As the explosion of blogs on the internet continues to grow – 105 million blogs already in existence with 120,000 new blogs created daily – retailers must realise the importance of having their own corporate blog on the website. It is expected that by 2010 – 70% of all content on the web will be user generated so it is crucial that retailers do not get left behind.

The one to one contact that retailers are able to have with customers is lost in the faceless world of retail websites. Having a blog enables you to project a human voice to your customers and break the formality of the rest of the website. The blog is somewhere you can speak as a human being rather than a company and customers are able to respond and post their own opinions and comments. This helps to build a personal relationship with your customers and you are able to respond and react to their comments, suggestions etc.

Although the idea of customers posting up their own comments and views on products etc is an unsettling concept for some retailers, it is better that consumers have somewhere to do this on your own site rather than elsewhere where the conversation is out of your control and you are unable to respond quickly and effectively.

Another advantage to having a blog is that it will greatly help your SEO strategy. You will be able to write blogs filled with all important keyboards and if you are blogging regularly you will be ensuring your site is full of fresh new content – search engine spiders love websites that are regularly updated.

To find out more about how you can integrate blogging into your e-commerce solution, feel free to contact the experts.

In order for your e-commerce website to be found by users searching in the search engines you must ensure you have an SEO friendly website both structurally and from a content perspective.

Search engines like Google have automated programmes called bots or spiders which crawl a website, indexing pages as they work through the site. When a user types in a query the search engine crawls through its index to find the pages that are most relevant to that query and then brings them up in the Natural Listings.

In order for the spiders to pick up the pages of your site they must be fully optimised for SEO with keyword rich content and a structure that the spiders can easily follow.

Obviously the main objective of e-commerce websites is to sell products, which usually involves having pages with lists of items and little content and therefore little for the spiders to crawl. There are several strategies you can adopt to combat this problem and ensure that the various pages of your site to get indexed by the spiders.

The first strategy you should adopt is to create content rich landing pages which then feed into your individual product pages. These content based landing pages should have keyword friendly links which also feed out into the product pages.

Another method of improving your rankings in the search results is to include pages which focus on ‘selling’ your products, explaining the various qualities and benefits of the products your company has on offer. Like the landing pages, these pages can also be fully optimised with the keywords you want your site to appear for and contain keyword rich links that then link out to the product pages.

The structure of your website is also crucial. Our e-commerce platform MotiveShop™ can create SEO friendly URL’s which will enable the pages of your site to be easily picked up the search engine’s spiders. The software can also dynamically generate keyword rich meta descriptions and page titles – all working to ensure the spiders are finding and indexing the pages of your website.

Product bundling is a very effective e-commerce marketing strategy which allows you to sell a number of products together thus creating additional sales and maximising the potential of your cross selling and up selling opportunities.

Bundling allows the retailer to heavily affect the choices customers make whilst browsing their e-commerce website. Traditionally whilst shopping in stores customers effectively created their own bundles, making their own decisions of what products to buy. Bundles allow the retailer to make this decision for the consumer to ensure an end result that benefits both the customer and seller alike.

Bundles are a much more effective method of persuading customers to make further purchases by highlighting the benefits of buying one product with another. For example, if someone was buying a digital camera they may not think to also buy a case, memory card etc. Bundles quickly highlight that these products compliment each other which along with a discounted total price encourages the customer to make a group purchase

Bundles are easy to change and adapt to suit whatever requirements the retailers has at that time. Enabling vendors to promote different products at different times and maximise the revenue from their online sales.

A good example of our bundles feature in action can be seen on the website of one of our e-commerce clients, Jessops:

www.jessops.com

With e-commerce now fully established - over £40 million spent online last year, it seems 2008 could be the year that m-commerce finally takes off in the UK. With the introduction of new devices such as the iPhone, web usability on the mobile is going to be vastly improved, creating countless opportunities for the retail sector.

More people own a mobile phone than a PC and our mobiles are much more personal to us than our computers. 4,000 texts are sent in the UK every second, highlighting the close relationship consumers have with their mobile device. This makes it an ideal platform for retailers to capture customers.

Most research carried out in m-commerce has highlighted that currently people in the UK use their mobile to research product prices and locations of stores – the challenge for retailers is to convert this research into conversions.

Retailers must ensure they secure consumers trust in their mobile websites reflecting the issues that originally plagued e-commerce in the early days. Guarantees of credit card safety and secure payment methods will ensure consumer confidence in mobile websites and as a result, sales.

The key to success in the m-commerce market is offering consumers a better quality of service than other retailers. Enabling orders made via mobile to be picked up in stores as well as permitting users to stop and restart sessions at their convenience would greatly encourage people to purchase goods using their mobile device. New developments in mobile platforms such as the iPhone are a promising sign that mobile browsing will soon be much easier for consumers. Retailers must ensure their mobile websites are as clean and user-friendly as possible. Unlike web browsing, vertical navigation is a must with focus on text rather than images.

The potential of mobile technology for the retail sector is endless. Many retailers are already using SMS to alert customers of special events and offers and Bluetooth technology could lead to customers receiving sales messages the minute they walk into stores.

To find out more about m-commerce strategies and the increased sales you can expect contact our mobile team

Until recently, there was no easy way to validate that a purchaser on an e-commerce website is indeed the legitimate cardholder. 3D Secure technology was launched to reduce the likelihood of online fraud, by authenticating the cardholder with the card issuer at the time the transaction takes place, thus significantly reducing cardholder disputes and merchant chargeback’s.

3D Secure requires the cardholder to register their card (on the card issuers website) answering a number of security questions. The cardholder then sets up a password and secret phrase which will be used by the card issuer for every online transaction. Once signed up the cardholder uses this personalised password for every online purchase on sites with 3D Secure integration.

This technology is designed to increase consumer confidence in using credit cards online – an issue that is key to commercial success on the internet. However, retailers need to be careful about its integration into a website as not all consumers are yet aware of the technology and therefore if handled incorrectly could actually increase the risk of shopping cart abandonment.

As there has been very little media coverage of the new 3D Secure technology, the average consumer is unaware of its uses, therefore there is work to be done for merchants in creating awareness and highlighting the benefits in order to prevent consumer confusion and shopping cart abandonment.

It may be advisable to add information within the buying process to explain and reassure consumers or perhaps have a link to a page that explains exactly what 3D Secure is and the benefits it presents for people buying products online.

Despite these teething issues, the introduction of this technology is an exciting one and will protect ecommerce merchants from online fraud plus increase consumer confidence in purchasing from sites with 3D secure integration.

3D Secure is predicted to become the industry standard by the end of 2008, providing online consumers with added confidence in sites utilising this technology. We have successfully integrated 3D Secure to e-commerce clients Toner Expert and Red Express, plus we are currently completing work on Jessops.com.

Welcome to the new Motive Technology Ecommerce Blog. We are very excited about the launch of this blog and hope it will be an informative and useful resource as well as showcasing hints and tips for the industry.

We are looking forward to discussing new technologies within the market and sharing ideas with other people interested in the world of ecommerce.