. In other words, you get permission from your potential recipients. If you are planning either of these exercises it would be really beneficial to get your target market to agree for you to send them - possibly by giving them an opportunity to register for contact when they visit your site, or by registering offline.

Allow them to operate a "double opt in". Once they tick an opt-in box, they are sent an automatic email asking them to confirm registration, this is the safest way of ensuring that your target market are happy to hear from you. Failing that, when you do send promotional emails or newsletters out - allow the recipients the opportunity to easily opt out of receiving any more.

Gain credibility and prevent your messages going to the spam box

Whilst I accept that allowing people to tell you not to communicate with them may seem a somewhat negative approach, you will gain more respect and, even more crucially, you will be communicating with people who want to receive information from you. As I have already highlighted - permission marketing is the key to success in marketing communications. The other thing to bear in mind whilst we are discussing "opt-ins" is that if you don't use them it is possible that you could be listed as a spammer by ISP's - meaning that you would be blacklisted from all future email communication with any on that ISP.

As with many things associated with marketing and ecommerce, there are too many surveys to mention. However, there are regular indications of how successful permission based emailing can be.

The power of email marketing

Over 50% of customers are more likely to buy from a retailer who sends them an email, have a more favourable opinion of them and feel more loyal towards them. These are positive effects of permission based emailing.

Other surveys have produced the following statistics about consumers who receive emails:
• 88% will download or print a voucher
• 79% will click a link in an email to learn more
• 75% will follow through and purchase a product online
• 69% will research the retail locations that carry a specific product highlighted in the email
• 67% will purchase the product offline
• 60% will try a product for the first time
• 55% will share a voucher or forward the email
• 33% will type or copy the URL into their browser

These statistics show that effective and professional use of emails and newsletters can and will increase your sales.

13 tips for successful email marketing

However, please bear in mind that there are many rules which you should study and follow to make sure that your permission based communications are even more effective; I have highlighted the main ones for you below:

1. The best days to send out emails or newsletters are Tuesday and Wednesdays and the best times are first thing in the morning or just after lunch.
2. If you are sending out regular newsletters, be consistent with both the time and the day every time.
3.  Stick to 40-50 characters in your subject line. Most email browsers default do not display anything beyond 40 characters in the subject line.
4. Don't use all capitals - IT IS AKIN TO SHOUTING!
5. Clearly state your offer - do not try to be too clever.
6. Make sure that your best content is "above the fold" so that it can be seen within your recipient's preview panel in their email browser.
7. Avoid images as your sole content. Many browsers block images until you click, so your recipient's first view of your email could be a blank space.
8. If you do want to use images, make sure that they are a maximum of 25% of your content and below the fold.
9. Break your message into short blocks of copy - even bullet points. People tend to scan emails rather than read them in detail.
10. Include relevant links to your site.
11. Don't try to be clever with fonts - use the traditional web friendly fonts and try to use a font size of between 10 and 14 points, except for titles and headlines.
12. If you are sending out details of Special Offers, always set a time limit and give a call to action.
13. To be even more successful, personalise your email and try to include the recipient's christian name where possible.

Other considerations

The most important rule is - even with permission marketing - only send emails when you have something to say. This may seem obvious, but if you look in your spam box or even your in box, you will find emails from companies who are just making a noise and saying nothing.

The one time you can "bend" this rule is when you use emails to conduct a customer survey. By asking your customers to rate your service, price, product offering, etc. you are turning emails from a one-way into a two-way communication. If you talk with and not at your customers, they will think more positively of you. The other bonus is that you can learn where you need to improve and what you are doing well from the only people who count - your customers.

Both emails and newsletters can be very effective marketing tools; if you follow these rules.

Analyse and segment your user base

If you analyse your customers effectively, you can segment them and send personalised emails based on such things as the last purchase they made, their home location, gender, response to last offer, etc.

This online segmentation gives you a new way to look at customer behaviour, for instance you may decide that infrequent visitors may get a monthly newsletter with highlights, whilst regular visitors get a weekly newsletter and special offers. The point is that you have a lot of marketing information available to you if you use your website analytics fully.

Conclusion

Enable your customers and potential customers to "opt in" to receiving emails and newsletters from you. Just ensure that you clearly state such things as:

• How often you will send emails
• What you will be sending, maybe you can show an example email and a list of benefits
• Clear statements that you will not provide their address to any other organisation
• A link to your privacy policy

Using your emailing as part of an integrated and well-planned marketing strategy (ensuring you offer 'opt in' or 'opt out') and you will increase your reputation, customer loyalty and sales.

Why the integrated method makes sense.

Whilst the subtitle sounds very “theoretical”, in practice it really means putting the customer at the centre of all your operational and marketing activities, because “Joined Up Marketing” results in more and happier customers”

If you collect and aggregate information about your customers, stock and merchandising across all your channels, you will be able to:

• Have a single view of your customers and their orders, giving you a better understanding or their buying behaviour and needs.
• Use real-time demand to respond to your pricing, promotions and merchandising.
• Combine customer, product and stock information to optimise cross-channel promotions, marketing and other Customer Relationship Management opportunities.
• Allocate your assets and resources between channels in response to any demand fluctuations.

Within your website, you should have access to a goldmine of customer information. For instance, you will know which products are viewed most and which are purchased most – there could be a major difference between the two! This information can then be used in all your planning – both on-line and off-line.

You will be able to test Special Offers and Promotions and also segment customers by demographics such as home location, gender, last product purchased, etc.   Combine this information with your off-line marketing systems and you will be able to build a customer database second to none.

This then is one advantage of integrated marketing. The other advantages must be applied to customers, let them collect vouchers either in-store, in your catalogue or online and use them in any channel; let them reserve online and collect in-store; buy online and exchange in-store. Give them the complete “Martini Offering” – Any time, Any Place and Any Product, and gain not only their confidence, but also their business.

Reasons to use ecommerce

The main reason many retailers moved into ecommerce were:

1. The changing behaviour and expectations of their customers as more and more of the public adopted the 24/7 shopping mentality.
2. To give them a “national presence” beyond their physical store.
3. To put even more pressure on “bricks and mortar” retailers, a start-up – with a new website and access to a supply and distribution chain – can have a fairly instant impact. In other words, there is a low cost to entry. This resulted in many retailers starting an ecommerce site driven almost purely by fear rather than strategy.
4. And the one reason which is given even now – “Because everyone else is doing it”.

Unfortunately, either all or a combination of these reasons have resulted in many ecommerce operations being implemented without a lot of planning or marketing thought. Ecommerce operations are then treated either as a completely separate part of a retailer’s business or even as an inconvenience, that has to be tolerated.

Retailers with a history and an investment in bricks and mortar stores find it difficult to bring flexibility into their operations to support new service options. Additional, many still fear that the sales of their physical stores will be cannibalised by the new channels.

If you then add to this the fact that, quite often, staff are incentivised to sell in their specific unit (be it by branch, by website or individually), customers are constantly being given conflicting messages. To build for the future, all your staff must be focused on winning and retaining business from your customers, regardless of the channel used. The fact is that “multi-channel customers” are more loyal and will give you an overall higher gross margin.

One of the many surveys that have been conducted into ecommerce showed that retailers believe that customers only like ecommerce because:

• They can find competitive prices
• Products are easy for them to find
• They can get next day delivery
• It takes away the need for them to visit the high street

If you base your total marketing and offering on the reasons listed above – in other words, on the past, you will be left behind. Newer, more agile retailers who interact more adeptly, more flexibly and in a more controlled manner will gain customers both today and in the future.

Using a multi channel and customer centric business model

Your marketing communications channels could well be: the Internet, call centres, stores, telephone, catalogues, print advertising – and I am sure there are more. In many retail organisations these channels, and the customers within them, are viewed and treated in complete isolation. For example, instore offers do not apply online, customers cannot buy online and return to store, etc., etc.

The objective for forward-thinking retailers has to be to reorganise their entire business around their customers. Using customer information to change their business processes, personalise offerings and allow customers to shop the way they want, both online and offline. In other word, to let customers browse, enquire, buy and return in any combination of the channels available to them.

Maintaining the status quo is no longer an option. Whether you call it multi-channel retailing, new retailing, or any of the other numerous names being currently used, the true answer is Integrated, Customer Centric Marketing.

This means that your whole marketing and communications strategy must be customer focused, as opposed to being product focused. Your total organisation must be targeted at meeting and beating the expectations of your customers both now and in the future. This integrated approach will deliver you both growth and profitability.

By accepting and using integrated marketing you will have:

• Consistent Objectives across all your marketing channels
• Clear Key Performance Indicators for all sections of your company
• Consistent execution of your sales and marketing strategies
• The ability to review your whole organisation as one
• The ability to keep learning what is happening in your market and with your customers

Put your customers at the centre of your business, integrate all your marketing and sales channels – and leave your competitors in your wake.

In marketing terms, the ultimate customer is known as an advocate – someone who not only is completely loyal to you, but also recommends you to their friends. By ensuring that your marketing is totally integrated, you will have less and less one-off customers and more advocates.

Look at your conversion rate, which is the ratio of visits to purchases, if its 2% or lower - you need to find out why, otherwise this means for every hundred new visitors to your site, only one or two are actually buying from you and even worse the other ninety or so others may not come back again. If you do not know where to find this data ask your web manager or agency. If they don't know, it's time to look for a new ecommerce solution!

See how good you are at converting abandoned baskets into orders, the goal is to get 8% or more recovered and purchased. Anything lower than this and you are missing out on nearly 10% of your monthly turnover - after most of the effort has taken place. Again, if you are not sure how to do this ask your web administrator. The usual approach is to trigger an email once the ecommerce site has detected that it has a basket with content and a visitor email address which is no longer linked to an active session on the site. If you don't have this system as part of your ecommerce solution, you can always look at abanndoned entries manually and send out an email to each one. Depending on the basket value it can be a rewarding experience when the visitor returns to complete the transaction.

