Tom Lindmeier’s Blog @ MarketPlanB

With average conversion rates running at 2.5%, there’s much work still to be done and plenty of opportunity to improve the shopping experience. I’ve always maintained that this number is very low because most visitors come to your site ready to buy. To put this in perspective, mortar retailers could not possibly survive if only 2.5% of store visitors made a purchase.

Despite well-known study data that shows a trend for the use of preview panes and image blocking, many marketers appear to ignoring the need to design emails that users can see. The following examples are of what appears on a 15” monitor with the preview pane set to occupy 50% of the available screen area (a default setting for most applications). I’ll begin by showing poor uses and end by showing designs that do a great job of getting critical information in the top.

The following checklist that can be used to evaluate your email campaign planning. The list is a result of evaluating the metrics of thousands of emails over the past 7 seven years.

I missed the Google Optimizer webinar: What should I test? but found it on YouTube today. I strongly recommend this to MarketPlanB clients and contacts. It’s an hour long, so you’ll need to do this with lunch

The multi-site business model based on marketing to tight vertical segments. They typically include the product category name in the domain and then take advantage of critical mass to build dozens and sometimes hundreds of niche sites. This concept is apparently alive and well and is still quite promising for entrepreneurs who are seeking opportunity.

Ecommerce marketers typically take a closer look at competitors promotion strategies during the 4th quarter holiday season because aggressive competitors may steal a substantial portion of business with the right offers. This is also true during economic downturns as marketers struggle to achieve revenue targets and are willing to give up margin to maintain market share and move inventory. Some will strive to take advantage of the downturn with the purpose of dealing fatal blows to weaker competitors.

Expo TV is a site that aggregates user-generated product review videos. Its’ a great concept that moves beyond the traditional text-based product reviews. Judging by by the funding they have recently received, investors believe it is very promising.
I recently encountered ExpoTV videos posted on YouTube that caused me to pause and sniff. Although these are genuine user-generated reviews my impression was that they are somewhat disingenuous.

Because of the proliferation of video sharing on the web, you may have considered or deployed video for branding and public relations on your online retail site. But the real payback may come from product demonstrations that are added to your rich media mix. Companies such as Ice.com have reported conversion increases of 40% for products with video presentations.

Do you have a disproportionate reliance on paid search? Paid search is the fast and easy way to quickly ramp up your business but you can quickly reach a ceiling where your ROI is maxed out and efficiency gains are difficult to accomplish. In contrast a natural search program is a slower development process with almost no efficiency ceiling. I have yet to meet anyone in the retail business who believes that their natural search program doesn’t have significant have room for improvement and unlimited potential.

This article is dedicated to all the entrepreneurs who direct the day-to-day projects required to build developing e-commerce businesses.