In this article we are going to have a look at how an online seasonal marketing campaign can help you generate more traffic to your website, gain more customers and then finally how to increase your sales.

With seasonal marketing you need to do the same planning as for any party – birthday party, Xmas party or a New Year’s party. First you need to set a date for when to start your marketing campaign. It is very important to have your December calendar in hand to make sure you start with your seasonal marketing in time! You don’t want to start your campaign after your competitors shops are sold out!

After you’ve decided the date for the birthday party, you should start to look at a theme for the birthday party and what invitations to give out. Now with an online seasonal marketing campaign your “theme and invitations” is your website and social media portals. Have a look at your website. Change the images to holiday images or festive season images like turkeys, presents or a company photo of your staff with Xmas hats on. Remember, images are a great way to draw your audience in and make them want to read more about your seasonal products / propmtions. This is the time to have fun and show your company’s creative side.

As soon as your website is “seasonal friendly” and your planning is up and running, you can start with your online marketing campaign. Firstly you need to do keyword research. It is very important to target the keywords which your market will type in the search box to get to your seasonal product/ promotional. A soon as the client types in the targeted keyword, your Adcopy will appear on the search page. In your ad copy, consider a promotional phrase in your title which will catch the client’s eye. If your campaign is live, don’t just sit back and relax, now you need to optimise and maximise your campaign by optimizing the key phrases and keywords, audit the channels, test contact us forms, test coupon cards, look out for 404 error messages and then make sure that most active pages link to your seasonal promotions.

The sweet taste of success with an online seasonal marketing campaign lies in the conversions! You can track your conversions on Adword and Social Media Marketing. You can see exactly where your client came from and how many convert into a sale!

Then after any party you need to clean up the place. It is very important to change the seasonal images to images relevant to your business and update your content to relevant content. It is very bad for a company’s online reputation if it is the middle of the year and the people still see the old seasonal images on your website!

Happy Marketing!

Today most of us are familiar with online shopping and had bought something online.

Shopping online was simply introduced because people did not want the hassle of driving all the way to the local mall. It’s a cool way to shop and you can look at exactly what you want and compare prices within a matter of minutes instead of shopping all day. You also don’t have to stand in long queues. At the mall there is not a search button which you can press to search for a specific CD, you have to look up and down the shelves for them.

So what is the future of internet shopping now that people are increasingly web-savvy? A recent report, carried out by the British Council of Shopping Centres, discovered that while many British adults expect to spend 40 hours doing Christmas shopping, they could do the same chores online in just 10 hours. By 2015, its forecasted that online sales will account for 11% of total retail spend, and in some sectors such as music and video, Internet spending will be almost 50% of total retail spend by 2015.

This means that there will be much more to buy online and websites will get better at selling it.

More excitingly, retailers will offer shopping on our mobile phones. eBay has already released a service to allow people to browse and buy items on the move. They predict by 2015 the mobile web will rule and smart phones will be the primary enabler of consumer shopping engagements and new technology innovations will generate additional opportunities for retailers and manufacturers. Buying merchandise online from your smartphone will save you time and with PayPal security you’re online shopping through your phone or pc will be safe and your account will be protected.

The world’s biggest bookseller Amazon.com, sold twice as many digital books as it did hard-covers last month and so far this year is has sold three times as many ebooks as it had by this time last year.

Polling company Nielsen Online conducted some research recently; they surveyed 26,312 people in 48 countries. 41% of internet users had bought books online compared to two years ago where only 34% had purchased books online.

Nielsen says more than eight out of ten internet users purchased something in the last three months. That is a 40% increase on two years ago, to about 875 million shoppers.

GLOBAL BOOK BUYERS

1. South Korea – 58%

2. Germany – 55%

3. Austria – 54%

4. Vietnam – 54%

5. Brazil – 51%

6. Egypt – 49%

7. China – 48%

8. India – 46%

9. Taiwan – 45%

10. UK – 45%

Percentage of internet users buying books online. Source: Nielsen

Below is an image which shows the percentage e-commerce sales as a percentage of total sales. You will be surprised to see that most of the sales are through e-commerce.

Gone are the days where people are scared to shop online. The technology of today makes the consumer shopping experience easy, efficient and fun.