Look at what proportion of your new visitors don't go further than the first page. if over 20% then you need to investigate further. Yes, that does mean you will have to look at your statistics, see what search terms are getting visitors to your site and work out why people don't think your homepage is the right place to be. Also check your prices and any other significant element on your homepage that is visible on first load. A further recommendation is to turn off any auto-loaded sound track, with an option to turn it on instead. If you are struggling with this section maybe our free ecommerce site appraisal will help.

One final check is the actual load time of your website homepage.  If it is over six or seven seconds on a good broadband link, then it may be too long for a lot of busy and impatient visitors. Make sure all the images are optimised for the web and any animation is minimal or allows the visitor to skip to the finished page.

Once you are sure that the above are all working well, turn on the advertising with the confidence that you have the best chance of converting the maximum vistors to customers...then you need to read the next section to make sure they stay loyal and buy again and again.

Microsoft has been maintaining operating systems for windows users online for years, it works for them - they can roll out updates and changes faster, don't have to pay for millions of CD's, get feedback from the installs and can customise the downloads for each subscriber. It works for customers as they can choose how often they have the updates, be reminded when they need to install them and normally receive them free.

The same benefits work for other applications as well. LiquidShop is an example of a Software as a Service (SaaS) application and operates in a similar way. You will be seeing more of this happening in the near future. If your ecommerce system is an offline, installed package, a bespoke build that has not been updated or an open source shopping cart that has been applied to your website a while ago you need to review it as soon as possible. Our book - 'Practical Tips for Successful Online Trading' provides an outline of the things to ask for in a new ecommerce website - order your copy from this website.

Burglary and fraud used to happen offline, and you knew what you had to do to give yourself the best protection. The email enquires you get from your website may include some that are rogue phishing scams and the username and password to your ecommerce admin will be targeted along with access to your Hotmail, Gmail, bank or any other web-based accounts. However, just as with so many other aspects of modern life the same old rules apply.

Phishing (if it looks too good to be true it probably is)

Phishing is the use of fake websites and official looking emails to lure people into revealing data such as bank account details or login names. Always be suspicious of inbound requests for information, or arriving at official looking websites via search engines.

If you are going to visit a website to update or check vital and confidential information make sure it is the real one. How can you do this? Check the web address with an original email, paperwork or published advertising, then place this in your favourites. Use this address to go to the site rather than links found in any other emails or browser pages you have visited.

Passwords (use the strongest locks and don't duplicate the keys)

So many things have moved online, with each one requiring a username and password it is so easy to use the same access name and codes for all. But just as you would not think of having the same physical key for your house, car, safe, locker, office, garage, luggage etc, it would seem to be good practice to have the same principles for your online activities. This has the problem of how do you remember them all and how often do you need to change them?

There is a great, easy to understand article on the subject of passwords taken from wikiHow which will give you good advice and various methods to develop secure passwords you can remember.

At the value end of the market

Tesco launches www.clothingattesco.com giving targeted access to its non food products to the remaining parts of the UK not covered by their big stores. Eyeing up the predicted 26% growth in clothing sales on the internet this year, Tesco intends to get rewarded with a share of this rising market. Tesco is using years of ecommerce experience on the grocery site to focus on what makes visitors become customers and fully understand the niche approach using a different site and style.

At the more sophisticated end of the market

The very experienced fashion retailer George Davies is launching his own brand at www.give.co.uk. He is responding to the other ecommerce trend of differentiation through service rather than price. A good eye for latest fashion from George Davies is a given. Add to this an instore alteration service, hi-tech ways to select and buy via kiosks, online and instore, he is piloting the future of fashion retailing.

Are you a fashion retailer?

If you are a fashion retailer and have stayed on the sidelines waiting for the right moment to go online - now is the time. With the right ecommerce partner you can be part of this growth.

Not the headlines you want to hear as a ecommerce supplier, especially as Christmas comes around. Putting aside any views on the outcome and still hoping it can be avoided; Sitemakers are looking at ways to help customers get products to customers. Here is a quick checklist of things you may need to think about:

What to do next

1. If you are currently using Royal Mail

• Look at direct alternatives ASAP, the major carriers will be seeing a rise of inquiries, so get talking as soon as possible
• Have you considered fulfilment companies such as .netpack? They will handle packing as well as dispatch and select the best and cost effective way to get your products to your customers.

2. If you are already using an alternative carrier

• Check with them to see if there will be any impact on delivery or collection times.
• Watch out for "special deals" produced to entice users away from Royal Mail, may be an opportunity to try a  new carrier or ensure your existing one matches the offers.

Keep your ecommerce site  updated

On your ecommerce website you will also need to ensure that your terms and conditions are updated with any changes in service, plus highlight on your home page how you will be tackling the Royal Mail strike (if it happens) to reassure visitors how they will get your products delivered. If you are changing delivery methods make sure all references to delivery charges within the ecommerce site are adjusted to correctly calculate the shopping basket total.

This is not a definitive list and actions will have to suit individual needs, however we hope to highlight some of the things you must consider and set off a train of thought that should cover your own circumstances.

A landing page, often referred to as a lead capture page is a website page where potential customers land on after clicking on an advertisement, web link or search engine link. Typically the landing page will refer directly to the content of the advertisement or web link and will be optimised to feature keywords and phrases targeted at achieving high search engine results. Furthermore the landing page will be optimised in its layout to maximise conversions into tangible business, be it an enquiry or sale of a product.

Similar to an advert where the purpose is to encourage internet users to click upon it your landing page must work hard to convert the resulting visitor into a paying customer. Here, time is of the essence, grabbing your visitors attention long enough to convince them to make that second click is less than 14 seconds.

"For sponsored search ads, you have 1.8 seconds and one glance to convince searchers to click on an ad. Once searchers arrive on your landing pages, you have 13.2 seconds to convince visitors that they are on the right site" Gordon Hotchkiss, President and CEO of Enquiro Search Solutions, Inc.

Six key elements and considerations for your landing pages:

1. Consistency

It’s crucial that your landing page reflects the link to which it’s associated with, be it a Pay Per Click advert, web link or search engine result as well as your corporate branding. Ensuring these elements visually and grammatically match instils confidence in the potential customer and helps them to take on the information quickly and react to it.

2. Design & Layout

The primary objective of your landing page is to increase the rate of conversions from your marketing and promotional material, to this end it must impart the necessary information in the quickest and easiest format for the viewer to purchase your product, subscribe to your newsletter or complete an enquiry form.

Utilising headings and concise paragraphs along with bullet pointing significant product or service features will allow the viewer to quickly scan and extract the information they require to move onto the next step. Ensure that text fonts are easily readable and that associated graphics do not distract from the objective of converting the visitor into a paying customer. If capturing information is the objective, your landing page should withhold information until contact details have been submitted to capture the lead.

3. Product Images

Product photos still remain a huge influence when purchasing online, as the primary tool used to replicate the experience of a high street store it’s absolutely crucial that your product photos are as good as possible. Multiple images combined with magnification tools are ideally used, and video clips are fast becoming an addition to many ecommerce shops to give them an edge over their competitors. Do note that it’s important to keep file sizes to a minimum to maximise page loading speeds, consumers won’t stick around to wait for unnecessarily high resolution photos to load.

4. Reviews & Testimonials

Reviews, testimonials and product ratings are an effective unbiased means of catching a customers attention and increasing the likelihood of a sale.

5. Call To Actions

A ‘call to action’ is a request or a direction for your website visitor to do something, typically ‘buy now’ or ‘signup to our newsletter’. The priority of call to actions should be to channel visitors to the checkout via the quickest route possible. With this in mind your call to actions should be linked directly to your shopping cart, subscription or contact pages. Visually call to action features should be bold, use the simplest terminology and be above the page fold of your browser.

6. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

When creating your landing page, it is important that you consider the search engines as well as your intended audience. Your page should be created using search engine friendly techniques such as the use of h1, h2 and h3 tags, title and meta data, and should also be W3C compliant. Don’t be scared to question your website designers on this, any reputable ecommerce providers should be developing to these standards.

Ensure that your text content including any internal links accommodate targeted keywords and phrases. Additionally make sure that there are several links from your main website, preferably from your most active pages, this will put extra importance upon your landing page and help it to establish higher search engine results.

Don’t forget to:

1. Track your results

It should be commonplace for any ecommerce shop to have the ability to record statistical data associated with its website traffic and user behaviour. When creating landing pages be sure to add any tracking code associated with your statistics package. Typically these statistics will record where your website visitors have come from, what keywords they have used, which landing page links they click on, and record an overall conversion rate.

There are a number of statistics packages available that present data in a variety of formats. Google Analytics is the most widely used and will help determine the efficiency, quality and value of your landing pages. Features such as ‘heatmaps’ that show where your visitors click when on your landing page will show you exactly what is and isn’t working.

2. Use split testing

Split testing is a technique where several different landing pages are used, each with subtle differences designed to identify the features within the design and functionality of your landing page that engage and stimulate visitors to remain on your website and convert into a paying customer. It’s quite often the smallest of alterations like a change in font, the way something is worded or perhaps the repositioning of a button several centimetres which makes the difference between a hundred conversions and none.

For more information on ecommerce and selling on the internet contact Sitemakers on 0207 099 1002.

Written by Geoff Jackson

Be creative with your links to Calendar events

It's not just mask makers and partyware shops that are looking to get extra customers at the end of October, a whole range of businesses will be expecting those extra enquiries and sales calls. If you are a car or limo hire, catering, restaurant, firework supplier or off licence you should be getting your share of the increased market for your services. But the opportunity doesn't stop there, providing the link is real and not too tenuous there are other companies that can ride the wave, it just needs a bit of imagination to get you noticed. How about insurance companies, security services and late night taxis? Just think up the strapline and get published, offline and online.

