Tag Archives: Electronic commerce

E-commerce secrets: What are you really selling?

Posted on by

what-are-you-really-selling-blogWhat are you selling through your online store? Stationery? Clothing? Art?

Think again. In your customers’ eyes, you’re providing a solution to fill a need, and to feed an emotion.

You’re not selling sweaters, you’re providing warmth and comfort, style, and protection from the cold.

You’re not selling quality wallpaper, you’re bringing beauty to a boring wall, allowing someone to express themselves and helping them create a home.

The key to creating compelling and engaging copy is to understand the problems your product solves and to tap into the emotional connections to it.

When you develop your brand and write content for your online store, don’t think in terms of selling goods. Think about solutions to problems, that’s what you’re really selling.

Want to learn more? My next post is all about nailing those fiddly product descriptions.

Related articles

How to write a press release

Posted on by

newspaper-dress

Have you just set up an online store? Or do you have some great news about your business that just begs for a wider audience? Then how about sending out a press release!

Press releases were originally written for journalists, to get them to write about your news in the popular press. But since the advent of easy online PR distribution channels, the humble press release now has a wider audience and can drive traffic to your retail website.

It’s not difficult to write a press release, but they do have a specific layout, tone and written content, so here’s how to
go about it…

Continue reading →

A guide to email marketing for online stores

Posted on by

guide-to-email-marketing-for-online-storesRunning a successful e-commerce business requires more than fresh web traffic and a groovy online store. You need to start a relationship with your web visitors and customers so they will come back again!

Used properly, email marketing is a key tool in your marketing arsenal. Use it to keep connected to your audience and drive sales by occasionally sending them interesting information and special offers. Be mindful of the SPAM Act before you start though, and read about the requirements here.

There are five important elements to good email marketing:

  1. A permission-based email list
  2. Relevant and valuable content
  3. A professional email marketing service
  4. A well constructed HTML email
  5. A specific landing page

Continue reading →

Tips for online retailers: How to optimise your store for search engines (part one)

Posted on by

Like most people setting up an online store, you probably know you should be optimising for search engines to get more qualified traffic. The trouble is, you may not know where or how to start.

Never fear! we’ve put together this two-part blog post to get you up to speed in no time.

Let’s kick off with a quick refresher on why Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is so important.

SEO is not paid search marketing such as Google AdWords. We will look at that in a separate post. SEO is a bunch of techniques that you can apply to your web presence to help you get into Google search results without paying for advertising. It’s commonly called ‘organic’ search.

Search engines send out ‘robots’ to find your web content and index it so they can refer to it quickly during search queries. Once your content is indexed, the search engine can then list it in the organic search results for the relevant search query. The whole process is very complex and highly automated – it relies 100% on the information the robots can find.

Therefore the ‘trick’ to good SEO is for your content to be easy for the robots to find and highly relevant to the keywords your target audience will use to search.

Luckily for you, your Spiffy Store is already brilliantly formatted and coded to be search engine friendly, but you will still need to use your keywords in the right places, create interesting content, embrace social media and build links to your site to improve your search engine ranking.

We’ve broken four basic SEO principles down into manageable techniques that you can do yourself. In this post we will cover using keywords correctly and creating quality content. Using all four elements will make a real difference to your search engine rankings, pushing your pages further up the results listing towards that coveted first page position.

Continue reading →

Minimize Shipping Costs with the Spiffy Stores Advanced Packing Algorithm

Posted on by

“How do I save money by minimizing my shipping costs?”

That’s a question we hear all too often as our store owners stuggle with the problems of shipping their goods to customers.

Setting your shipping costs is one of the most important aspects to running an online ecommerce business. If you charge too little, then you may lose money on each order and if you charge too much, you may lose sales as customers go elsewhere.

Other Shopping Cart Software Fails to Deliver

As incredible as it sounds, the popular ecommerce software packages available today are of little help, with most offering no more than simple flat-rate shipping schemes. If you find a service offering real-time carrier calculated shipping rates, such as from Australia Post or New Zealand Post, then the chances are that if your customers order more than 20kg of items, they’re out of luck as that’s the maximum weight that you can send using these services.

This means that you could lose customers or risk going out of business because you’re not making enough profit. What’s worse is that you may be losing valuable orders where your customer wants to purchase a large number of items and your shopping cart software says: “Sorry! I don’t know how to handle that many items. It’s all too complicated for me. Please take your business elsewhere.”

Large shipping companies pay $100,000s for software to help them optimize their parcel packing because it saves them money. It’s expensive because it’s a very complicated problem and requires a lot of advanced mathematics to solve.

Spiffy Stores Advanced Packing Algorithm Software Solution

At Spiffy Stores, we’ve solved the packing problem and we’ve added our advanced parcel packing algorithm to all stores at no extra cost. Every Spiffy Stores plan includes real-time carrier calculated shipping rates, and all orders are processed by our advanced packing software.  This means that the cost of shipping every package is minimized, and that means you save money!

Our Advanced Packing Algorithm software is unique to Spiffy Stores and you won’t find it anywhere else. Our range of shipping options is unmatched by any other vendor, and every one of our shipping features is freely available to every store on every plan. Other providers charge extra for basic carrier shipping apps, plugins and add-ons that we provide for free!

There’s simply no competition. Have a look at what the others offer and you’ll see the advantage in choosing to build your business with Spiffy Stores.

Related articles

Google’s “Trusted Stores” E-Commerce Certification Program

Posted on by

Google recently announced a new e-commerce certification program called “Trusted Stores”, where stores that go through an approval process with Google will be allowed to add a “Google Trusted Store” badge to their online store.

Google intends for the trusted store badge to give consumers a boost of confidence when shopping online, and it comes with a $1,000 guarantee to cover the purchase… which should really help to increase sales in your online store when the program is up and running.

The way it works is when a visitor to your online store hovers their mouse over the trusted stores badge, a live “report card” type tooltip will pop up. Easy to understand grades like A+, A, B and C are awarded for quality of service features like customer service and fast or reliable shipping.

Right now it’s just a pilot program with a limited number of retailers, but all Spiffy Stores owners can apply to participate by filling out this form. There’s no guarantee that Google will accept your application… as it’s currently only in Beta, and you’ll need a great history of reliable shipping and great customer service for them to even consider your application.

Learn more by watching Google’s overview video below, or click here to watch it on YouTube.