Just think of it this way, you don’t need to leave your home to buy groceries, you can compare prices and the Grocery shop will deliver the food at your doorstep.  I will definitely buy more online because it allows you to shop 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.   You will drive less so this means you will safe more money on petrol which means you will have more money to shop online!   Bye – bye shopping malls, Hello E-commerce!!!

For any particle product, the buying process can include one or all of the following steps:

Let’s find out the meaning of these steps:

Step 1: Need or problem.

“I need something”. At some point a person realize a need. It is only once an individual recognizes a problem that she can start looking for a solution. This stage cannot be skipped, and is always the first stage of the process. You need to ask yourself, “How do customers become aware of my product?”

Eg. I need to buy a new bed.

Step 2: Information Search

This is the 2nd stage of the purchase process where an individual now begins to look for solutions to their problems or to the opportunities that they’ve identified. There are often more ways than one to achieve the given objective. People involved in purchase decisions are confronted with information from a variety of source: Consumer reports, salespeople, magazines, family, friends, and local experts.

Role of the Internet in Step 2:

In terms of the internet, it dramatically improves an individual’s ability to find alternatives and information about most of those alternatives. Perform a search for new bed and you’ll be presented with at least 65,700.00 results.

Step 3: Evaluate Alternative

Which one is best for me? This includes not only products within a category, but substitutes as well. The 3rd phase of the process is the Assessment of Alternatives with an eye to reduce risk, and maximize the probability the objective set forth is satisfied. The more complex and costly the possible solutions, the more questions that have to be asked and answered.

Role of the Internet in Step 3:

In terms of internet marketing, potential purchasers will look for recognized brands online, or anything within a website that suggests stability and credibility such as:

a. crests
b. partnerships with recognized brands
c. awards
d. consumer feedback and opinion
e. site quality

Step 4: Purchase

This is the big sale. The client did all the research about the product or service and is happy about the information gathered about it.

Step 4: Evaluate (Post Purchase Behavior)

Did I make a mistake? This conclusion can be reached either on a physical level by testing the product’s efficacy or on a physical level by checking the product’s peer approval.

Role of the Internet in Stage 5:

As said earlier,the internet plays big role in spreading both the brand advocate and brand basher messages. Blogging and micro-blogging (eg. Twitter) make it possible for people to share their experiences with hundreds of others with minimal effort. Purchase of a product can help you with you SMM (Social Media Marketing). People become fans of products and services on Social media platforms Facebook and they also share it with their friends.

Let’s have a quick look at some benefits of online shopping.

1. Convenience: You do not have to wait in a line or wait till the shop assistant is ready to help you with your purchases.
2. Better Prices: Another thing which fascinates me is the cheap deals and better prices I get from online stores because products come to you direct from the manufacturer or seller without middlemen involved.
3. Variety: The choices you can get for products are amazing. One can get several brands and products from different sellers at one place.
4. Comparison of Prices: Online shops make comparison and research of products and prices possible.
5. Crowds: If you are like me, you would like to avoid the crowds when you do the shopping. Especially during Festivals and Special events the crowds can really give a head ache. Crowds force us to do a hurried shopping most of the time.

So, what do you think? I really hope after this week’s blog posts, you will be convinced to buy online!

Let’s take a look at some of the things you can do to make the online shopping experience on your site a pleasant and more importantly a successful one.

Indication of Shopping Process

When you go to a supermarket you are completely aware of the buying process, you walk in, browse around, select your items and place them in your shopping cart before heading to the checkout counter. Many people are reluctant or intimidated by shopping online as they have no clue as to what the purchase process is, I mean I was such a person once upon a time who did not really understand the internet much less Ecommerce. Including a simple outline of the buying process will help your potential customer as they will be confident of their next step. To illustrate my point I have used an example from Amazon below,

Keep the Shopping Cart Visible

It is important that you keep the shopping basket visible and easy to understand for the buyer at all times as it creates a sense of ownership and ensures that they don’t forget about their purchase. Incorporating this on your site also allows the buyer to see how much they are spending. Make sure that the basket is visible no matter which page of the website the buyer visits as it can be frustrating to have to click back to one page all the time to ascertain your selected products and their cost. I have chosen Kalahari .Net as an example to illustrate what information a shopping basket should incorporate.