There is a void to be filled

It is also worth remembering that a big player in the Halloween market is no longer playing... the Woolworth share of Halloween sales will be distributed among the other retailers this year. While it may be too late to make a significant impact by the 31 October 2009, there are plenty more special days in the calendar that you can start planning for now.

By the way, why not check out our  Liquidshop client  Party On-Line who stock a huge range of Halloween fancy dress and accessories.
If you are interested in ecommerce solutions to help you maximise your sales on special days then why not give us a call today on 0207 099 1002 or contact us

The recognised leading industry body for global e-retailing is IMRG and they operate a scheme called ISIS – Internet Shopping Is Safe.

Apply for ISIS  its simple

As members of IMRG we recommend that ecommerce sites have this accreditation as it will improve visitor confidence  and therefore have a positive impact on conversion rates.  The cost?  Only £125.00 per year and that includes the review of your site and recommendations to ensure you are up to the required standard. Sitemakers have also negotiated an extended accreditation period for our clients; you will receive 15 months accreditation for the price of 12!  

How to get the ISIS approval

For further details and application go the ISIS website at http://isisaccreditation.imrg.org

then click on the section "join ISIS"  on the left hand side.

Okay, so you've heard of Twitter, the latest social media phenomenon, but how do you use it effectively for your ecommerce business? Here are some great starter tips to ensure you are ready to get the most out of your Twitter stream and to really connect with your customers and reap the value!

Getting started
If you haven't already, then get yourself over to Twitter and sign up for an account. You will be lucky if you can secure your ideal username as there are now over 50 million registered members on Twitter. However, when setting up your business on Twitter try and adhere to these guidelines:

1. Try and select a username that best identifies and represents your business, if you are active on other social media channels, it is important to try and use the same username on all your accounts to develop your online brand. Creating an official Twitter account under your business name may prove the most effective way of tweeting special offers, promotions, deals and sales. Alternatively you can use an individual within the company as the face of the business, which adds a personal touch to your communication.
2. Ensure you upload an avatar that represents your brand effectively, a 73pixel x 73pixel sized image can tell people a lot about you. If you are creating a Twitter account for your business, it is best that your avatar is your company logo. Ensure it is in proportion, up to date and optimised. If you going to tweet for your company under your personal identity then a clear, professional avatar showing your face works best
3. Complete your Bio, Location and Website fields on your account to give your followers as much information as is available They will be following you as they are interested in your company so make them feel like they really know you, and offer straight and factual information. You will also find that this is the first place potential new followers look before deciding whether you are worth following and if you can add any value to their Twitter stream; an empty Bio description doesn't tell anyone why you are worth following!
4. Customise your Twitter profile background, make it personal. Incorporate your company's graphics and colour scheme, check out this good tutorial online to create a custom Twitter background using the correct dimensions.
5. Use a legitimate, appropriate and professional font. You probably aren't making a good impression for your company if you are using a Comic Sans typeface for example.

How and what to tweet

1. It is important to engage with your followers, whether they are customers, people interested in your brand, fans or enthusiasts of your industry. Reply to everyone who mentions you.
2. Don't just self promote! Use a mix or engaging tweets amongst the promotional tweets. Nobody wants to listen if all you are doing is trying to sell sell sell to your followers.
3. Ask questions; Twitter's micro-blogging interface gives you the perfect opportunity to obtain feedback about your services or the products you sell.
4. Be yourself, let your followers know you are human and that you have thoughts, opinions and social skills instead of just representing your brand or maintaining your Twitter account in a robotic manner.
5. Use your Twitter account to extend your level of customer service, allow and encourage questions, queries or problems about your products/services. Always do what you can to develop the conversation and build a strong community of followers.

The reward comes naturally.

How to manage Twitter without "wasting time"
Even now, many businesses still do not see the value in Twitter and raise the argument that it wastes too much time that they see little or no return from. There are many tools and applications available now to help keep you on top of managing your Twitter account(s). Here are some recommendations:

1. CoTweet - Web based platform that helps companies reach and engage customers using Twitter. Allows the management of multiple accounts and users simultaneously.
2. TweetDeck - Desktop application that allows you to manage multiple accounts and users and create customised groups that allow you to extract your quality followers from the rest.
3. Ping.fm - Allows you to post to many other social network services as well as Twitter from your mobile phone (SMS/MMS) so you can manage your account(s) whilst your on the move and not just in the office.
4. Twitpic - Share photos on Twitter either via their website or post direct from your mobile. Great for when your getting some new products listed on your website and you want to let your customers know.
5. TwitterHawk - Targeted marketing on Twitter, track and monitor by keyword who is talking about your brand, services or products and automatically send replies to them each time these keywords are triggered.
6. SocialOomph (Formerly TweetLater) - Automate aspects of your Twitter account to save you time, although we wouldn't only recommend very little account automation, this tool can still prove great when used in the correct manner.

If you would like to discuss how Sitemakers can help you with social media marketing, then why not call us today on 0207 099 1002

Written by Geoff Jackson

If you are already active on Twitter, I am sure by now you would have seen many instances of hashtags, it is just simply a # followed by a word (e.g: #hashtag).

Although not always used in the most effective way, hashtags can be used as a great marketing tool and serve many beneficial purposes, both as a business or a follower. Hashtags can be used to follow any topic of interest, news, event or conversation and it's easy to create your own.

You should never tag an update with a unrelated hashtag or fill your tweets up with popular trending hashtags in the hope of getting noticed as this will be classed as spamming.

So how can you benefit from hashtags on Twitter?

Hashtags are great for grouping related tweets together and for targeting a more relavant audience, especially if you have thousands of followers.

Hashtags can:-

• Help get your tweets noticed by others interested in your topic/hashtag
• Help build your Twitter profile and gain more targeted followers interested in your tweets
• Track who is talking about your brand/business and engage with the discussion
• Subscribe via RSS to a hashtag to track the conversation as it happens on any given subject
• Use a simple hashtag to promote your brand or products or hints/tips

For eCommerce hints and tips, we recommend you subscribe to the #eCommerceTips hashtag, you can see from the screenshot below that we often tweet excellent tips to bear in mind when running an eCommerce business...

Other ways you could use hashtags in eCommerce

• New specal offers in store now available online with #lights4living
• Fantastic deals on #homefurniture just before Xmas at http://www.homefurnitureland.co.uk
• #trippsale Huge range on top quality luggage for all occassions, please ReTweet

Sites to track hashtags on Twitter

• Twubs - Twubs are Twitter groups built around content aggregated from #hashtags
• What the Trend? - What the Trend? helps you find out what's trending on Twitter and why
• TweetChat - TweetChat allows you to follow a hashtag in real time and displays the stream.
• HashDump - Claim and register your hashtag and give it a description.
• HashParty - HashParty is a hashtag trend explorer and displays the history of them.

If you would like to discuss how Sitemakers can help you with social media marketing, then why not call us today on 0207 099 1002

Written by Geoff Jackson

The implications for this across the EU may prove detrimental, with nearly every modern day website using some form of web cookie. A cookie is a small piece of text stored on a user's computer by a web browser and may contain bits of information such as user preferences, shopping cart contents, the identifier for a server-based session or any other data used by websites.

An exception exists if the cookie is "strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user to provide the service". So on an ecommerce website, there should be no consent required for cookies used by the shopping cart but, even so, where do you draw the line with which cookies are strictly necessary?

The thought of being inundated with a constant stream of pop-ups asking for cookies consent doesn't bear thinking about. I think some of the people worst affected by this could be affiliates who may have difficulties getting their referrals through to the merchant's website counted. A lot of websites are purely based around affiliation, an affiliate gets rewarded (normally in the form of a commission) for each website visitor they refer to the merchants website that goes on to make a purchase . Even the way that web analytics programs work may need to be assessed and changed as they currently place a cookie on your machine to track user sessions on the site.

If you would like to discuss how Sitemakers can help you with ecommerce solutions, then why not call us today on 0207 099 1002

Written by Geoff Jackson

In simplistic terms:-

Filters: Modify data on the pageview level
Advanced Segments: Change a reports view of the data at the visit level

Filters

Filters are applied to the information that comes into your analytics account and allows you to manipulate the final data in order to provide specialised reports. By creating one master profile with your original data, you can additionally create seperate profiles to track different filtered data, as each filter will alter your original data.

For example:

• Create a master profile that does not filter any of your website's tracking data (or at least to the basic specification that you require).
• For the same web domain, create additional profiles with filters to generate specialised reports (pay per click, social media marketing etc).
• Use the filtered profiles to produce targeted specific reports so you can make the most out of analysing the recorded data in your analytics account.

Advanced Segments

Advanced Segmentation is a tool you can use to filter the analytics data you are viewing within a report. These do not require you to set up seperate profiles like is needed with filters, your original data is left untouched and this tool offers a wide range of dimensions and metrics to filter this original data so you can analyse any area specifically.

For example:

• Advanced segments can be created in any profile to analyse any metric on the original data.
• Quickly create and test advanced segments as potential goals.
• Use advanced segments to track and measure any metric in the same report view.

If you would like to discuss how Sitemakers can help you with web analytics solutions, then why not call us today on 0207 099 1002

Written by Geoff Jackson

Christmas is a time for giving

With the recession this past year charities such as Secret World Wildlife Rescue have really been suffering. This Christmas Sitemakers have given a donation on behalf of our staff and clients to a deserving charity that we have been involved with for many years.

Secret World Wildlife Rescue specialises in the rescue, rehabilitation and eventual release of orphaned and injured wild animals. It’s run entirely on donations and each year cares for approximately 4,000 wild animals. Together with a dedicated team of staff and volunteers, they continue to care for all manner of creatures, from the tiniest harvest mice and bats to badgers, swans, foxes, deer and otters.

Photo: Nick Pratt, Managing Director of Sitemakers presents the Sitemakers Christmas donation to Pauline Kidner at Secret World Wildlife Rescue

Online retail just keeps on growing

The current recession has done nothing to slow the rate at which the internet is changing retail business. In a desire to explain these changes, industry commentators create ever more jargon to describe the increasing influence of online retailing. Over the past couple of years, terms such as multichannel retail, cross-channel retail and now even omnichannel retailing have been used to explain these changes. But what does all this mean, practically, for you and your business?

What's in a name?

Whatever you choose to call it; online retailing, ecommerce, or simply selling online is rapidly establishing itself at the centre of the most successful retail operations. It's certainly where most of the sales growth has been seen during 2009. Online sales have grown in excess of 10% for the year, and will have helped some of our larger retail groups to avoid major embarrassment when announcing their overall results in January. Online retailing has also given many small retailers the opportunity to out-manoeuvre their larger competitors, many of which have been struggling to adjust to a new, and fast-evolving retail model. Some of the high-profile retail business failures seen over the past 12 months or so have doubtless been tipped over the edge by reduced consumer spending during the recession, but the majority of these were already compromised businesses without a well-defined and successful online operation. The downturn merely exposed their weakness.

High street retailing is currently undergoing a major transformation, and it is one that favours those businesses that can react quickly to new technology and can take steps to meet the changing needs of customers. Success is in the hands of the agile retailer.

It has only just begun

Most consumers now have a broadband internet connection available to them either at home or at work. And when you look at the peaks and troughs of daily online retail activity, it reflects the pattern of the average day with peaks mid-morning, lunchtime and mid-evening - when people have time to shop online, fitting it in around their chores and other activities. The development of new technology has a large part to play in helping us to understand how online retail habits will continue to evolve. A point in time when most of us have an easy-to-use internet-connected device in our pockets is approaching fast. The phrase ‘easy-to-use' is the key here; traditional mobile phones will connect to the internet - but the experience is far from great, and most people don't bother. Led by the category-defining Apple iPhone, we see a vast array of new, user-friendly smartphones entering the market and seducing users to start using the internet on the move. The impact this will have on online retailing is huge because, if people start shopping online while they are out and about in town, this presents retailers with a fantastic new opportunity to build stronger, more active relationships with their customers.

Building relationships is a fundamental part of human nature, and it is second nature to all successful retail operators. The internet brings new ways to create and maintain relationships with customers. A consumer dealing with an agile retailer can often start a transaction in-store, and complete it at home on the internet or, alternatively, find a product on the internet and reserve and buy it in-store. And we are beginning to treat this type of flexibility as a requirement to retain our loyalty. The relationship is simple - do what we want and we will buy from you. Allow an inflexible system to stand in our way, and we will simply side-step you and shop elsewhere.

Internet research power available in the high street

The internet has allowed us all an unprecedented facility to find just about anything we want to know, almost instantly. As a result that Great British institution, the Pub Quiz, is now threatened by savvy contestants looking up the answers on Google as the questions are read out. This facility for instant research is another key factor that is changing retail. Comparison shopping has become the norm across all retail channels. Physically going into four competing stores to compare prices, even in the same town centre, may take an hour or two. The same task can be completed in as many minutes and is merely a click away on the internet.

As customers have become more cautious about their spending then research is becoming the norm for all but the most mundane and regular purchases. Visit your local branch of Comet and it looks like a reporters' convention; people with notebooks and pens jotting down product names and reference codes before rushing off to locate the best prices online for next-day delivery - maybe even from Comet. The potential threats from this behaviour are obvious, but the opportunities for the agile retailer are also there to be exploited.

Consumer research consistently shows that price is certainly not the only factor that determines an online retail purchase. There are many factors that make up the value proposition presented to customers. Speed of delivery, certainty of price - led by free or fixed price delivery, security of payment, after-sales support and overall confidence in the retailer all play a part. As with all retail purchases, consumers balance their needs, desires and expectations and make decisions about what to buy and who to buy from as a result. Many companies sell online at higher prices than their competitors and still make the sales where they can offer an overall more compelling value proposition to their customers. Quite simply - there is room for everyone but beware, opportunistic high prices are impossible to sustain in the bright glare of internet comparison shopping.

Back to basics

Core retail values have always centred on customer service - providing the customer with the products they want, when they want them and at prices they are prepared to pay. The values of online retailing are fundamentally no different from this and retailers who understand this are currently winning market share. The same customers who buy from you in-store also buy from you online. You can be pretty sure that the customer coming through the door is the same customer who is also buying from your website. The agile retailer recognises this and treats them to the same experience and service, the same offers and makes sure they are aware of all of the channels available to them to browse and make a purchase.

The ability to collect and analyse customer behaviour is the golden goose of online retailing - and one that keeps on laying. When someone buys from you online you know who they are, their name, address, email address, what they bought and when. This level of intelligence is much more difficult to gather from store customers and should be used to present the customer with relevant offers and product information that will then bring them back to your business, either online or in-store. It also provides you with the vital feedback you need to develop the business.

2010 will doubtless see more retail failures, but these will not include retailers who understand and act upon the opportunities that the internet presents to them. Internet retailing currently accounts for less than 20% of all retail spending in the UK, but by 2020 it is expected that the internet will influence over 90% of all retail purchases. It is the agile retailers who will be the success stories over the coming few years.

Pre-register your interest here

Sitemakers Ltd presents the LiquidShop Successful Ecommerce Award. The prize for the winner is an ecommerce website backed-up by support for a full 12 months to help make the venture a success. The winner will be an entrepreneur or business that can demonstrate to the judges that their ecommerce business idea has the most potential for success.

The competition is sponsored by leading names in the ecommerce world, including Sitemakers, Sage Pay, and IMRG. The competition is also supported by Ecommerce Expo, with the winner being announced at the Ecommerce Expo North event at Manchester United Football Stadium on 27 May 2010.

The prize includes the LiquidShop ecommerce platform and website design, hosting and on-going support from Sitemakers for 12 months, Sage Pay payment card services for 12 months (up to 5,000 transactions), ISIS (Internet Shopping is Safe) and IDIS (Internet Delivery is Safe) accreditation from IMRG for 12 months.

If you are running a fledgling ecommerce business or looking to start something new and believe you have what it takes to be successful then this competition is for you. We are looking for strong commercial ideas backed by a robust business plan.

The LiquidShop Successful Ecommerce Award is sponsored and supported by:

If you think you have what it takes and would like to enter then complete the form at the below link. The application packs will be released shortly and you will be notified as soon as they are available.

LiquidShop Successful Ecommerce Award

Launching an ecommerce website is only the start of building a successful online business. You must consider how people will find your online store and how this differs from a physical store. One important distinction is that when people shop online they tend to be searching rather than browsing. This means they often have something clearly in mind that they are looking to buy. If you want your online store to be one of their options then you need to make sure your website is easy to find. There are many ways to achieve this, but outlined below are some of the key methods you should consider.

There are two marketing techniques that will be familiar to anyone who has ever worked with a web developer; search engine optimisation, and pay-per-click advertising. They are often the mainstay of website promotion, and in many cases the only promotion that is carried out to bring customers to an online store. We will come back to these in more detail as they merit more explanation, but firstly there are many other, often overlooked but effective, techniques for promoting an ecommerce website that do not involve search engines.

Email newsletters

When someone buys from your website you know their name, email address, what they bought, when they bought it and how often they buy from you. This is much more information than you would normally gather from an in-store transaction, and can be used to promote relevant offers back to existing online customers. Email is relatively inexpensive and by sending timely and interesting offers to customers you will keep them coming back to your website to buy from you. Depending on your products and the frequency of purchase it may be appropriate to send a weekly, monthly or quarterly email. You should use software that manages subscriber lists and allows recipients to unsubscribe if they wish.

Printed catalogues

One of the weaknesses of an online store is that it is waiting to be found. Unlike a high street store with a physical presence you need to work much harder to attract attention. Printed mailers that land on the doormat and highlight product offers and remind customers of the website's presence are very effective in generating a repeat purchase.

Customer reviews

A system within your website that allows customers to review your service and products is a good way to build confidence among new shoppers. If you have a nationally known brand then maybe this is less important - but if you are less well known then the positive experiences of existing customers can be a strong influence.

Advertising banners

When someone enters your physical store you don't abandon them at the door - you use signage to direct them to departments or to products that you wish to highlight. Exactly the same should happen within your ecommerce website using clickable banners that direct visitors to relevant offers and seasonal products.

Social networking

There has been huge growth in online social networks, and just as word-of-mouth recommendation spreads offline, it spreads so much faster online. As a technique it is not an easy marketing option, and you need to be careful that promotion of this type is not seen as a cynical ploy and therefore counter-productive.

Price comparison websites

There are some well-know price comparison services that you can use such has Kelkoo and Pricerunner. By their very nature, the focus of these services is on price, and they appeal to a consumer looking for a bargain. If you are the cheapest online then these can work well for you; if you are not then the results can be less satisfying.

There are many more options for website marketing your website, but let's return to search engine promotion in more detail, and the techniques that can build visibility and bring customers into your ecommerce website.

Search engine optimisation

Search engine optimisation (SEO), describes the techniques used to encourage search engines to rank your website highly for your chosen keywords. For this example we will use Google as it accounts for around 70-80% of all search engine queries. SEO delivers what are referred to as natural or organic results within search engine listings. These are the websites that feature in the main part of the results page, sometimes below a tinted panel containing sponsored links. Google decides where web pages will be positioned within the natural results, and it aims to put the most relevant results at the top of the list. Nobody pays for their website to be featured within the natural search results, but there are techniques that you can use to influence your positions. Google looks for relevance, and therefore the more closely matched your website is to your chosen keywords, then the more likely you are to gain good positions.

There are three main elements of search engine optimisation that influence your positions; the coding of the website, website content, and external links.