Simplify the Buying Process

If the buying process on your site is complicated and intricate, chances are that the buyer will abandon the sale altogether and may never visit your site again. Try to make it as easy as possible for them, this is definitely not a place to let your designers get creative and cryptic, rather let it be as obvious as possible. Have a look at the example below from Amazon as to what a simple, obvious checkout should look like,

Ensure Transparency Of The Shipping & Delivery Costs

Most people won’t buy until they know the final cost, make sure that you are upfront about the shipping costs and delivery methods and time. You should offer a few options with regards to delivery method as some people prefer to collect their parcels at a post office within a few working days or next day door to door delivery.

The suggestions above will help enhance your website and also assist you in gaining your potential clients’ trust. I hope that you will implement them on your Ecommerce site.

1. Telephone number on every page

One of the first things I look out for on a website before I make a purchase is a telephone number. Whenever I find one I immediately feel more assured. Even though this doesn’t mean the merchant is credible it allows me to phone him before I make the purchase and make sure I can reach him should anything go wrong.  A physical address on the website, not necessarily on every page, just reinforces trust with a clients.

2. Always have a clear return policy

Clients like me will always look out for this to ensure I can return my purchase if the product turns out to not live up to my expectations, or in the situation where the product is damaged when it arrives. A good return policy helps clients trust your website as this is something merchants they already trust offer.

3. Professionally designed website

Now this is extremely important for me. If a website doesn’t keep up with the current quality of websites today, I’m very wary of making a purchase from them. You need to make sure your website wasn’t last updated in the 1990’s because then I’m not going to buy anything from you. You need to make sure that you keep your site on track. People can see immediately if your site is not professional. They judge your site within the first 3 seconds of opening it just like they judge other people. So make sure you don’t fail this test.

4. Encourage clients to review your products

By offering your clients a discount on their next purchase or something similar you could have them write reviews for your products. Now you do run the risk of getting negative reviews but these are a necessary evil. They will ensure clients that will be put off by certain factors don’t make purchases and return the products causing you endless headaches. These reviews will also show clients that you are reputable and that other customers have made purchases from you.

5. Offer purchase without creating accounts

Now we all want to leverage the clients that we have already obtained but you will find that forcing them to sign up for an account discourages people from buying from you. Ensure you have the option to buy without creating an account.

6. Offer multiple payment option

If you allow your customers to complete their transaction with a payment provider of their choice you immediately earn trust. This is because most payment gateways like PayPal protect people who complete online purchases using them. It also means that they don’t have to divulge their payment details to you and they can rather use a third party that they already trust with their banking details.

7. Register with safe shopping organisations

Make sure your shop is rated by an external company as a safe shop. In the UK there are sites like www.shopsafe.co.uk where you can register your website. They will then test your website and offer you a certification that you can use to prove to your clients that you have been rated as safe by a third party. They will also list you on their site as a safe shop, which will give you a bit of exposure.

8. Always have a SSL certificate where ever personal details are exchange

Your client are getting smarter online. They are going to look out for a SSL certificate as the first sign to ensure your site is safe to use. Make sure that all the pages where you ask for any personal information be it email addresses, credit card details or anything else are all covered by an SSL certificate that clearly states your companies name and details.

Now these tips on their own won’t make users buy from you but they will definitely help to minimise the entrance barriers for them to make an online purchase from you. Good Luck and feel free to ask questions below.

You definitely need to be careful when using your card details online but you can determine when a website is unsafe or when you should be cautious. If a company wants to sell products online they need a couple of things on their website to get trust from their visitors so that they know their details will be safe.  To do this they need a refund policy, terms and conditions and a SSL certificate in place to gain trust with clients and to show that it is a real company not just a scam.

The SSL certificate is the important part, that is where your details and transactions are kept private even though they travel across the internet. How it works is the SSL certificate is a piece of code that enables an encrypted connection between a clients computer and your site. You will see the following in your address bar, the URL will change from http to https and there will be an image of a lock at the end of your URL .If you click on the lock it will give you the details of the merchant who the certificate belongs to. If you use Firefox before the http part of the URL you will see the name of the merchant, you can also click on it to see more details. If you don’t see any of the above, it is not safe to enter your credit card details on the page at all and you should look at different payment methods.

The rest of the posts this week will all involve online shopping so do check in again for some more tips on online shopping.