The coding of the website

Search engines read billions of web pages every day, and the easier you make it for them to read information within you site, then the more of that content will be read and filtered through into the search engine database. A website that is coded to comply with modern standards and meets accessibility guidelines is one that makes it easy for the search engines to read, and is likely to perform better as a result. Information about website coding standards and simple tests to assess your own website are available at www.w3.org. A lot of the work in this area of SEO should be carried out by your ecommerce provider and it is good practice to comply with web standards both for search engine performance and for the usability of your site by customers. There is also what is called ‘meta data' that should be present within the code of your website. This includes page titles, keywords and text attached to links and images.

Website content

Whereas you may not be confident working on the code of your website, one area where you can have a significant influence on natural search engine performance is the text content of your website. Search engines read words, and so the words you use within your web pages will have a profound effect on your search engine positions. Customers use keywords typed into a search engine to find relevant websites; if the content of your website matches the words being used in the search then this increases your chance of being found. Choosing keywords is often a case of listening to customers - how do they describe your products. Use these words to describe products within your website. A good ecommerce system should also allow you to add additional keywords to a product page, so that you can include mis-spellings and slang words without having to show them on the visible page of the website. There are many theories about how keywords should be used within the pages of a website in order to optimise search engine performance but, in essence, using the most popular and accurate phrases to describe your products is likely to result in a good performance

External links

The third key element of developing strong natural search engine results is building a network of inward pointing links to your website. There are many good directory websites where links are either free or available for a modest fee. The search engines view inward-pointing links as a vote for the popularity of your website they can have a significant effect on search positions.

It is important for any ecommerce website to have a strong search engine optimisation strategy. Work should be carried out regularly on the website and results should be constantly measured to assess the effects. This process should be continuous in order to build strong natural search positions over a period of time.

Pay per click advertising

One of the weaknesses of search engine optimisation is that it cannot be guaranteed to deliver results. For this reason it cannot be relied upon as your only search engine strategy. Pay-per-click advertising helps to cover this weakness.

Pay per click advertising (PPC) is a form of advertising that delivers links to your website within the sponsored links section of the search results. These appear down the right hand side of the Google results page, and sometimes across the top of the page as well.

The main features of PPC are that you choose your keywords, and you choose the wording for the adverts that appear when your keyword is searched on. The more you are prepared to pay, then the higher your advert appears in the listing. When someone clicks on your advert then a sum of money is deducted from your account with Google. The exact amount that is deducted is dependent on the value of other bids received for that keyword, so even if you submit a very high bid, you will not pay much more than the second highest bidder at any time. PPC is effectively a constant auction between advertisers. Advertisers who are most successful are those you choose their keywords very carefully to make sure they are targeted towards buyers, and specific to the products they sell. They ensure that their advert wording is accurate and honest so as only to attract genuine buyers, and they manage their PPC accounts carefully to ensure that each advert is converting visitors into customers, and not simply wasting money with visitors coming into the site and not buying.

The internet is going to continue to be an area of significant retail sales growth over the next few years and the ecommerce businesses that will be successful are those with an effective and easy-to-use website, a clear understanding of their customers needs, excellent service combined with effective marketing to develop new business and breed customer loyalty.

Product Images

Create a consistent style for all your products images, make sure that all photographs are large, clear and, where possible, include multiple images for each product. Your ecommerce system should help you to optimise the image sizes and formats, and you should focus on creating images to help the customer make a decision to buy. Plenty of detail shots showing specific features of the product can be a key factor in encouraging a sale.

Wording

Make sure that all product wording is clear and informative. Use multiple tabs so that customers can click through to more information and specifications if they want, and make sure that all text includes the keywords and phrases that a customer would use to search for your products; this helps with search engine optimisation. Ensure that you have plenty of supporting information pages; about your business, terms and conditions and clear delivery options and costs. Most customers will not be speaking to you, so make sure all of their questions can be answered through the pages of your website.

Product categories and search

Customers will often have searched to find your website, and the majority will want to search within your site to get to the product they are looking for. Does your site have a prominent search box and does it work effectively? Have you tried using it yourself to find out? By sorting your products into usable and logical categories you will be improving your chance of a visitor finding what they want to buy. If your ecommerce site does not have an effective or well structured search you will be losing sales.

Promotional Banners

Just as you would expect to see promotional signage within a physical store, you should make sure that your online customers have the signposting to help them find special offers and new products. Banners should be created to highlight these deals to encourage sales for the products that are high in stock or particularly profitable and popular. You should be able to manage these banners via your content management system meaning the website can be kept up to date with fresh offers each week, month or season.

One final tip; the content of your ecommerce website is never finished and needs reviewing every day to make sure you are maximising your opportunity to make sales.

What does this mean to retailers?  A blurring of the edges when it comes to ecommerce and high street retailing. However, it is becoming clear that you need to be online with ecommerce to support a retail presence on the high street.  Adapting to being a multi-channel retailer is not as difficult as it seems, there are plenty of existing models that are working well; so where do you begin?  Here is a simple  1-2-3 checklist to get you started :

1. Review your existing website to make sure your content up to date.
2. Check to ensure that the home page and the product buying process to the checkout is smartphone friendly – How to do this? Someone you know will have an Android or i-phone and would welcome the chance to show what they can do.
3. Look at your customer base and see if the age range and status is already smart phone friendly  -  then see if your current marketing matches the places they will be looking at.

The competition was sponsored by leading names in the ecommerce world, including Sitemakers, Sage Pay, and IMRG. The competition was also supported by Ecommerce Expo, with the winner, Fashion Capital, announced at the Ecommerce Expo North event at Manchester United FC Old Trafford on 27th May.

The Award was presented to Emily Tullet, fashioncapital.co.uk Manager, by Managing Director of Sitemakers Ltd, Nick Pratt. The prize includes the LiquidShop ecommerce platform and full website design, hosting and on-going support from Sitemakers for 12 months, Sage Pay payment card services, ISIS and IDIS (Internet Delivery is Safe) accreditation from IMRG. The total value of the prize is approaching £20,000.
There was a shortlist of strong entries for the Award, and the judges, including Sitemakers, Sage Pay, IMRG and high street retailer Tripp, had a challenge to pick out the eventual winner. Fashion Capital was selected because of a clear business case they made for an ecommerce website to help promote clothing produced by emerging fashion designers. Fashion Capital is a not-for-profit organisation established to nurture fashion design talent in the UK. They provide mentoring and practical help to their members including access to wholesale sales channels, a UK based manufacturing facility and a small chain of retail boutiques. The missing element is ecommerce, and their clear proposals for introducing this retail channel caught the imagination of the judges.

We now begin the task of working closely with Fashion Capital to help them create a successful online retail website for the benefit of their fashion designers.

This is where Sitemakers can help. We can provide a free, 30-point assessment of your existing ecommerce website, together with help and advice to make improvements.

Here are a few pointers to get you started:

1. Does the homepage of your site clearly reflect the products and services you offer?
2. Have you helped visitors by giving clear navigation to guide them to popular sections?
3. Do you show your payment partner, trade association membership and other accreditation logos on homepage?
4. Are your product pages clear, with good quality images and simple navigation to select options?
5. Can a visitor always see the shopping basket on every page with the current value of purchases?
6. Are you making visitor aware of any delivery costs and adding them to the basket as well?
7. Do you keep the customer informed of progress of their order by email at each stage?
8. Are your sale and other special offers up to date on the site?
9. Do you clearly show on the website the contact numbers and times that customer service is available ?
10. Have you written clear and comprehensive product descriptions?

If you would like to take advantage of our free, no-obligation ecommerce website appraisal service just go to our appraisal request webpage.

We choose partners that have a clear role to play in enhancing the online shopping experience.

PayPal Card Payment Services

One recent addition is PayPal, now available as a payment option within LiquidShop websites.

Using PayPal's Express Checkout customers can pay easily, quickly and securely in as few as three clicks, they don't even need a PayPal account to pay you. Express Checkout is available as an addition to your existing checkout solution.

Here is some recent research published by PayPal:

• 1 in 3 UK internet shoppers cite PayPal as their preferred way to pay online.
• PayPal's Express Checkout has a conversion rate of 77% meaning merchants can convert more browsers in to buyers
• PayPal is proven to increase merchants' online sales by an average of 14%

To find out more about getting started with PayPal contact Sitemakers.

SpinMe 360° Images

Sitemakers is always looking for services that improve conversion rates for our clients' websites. We have looked at a number of 3D and aminated imaging systems and have recently evaluated the SpinMe offer. SpinMe provides 360 degree product photography. They can photograph products for you in their own studios or setup a studio for you including the supply of hardware, software, training and support.

Not only are the finished SpinMe animations of a high quality and easy to use, but the flexibility of the SpinMe offer allows for the introduction of a few initial test images at low cost. More details of this service are on our partners page.

Contact Sitemakers for more information.

Seasoned online consumers will know what they expect to see and if the website does not deliver rapid progress to a product, price and enough detail to make a purchase they will be away to another site that does the job better.

The features that define the success of an ecommerce website are becoming more subtle and less obvious to the visiting consumer. By using the trail of data that is created every time someone comes to your website you can deliver a more tailored experience for their subsequent visits.  Intelligent use of this data will enhance the consumer experience, and lead to increased sales conversion. Good ecommerce platforms have inbuilt routines to personalise the customer experience, including the email follow-up of abandoned baskets – which can recover around 10% of potentially lost sales.

Here are some tips for ecommerce website owners just back and refreshed from the summer holidays;

• Take some time to understand and review your existing website data – are you making the most of the knowledge you gather?
• Check that you are using all the options in your existing ecommerce platform in order to improve the customer experience
• Take a look at your main competitors’ websites - benchmark your site against them (remember, your potential customers may well be visiting their sites as well)
• If you are falling behind and you do not have the options to improve within your current systems, it’s time to review your ecommerce arrangements

LiquidShop powered Pedal Car Shop has achieved greater sales through their ecommerce site by adding the PayPal express checkout to their payment options. In fact almost 50% of customers are now using this method to buy from the site.

The Pedal Car Shop specialises in ride on toys for children and covers a wide range from modern sports cars and current models to retro and classic updated versions of the original pedal cars of the 60's. This means they have a wide audience for their products and shows that Paypal is also used by a wide spectrum of online buyers. PayPal express does not require the buyer to set up a Paypal account so is a very easy and useful addition to any ecommerce site.

With the increasing use of smartphones to browse the Internet, it is also good to know that having searched for purchases on an iPhone or Android powered mobile, with a LiquidShop and PayPal enabled ecommerce such as the Pedal Car Shop site, this can be taken right through to purchase as well.

As the number of channels that retailers use to reach their customers increases, ecommerce continues to dominate this growth, but the ways that consumers are accessing their favourite online retailers is also evolving. The days of internet access being fixed to a static location via a PC are gone and increasingly we are using mobile devices such as Apple's iPhone and other smartphone devices to go online wherever we happen to be.

To own a device that can serve as a phone, laptop, TV, mp3 player and camera and that can also fit in your back pocket is appealing to many people. Now retailers have multiple ways in which to interact with their customers through a device they carry everywhere with them.

In a recent survey by eDigital UK, 30% of smartphone users admit to shopping online at least once a week using their device. In the same survey 28% shop on their smartphones outside of home e.g. during lunch breaks, on transport, etc. As the focus for buying changes from the high street shop to almost anywhere, it is even more important for retailers to get the method of communicating with customers on smartphones correct. The good news is that smartphone users accept that they will be targeted for offers and appear to be ahead of retailers in terms of the control and use of this information as seen from the following.

The Top 5 ecommerce features requested by smartphone users are:

* Alerts for sales and offers
* Easy and fast checkout
* Alerts when new stock is available
* Ability to purchase through an app
* Ability to browse entire range

In order to benefit from this growing population of mobile online customers you will need to make sure your website is smartphone friendly. Many of the major retailers have already taken the plunge into mobile ecommerce and in the past this may have needed a significant budget. However, with the right ecommerce partner it need not be an expensive exercise for smaller independent retailers

With the right approach, and possibly an incentive in the form of a discount voucher, a good proportion of these transactions can be recovered. And a good ecommerce system will help you to manage this procedure.

Sitemakers; the developers of the LiquidShop ecommerce storefront software, are looking to reward another budding etail business with this Autumns LiquidShop Successful Ecommerce Award . Together with supporting sponsors IMRG, PayPal and SagePay, the winner (as judged by an industry panel) will get almost everything they need to setup and run an ecommerce operation for a full year. The award is open for applications now until the end of September and can be obtained by registering at www.sitemakers.co.uk/success.

The winner will follow in the footsteps of the original LiquidShop Successful Ecommerce Awarded winners, FashionCapital, who demonstrated to the judges an innovative and appropriate plan for a new ecommerce business. The FashionCapital ecommerce site will be launched soon and will complement the fashion portal site that FashionCapital already runs.

For further details, how to apply or background information contact:

Ray Buckler - Sitemakers ltd

main switchboard: 020 7099 1002 option 2

email: ray.buckler@sitemakers.co.uk

The competition was sponsored by leading names in the ecommerce world, including Sitemakers, Sage Pay, PayPal and IMRG. The competition was also supported by Ecommerce Expo, with the winner, Chocolat at Home announced at the Ecommerce Expo - excellence awards evening in London on the first night of the exhibition.

The Award was presented to Paul Vine, representing the Chocolat at Home company, by Managing Director of Sitemakers Ltd, Nick Pratt. The prize includes the LiquidShop ecommerce platform and full website design, hosting and on-going support from Sitemakers for 12 months, Sage Pay payment card services, PayPal express checkout plus the ISIS and IDIS (Internet Delivery is Safe) accreditation from IMRG. The total value of the prize is approaching £20,000.

From the responses we had The Chocolate at Home proposal stood out as both the most professional response to our entry requirements  and a fascinating new business idea.  The company is a new venture and combines the talents of Kristel Boelaert  a Belgium chocolatier and Paul Vine  who  has spent  a number of years in senior marketing roles.

We now begin the task of working closely with the Chocolat at Home team to help them create a successful online retail website for the food and confectionery sector as soon as possible.

When we get to this point in the year, our minds turn to Christmas and the exchange of gifts between family and friends.

Over the last few years we have seen a massive rise in shopping through the internet; total online retail sales for 2010 are expected to approach £60 Billion. You can now purchase almost anything quickly and easily from the comfort of your home. However, there is one element of the process that cannot be completed with the click of the mouse. That is the physical delivery of the goods you buy, and without a reliable service all of your time and effort to make the selection and complete the purchase will be wasted. As all good online retailers know - the transaction is not complete until the package arrives successfully with the recipient.

The ability to increase despatch volumes without compromising on accurate and timely delivery is essential to keeping customers happy. Unless you are running your own fleet of vans nationwide, you will be entrusting your customer satisfaction to a third-party carrier. There are a number of things you can do to maximise the benefits of this:

1. Make sure you have the latest delivery times and Christmas deadlines from your carrier and post them onto your website - this will ensure your customers are aware of the latest order date before they place an order.
2. Have you any items that could be shipped direct from the supplier. This could save space in your stockroom and time to get the order out.
3. Consider using a fulfilment service as a means of coping with overflow and/ or saving on additional capital investment costs.

Fulfilment is a service that will arrange the warehousing and delivery operation of your company's products. It is often overlooked as a viable option but has a number of benefits for a growing retailer.

• It can be used to cover seasonal peaks in business without the need for initial investment in extra warehousing space or staff.
• If you are running both a website and high street stores fulfilment can be a cost-effective way of treating the ecommerce shop as another physical location, without the overheads usually required to run your own operation.
• As your fulfilment company will often be using a number of different carriers, this gives you access to the best delivery rates for across a wide range of products and delivery options.
• You will have the opportunity to take some time off from handling the dispatches and even take a break, knowing that the web orders will continue to be processed and delivered.

Sitemakers has existing clients that use third-party fulfilment to great effect and advantage. Netpack is a Sitemakers Partner and has a range of services that can help retailers with their logistics requirements, including warehousing, pick, pack and despatch, and even handling customer service. You can find more details on our Partners page and, of course, the LiquidShop system works seamlessly with Netpack's own systems.

The ecommerce idea is the brainchild of Dr. Kristel Bolaert, a child health specialist from Belgium with a keen amateur interest in artisanal chocolate and pralines.

Her original business model envisaged the development of a line of speciality pralines sold through shops and via the internet.  However, it soon became clear that the labour-intensive nature of praline making made profitable production an unrealistic goal, even at a premium price. The directors examined a number of alternative to boxed pralines from which the idea of an ecommerce site selling quality ingredients and chocolate-making equipment to enthusiastic amateurs eventually emerged.

Chocolat at Home are the winners of the latest LiquidShop Successful Ecommerce competition: The prize was announced by Sitemakers Managing Director Nick Pratt at the recent Ecommerce Expo Awards evening in October this year.

The site is now marketing chocolate making kits and supplies together with a great tasting range of quality Belgium chocolate beads and fillings enabling you to become a chocolatier in your own home. Who can resist chocolate? Add to this a number of studies from universities such as Harvard and Glasgow confirming various health benefits and you have a treat that may also help to tackle high blood pressure, stress and a number of other conditions.

We have been working with the Chocolat at Home team over the last six weeks to place their winning ecommerce designs and ideas into the LiquidShop ecommerce platform, the results of these efforts are now live on the web. We wish Paul & Kristel every success in their new venture.

Here are some season and monthly based tips for your ecommerce operation for 2011

January - Now is the time to make sure your pre-Christmas promotions are removed from your ecommerce website, and to contact your new and existing customers about special offers and to remind them about consumable items relating to their December gifts and purchases. If you have a ‘tell a friend' function on your ecommerce site, think about re-skinning the name to ‘what I would like for Valentine's Day' generating a wish-list that can be emailed a partner, with links back into the website.

February - Look at offline promotions that you are running and see how you can match these with online equivalents. Keep an eye on major news stories to see if you can create a related search term that is relevant to your products. Maybe even create a specific landing page to bring visitors directly to products relating to the story. Mother's Day will soon be here; have you any gift products that are suitable? Remember, people will be frantically searching the web to be inspired, so be there to help.

March - Time to look at your ecommerce website administration? Are you really sure you know how to use the all of the selling features? A good ecommerce platform will be updating its features at regular intervals to keep pace with the fast-developing marketplace. Don't just use what you have used in the past, have a look and see what other features are right for your business. If your ecommerce platform has not updated during the past year, maybe it's time to look for an alternative.

April - Longer days and warmer weather, we hope! Time to refresh your website. Getting visitors to buy online is a combination of many factors, including; good online and offline marketing, compelling website design and functionality, competitive prices and great customer service. These are all part of a good retailer's skills. Also check out your competitors and strive to beat the online retail websites you think are better than yours.

May - By now a wide range of smartphones will be in even more consumers' pockets and, increasingly, they will be using these devices whilst out-and-about to help them make retail buying decisions. Is your ecommerce website smartphone-friendly, and can customers buy items from your website using them?

June - There is always a good reason to look at your ecommerce website's statistics. Google Analytics is a free service and provides a clear analysis of the visitor traffic to your site - from this you can view key indicators that will tell you honestly how your site is performing. For example, you can see the sources of your visitor traffic, entry and exit pages and conversion rates (the proportion of visitors that become customers). All of this data can be used for benchmarking and setting targets for improved performance.

July - How often do you review your product range? Remember to remove obsolete product information from your ecommerce website so that everything that a visitor views is available. Time for a summer newsletter? Before you create and send a topical and interesting newsletter you must review your database of recipients. Have you merged all the email addresses from your emails, offline communications and any in-store forms and applications? If you are not using every opportunity to collect email address from all customers and visitors to your website and high street stores then you are missing out on some very cost effective marketing. A good email marketing system will automate many of these functions and ensure that you only send to those people who have opted to receive your marketing communication.

August - How does your website look on your customer's favourite browser and operating system? Whether it's Firefox, Explorer, Chrome or Safari, Microsoft or Apple - your visitors will be accessing your website from all sorts of browsers and platforms and you need to be sure yours works on the most popular ones. If you have taken our June advice and looked at your statistics, then you will know which browsers and operating systems your website visitors are using.

September - Are you using pay-per-click advertising to bring visitors and sales to your website? If not then you can get started in time for the Christmas rush using Google AdWords. The best advice is to find a partner who can help you to select suitable key words, manage budgets and plan campaigns for you. Running effective, cost-effective pay-per-click advertising campaigns requires skill and experience, but when managed professionally they can be a very effective way to secure new customers for your business.

October - You should have your Christmas campaigns ready by now; a seasonal theme for your website, product ranges, prices, promotions and draft newsletters all ready. If you have physical stores as well as an ecommerce website then use the multichannel advantages to their full to attract customers, giving them the option to browse either in store on online and then buy from which ever channel is most convenient for them. Matching price offers across channels is the best way to maximise this benefit and is most likely to develop customer loyalty.

November -If managing warehousing and despatch is becoming a problem as sales grow then consider using the services of a fulfilment house. This may be more cost-effective than renting warehouse, staff and other overheads, especially where rates of growth are unpredictable. Another option for fulfilment is to arrange for suppliers to ship goods direct to your customers. For this to work you need to make sure you have tried & tested relationships with your suppliers in advance of busy periods.

December - Don't forget to publish your customer service opening hours for the holiday period, and the last order dates for pre-Christmas delivery. Also ensure you have adequate staff cover to manage website orders, deliveries and customer calls. Plan for the post-Christmas sales period, starting on Christmas Day as it is now established as one of the busiest online shopping days in the calendar.

The massive growth of online retailing to almost £60bn in 2010, and equating to around 20% of all retail spending, has been very much at the centre of these developments. Its increasing influence over the past 10 years has impacted on every aspect of retail business operations.

One clear example of this change centres on when people choose to browse and shop. Back in the days before Sunday shop opening was introduced it was argued by many that the shops were open for enough hours, and people were largely happy to fit their buying around the core daytime hours of Monday to Saturday; the times when most shops were already open.

Well, of course we all know now that there is huge demand for Sunday opening and, for many, it is the best day of the week to get out and indulge in a little retail therapy.

A study of online consumer buying behaviour gives us the opportunity to truly see when people choose to shop when there are no restricted opening hours. Online shops are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and there are no travelling or parking constraints. Shopping online takes only the time you are within the web shop itself.

So, when we have the choice go shopping at any time that suits us, when do we go? The image below shows the spread of visits to a typical retail website. This graph has been generated by taking data for a number of retail websites operating across different retail sectors, so it provides a good indication of overall patterns.

The graph clearly shows that a large proportion of online shopping takes place outside of conventional shop opening hours. These are the times during the day when we have a few minutes spare to browse and to buy. You can see that there is a steady build-up of activity during the morning, peaking at noon, it then drops away a little and then builds again to later in the afternoon. The biggest peak is at 9:00 o'clock in the evening, long after most of the high street doors are locked and shuttered, but a time when many of us can unwind and browse the online shops.

So, with 20% of retail sales taking place online, and much of this spending outside of high street opening hours, online retail must be positioned firmly at the heart of every retailer's strategy for growth.

There is a lot of talk about ‘cloud computing' at the moment, suggesting that it is something new that we all need to start using. Well, for many of you reading this article - you are already using at least one cloud-based service - LiquidShop. Put simply, a hosted, web-based service is cloud computing and the benefits are clear. Reduced capital costs, a fully managed and maintained service, and access to regular system updates. Why would you want to ever buy software again when these are the benefits of the alternative?

The retail trade is about to enter its next major buying period and Sitemakers will be attending some of the major retail trade shows in June and July to provide seminars and advice to retailers on the subject of online and multichannel retailing. One thing that we discuss is the need to have access to timely data on stock and sales whenever and wherever it is needed. Using hosted services means that a retailer can access all of the relevant trading information at any time and be able to keep track of the business even when out at trade shows seeking next season's new and exciting products.

All this is part of making sure your business is fit, agile and responsive in order to stay ahead of the competition.

Somerset will receive a multi-million pound package, part of the Government’s £530m fund earmarked to support the roll-out of superfast broadband to areas that the market alone will not reach, adding to the existing superfast broadband pilots.

“This is great news for people in these areas,” said Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. “Other councils will soon have the chance to bid for a nationwide funding programme as part of our plan for virtually every community in the UK to have access to superfast broadband.”

Sitemakers have been supporting the bid for this grant and congratulate the team at Connecting Somerset that put forward  such a compelling proposal.  As well as supporting the creative industries in the county, this means that almost any business can be part of the online revolution and does not have to be located in a city  to get access to the digital world  as the same high speeds that urban areas already enjoy.

Sitemakers are often asked to review ecommerce websites for retailers and we find that well over 50% of these appraisals show a site that has not changed for a significant period of time. We are in the era of knowledgeable and impatient online consumers and they can be even more critical of ecommerce websites than our own reviewers. Customers will rapidly decide how good a website looks, feels and navigates but, just as importantly, they will expect it to offer all of the key features they are used to seeing on other websites when searching and buying from the Internet.

If your website has not been updated or improved during the past few months the chances are it will be missing some of these key new features and it may also limit access to the growing market of smartphone and tablet computer users.

Have you tested your site to see if it works on the iPhone and Android based smartphones? Over 10 million people in the UK made retail purchases online via their mobiles in 2010. In addition, the most popular web browsers - Firefox and Internet Explorer, have had major updates recently. This means that even if you are still viewing your ecommerce site on last year's version of a web browser many of your ecommerce visitors will be accessing web pages on this year's shiny new version. And it is vital that it works properly for them.

The popular phrase "the only constant is Change" is so true about modern technology with its compelling drive for faster, better, easier. Don't be left behind in this process and if you do not have the time or inclination to tackle this yourself, then get a member of  staff or a trusted supplier to take this on for you.

Where possible, you need to set aside a time each day when you review the homepage of your site, the most popular and visible products and sections and tune (not tinker) with the content based on your retailer expertise coupled with looking at your sales and site statistics.  Of course this means that you must have the ability to make these adjustments immediately – most good ecommerce systems will have a content administration (usually called a CMS) that gives you the ability to amend preview and enact changes instantly. If this is not the case and any amendments to your website require a third party or supplier to take your instructions with a turnaround time that is not under your control, then it’s time to look for a replacement.

Pages viewed

This data will give you the most popular parts of the site, the most frequent sequence of pages viewed by visitors, the benefits of this are fairly obvious, take a look at the pages and see why they have this attraction and see if this can be replicated in other parts of your site. But as well as this take some time investigating the least viewed pages as well: why are visitors not using them? Are they just supporting information and about us pages, which is not a problem, but if they contain items you want to market and sell, you need to find out why they are not doing the job.

Visitors

A lot of answers to your target market are in these stats. Who is visiting? How long are they spending on the site? How often do they come back? - you can use this information to tune your marketing and better understand your audience, you can also create a benchmark to see whether the changes you make are having a positive effect on your visitor numbers.

Keywords

The stats will also identify the words and phrases used in the search engine that brought the visitor to your site. Are they what you expect? Or are the words used by visitors in some way different? This intelligence should be fed back into the site by using your customer keywords, where appropriate, plus any Google Adword (Pay Per Click) campaigns you may be using.

Systems

The operating systems used by visitors is also a useful benchmark of the lifestyles of your target market, are many using mobiles to access your site, is this what you would expect, does your site handle mobile, right through to checkout? If not, it is certainly time to review your site as there is a increasing move across to mobile access to the Internet by consumers.

Basket abandonment

Do not let the premature exit by visitors before they have made a purchase spoil your day. In a number of cases they will have gone as far as leaving email addresses, which provides you with the ability to contact them. In fact most good ecommerce systems have this facility built in to automatically wait for a pre-set time and fire off an email with an encouraging message to come back and complete the purchase - having saved the contents of the shopping basket for them. In most cases the reasons for abandoning the basket are benign, for example; they were midway through the order and the broadband link went off...by the time they got the service re-activated many people have other things to do and do not revisit the site. For this and other reasons they would welcome a friendly email supplying all the information they need to pick up and complete the transaction. Unless you follow up these abandoned links you will never know, in our clients experience 10% or more of visitors emailed in this way came back and made the purchase.

It does not mean having to stand by and watch as their ecommerce site becomes out of date, or having to pay a developer to take on the task and rely on them to give the best advice on the way forward.

Sitemakers understand how busy retailers are and offer a no-commitment, detailed and professional ecommerce site appraisal which covers all the important elements of ecommerce from design to checkout. Not only will we give the site a "full MOT" but will also supply you with recommendations on how any non performing elements can be improved.

Why not apply now and get your review by the end of July? just click here to apply.

Effective support is a vital aspect of many things that we simply take for granted. In some cases, such as the elegant and slender columns of the Millau Viaduct in France, this support is clear to see. The columns carry a busy roadway across a deep and picturesque valley, dramatically reducing journey times whilst adding a positive dimension to the landscape.

But even where support is less visible, it can be just as vital in keeping things running smoothly. Ongoing support is an important part of the LiquidShop service. At Sitemakers we see this as a key aspect in helping to make ecommerce a success for our clients. LiquidShop is an intuitive and easy-to-use ecommerce system, but it has many hundreds of features and offers great flexibility. No user can expect to learn the whole system in a short space of time, and so our commitment to providing ongoing training and support is vital to make sure our users get the most out of their LiquidShop ecommerce website.

New clients receive initial training in the use of the LiquidShop system. This takes place at our Somerset offices, where we have comfortable facilities. LiquidShop training is carried out by support staff, so that clients get to know the people who will be supporting them as they grow their ecommerce business. Support is available as required on an on-going basis. Our view is that users who are well versed in the LiquidShop system will make full use of the features and will therefore have a more successful ecommerce website. Our support staff are available via telephone and email during normal working hours, and a support ticket system operates outside of these times

In addition there is the need to be aware of trends and keep up the search for new products. And for many there is now the added dimension that comes with the operation of an ecommerce website. With over 20% of ALL UK retail sales happening on the iIternet and 10 million consumers already making transactions on a mobile, smartphone or tablet, the need to keep your ecommerce storefront updated is relentless.

Review and refine

Sitemakers are often asked to review ecommerce websites for retailers and we find that well over 50% of these appraisals show that the site has not changed for over a year. We are in the era of web savvy consumers and they are often even more critical of ecommerce websites than our reviewing team. The canny buying public will decide rapidly how good a website looks, feels and navigates but, more important than this, they will expect it to work with current features they see on other sites when searching and buying from the Internet.

If your website has not been updated or improved since last year the chances are it will be missing key new features and may be limiting access to the growing market of smartphone and tablet users; have you tested your site to see if it works on the iPhone and Android based smartphones? Over 10 million people bought retail items online via their mobiles in 2010.

On top of this, the popular web browsers have had major updates recently so both Firefox and Internet Explorer, to name just two, will be looking at website code in a significantly different way from last year. This means that even if you are still viewing your ecommerce site on last year’s version of a web browser, many of your ecommerce visitors will be accessing web pages on this year’s shiny new version, so it is important that it works for them as well.

Keeping up with change

It’s one thing to have the latest products and prices on your ecommerce website along with the latest display features to show them off. However, unless you have processes in place to review, change and market these products on a daily basis, you may not achieve the sales you need from the site.

Now that we have reached 20% of all UK retail sales happening on the Internet, there is no excuse for leaving your ecommerce website to run itself. Just as you would always have a staff member in a retail high street store, the same applies for online.

Yes, there is some clever coding embedded in good ecommerce sites that will take away the repetition of tasks such as deciding that to do when a product runs out of stock, but this does not replace an individual retailer’s knowledge and experience to just know what works and why.

Where possible, you need to set aside time each day when you review the homepage of your site, the most popular and visible products and sections, and tune the content based on your retailer expertise coupled with looking at your sales and site statistics. Of course this means that you must have the ability to make these adjustments immediately. Good ecommerce platforms will have a content management system (CMS) that gives you the ability to amend, preview and enact changes instantly. If this is not the case, and amendments to your website require a third party supplier and a turnaround time that is not under your control, then it’s time to look for a replacement !

Sitemakers can carry out an extensive and confidential ecommerce website review for your existing site,  click here for more details

Love Local brings together a wide range of handmade products from designers and producers, all searchable by location. Starting with suppliers in the south west of England, the plan is to expand the service across the UK.

The main sponsor of the LiquidShop Successful Ecommerce Award is Sitemakers Ltd, a leading UK supplier of software and services to online retailers. The Award is also sponsored by PayPal,  online retail trade body IMRG, and the organisers of Ecommerce Expo, UBM.

The Award is given to a business that demonstrates their ecommerce business idea has the most potential for success.The judges are looking for strong commercial ideas backed by a robust business plan.

The LiquidShop Successful Ecommerce Award is more than just a plaque to hang on the wall; the winner receives substantial practical and financial assistance for a full 12 months to help them establish their business. This includes the LiquidShop ecommerce platform, website design, hosting and ongoing support from Sitemakers, PayPal Express for 12 months, and associate membership and accreditation from IMRG. The total value of the award is in excess of £20,000.

Speaking after the award ceremony, Managing Director of Sitemakers, Nick Pratt said, “The LiquidShop Successful Ecommerce Award is unique in that it helps new online retail businesses that are just starting out. It is not simply rewarding past success but aims to encourage new entrepreneurs and new ideas with practical help and support.” He continued, “We are delighted that Love Local has won, and we have already launched their new website at www.love-local.com

Online retail is responsible for almost all of the current growth in retail sales, while sales in many high street stores are, at best, stagnant. Around 20% of all retail sales are now online.

Independent retailers have much to gain, or lose, depending on their strategy in respect to ecommerce. A good ecommerce website will bring significant rewards, but one that is poorly designed and managed will hold back growth. Ecommerce is a must-have sales channel, and the ability for you to manage the online store effectively is a key aspect of ensuring its success.

The controls that you have in your physical stores need to be replicated online. Price changes, offers, promotions and merchandising must be kept up-to-date, and orders managed daily. A good ecommerce system will give you this day-to-day control of your website in a way that does not require technical knowledge, using a content management system.

A content management system, often shortened to CMS, provides a browser-based backoffice to your ecommerce website so you can control all of the management functions, and this should be at the heart of any good ecommerce platform.

A quality CMS separates the technical aspects of the website from the content, allowing you to add content, upload product pictures, click a couple of tick boxes and, hey presto, your changes and additions are uploaded, polished up with the correct ‘look and feel' of your website and immediately visible on the internet. However, not all content management systems are the equal, content management systems differ considerably in functionality and, importantly, usability. If you currently sell online but don't have an intuitive method of managing your ecommerce website, it's time to ask important questions such as:

How much direct control do you have over your website?
Which elements of content can you manage yourself?
Which elements can't you control?
Do you get automatic alerts for things that need attention?
Do expired offers need to be manually removed?

Key areas that must be within your control are:

• The homepage content
• Products and pricing
• Information pages such as delivery, terms of business etc
• News and events 
• Promotions and offers
• Order management
• Customer records

One thing is for certain, and that is ecommerce is going to continue to be a growth area of retail sales in the foreseeable future. A good ecommerce website is a requirement for all retailers, and choosing one with an intuitive and well-featured content management system will help to set your business apart among your competitors.

*Source IMRG.org. Online retail trade body in the UK

Retail sales are growing by 16% year-on-year, new stores are opening daily, and store owners are investing heavily with the realistic expectation of continued profitable growth into 2013. Is this a retail industry that you recognise?

 It is, in fact, the prevailing view from a part of the retail industry that has managed to grow strongly throughout the recession and during the ongoing economic troubles.

 The woes of high street retailing have been exacerbated by the structural changes taking place within the retail industry as a whole. Consumers are shifting their spending onto the internet at a faster rate than ever before, and in the absence of overall growth, this is having a significant effect on viability of many high street stores. Around 20% of retail spending now takes place online, amounting to around £60bn in 2011.

 Many retailers have already taken the plunge and invested heavily into online retail, with ecommerce websites and supporting service to match.

 As consumers we expect choice and availability – we do not like to wait  - not even for the shops to be open. Analysis of our own ecommerce retail client base shows that the busiest times for their customers to be on their websites, and buying, is in the evening from around 8- 10pm. A time of the day when the vast majority of retail stores are closed for business.

 The growth of mobile internet devices such as smartphones and tablet computers means that consumers are spending more time online, some of that spent researching their retail purchases. If you have an ecommerce website then you can be part of that research and a share of the sales.

 A good quality ecommerce website is the first step to protecting your business for future and providing a sales channel with proven ongoing growth. This is why the next store you open should be online.

• Is your ecommerce website mobile friendly?
• Can you use iPhone, Android, Blackberry or Microsoft mobiles to see your full website?
• How easy is it to actually make a purchase on your website from a smartphone?

Ecommerce continues to develop and the best ecommerce platforms work well when accessed by smartphones. Almost 10% of visits to ecommerce websites are now from smartphones, so check your own website make sure you are not missing out on sales.

Key indicators:

Bounce rate - this is the percentage of visitors that land on the home page and then leave. A high bounce rate indicates that maybe your home page does not engage with visitors, or perhaps your search engine entries may not be matching the goods and services that you supply.

Conversion rates - the ratio of visitors to sales, a very low conversion rate is not good for business and will demand further investigation; below one percent means that 99% of visitors are not finding anything they want to buy. However, a conversion rate of 3 or 4% is reasonable for an online store, especially given how easy it is for customers to browse online and click between different ecommerce sites.

Lost sales (basket abandonment) - If people are spending time to place items in a shopping basket, then they are getting serious about making a purchase. However, if the majority are abandoning the process at this point then you may need to look at perceived barriers, such as hidden delivery costs, that are stopping customers from completing the transaction.

Understanding your ecommerce visitors

Moving on to the visitor perspective, customers want a choice of how to access your online store. Some will prefer to use their desktop or laptop computer at home or work to research and buy, but increasing numbers are recognising the power and versatility of their smartphone to browse and shop online. In order to accommodate these various ways of buying it is important to be able to deliver choices via your website. Consumers are beginning to expect options such as:

• A simple button click to swap between a full web display and a mobile/smartphone friendly version.
• Having multiple (and easy to use) ways to search for items on your website, such as a search text box, refine by brand, price or size, etc..
• Being able to switch between a list of products (search engine results style) and a picture gallery display.
• Not being forced to go through a full new customer setup when buying from you for the first time. Some customers prefer using a ‘guest checkout' that slims down the information required to the minimum needed to complete a transaction.
• A choice of payment service providers will also help conversion, especially if you expect visitors viewing on smartphones, as not all payment providers currently have a working checkout version for iPhone, Android and other mobile systems.

The items above, and many more, should be mainstream options within any good ecommerce system. Your ecommerce supplier should have the knowledge of what works effectively online and provide advice on how to use these options within your website. And with around 50% of UK consumers now shopping extensively online, now is the time to ensure your ecommerce site is as friendly and easy to use as possible to maximise your sales.