Archive for the ‘Ecommerce’ Category
True or False: You Can Make Money While You Sleep
Manbeer Singh asked:
It’s a crying shame really. So many people have tried to follow the Internet dream. They’ve heard the stories of others who quit their day jobs, wake up whenever they choose, take leisurely lunches with friends, shop for hours on end without one worry about how to pay for their purchases, buy new cars and pay cash for them, and make money hand over fist while they sleep. Naturally, these people would drool over the thought of being able to do the same for themselves.
However, as the landslide of people all across the globe began to flock to the ‘Net much like they did to California in the gold-rush days, they find that making money while you sleep might be a myth. They wonder if they’ve just been led astray by wicked, evil people with nothing better to do than make fools out of innocent, hardworking folks.
What is the answer? Can you make money online? CAN you make money while you sleep? I don’t mean an extra $200 a month to pay for groceries, but a real living. If so, how do you go about it?
It’s True! I’m Doing It Myself!
First of all, it’s not a myth. I can honestly tell you that I am making a full-time living online. And yes, there have been many mornings where I’ve awakened, turned on my computer, and found notifications of sales that occurred during the night. I AM making money while I sleep, and you can, too.
Let me tell you what I think probably happened to generate this long-standing myth.
The early Internet pioneers discovered ways to make automated income. They realized this was a wonderful thing and began to spread the news to everyone they knew. Then, however, those unscrupulous types (you know… the jerks) saw this as an easy way to make a fast buck. They began preaching that making automated income online was as easy as pouring yourself a glass of water. In essence, they told half the story. As more and more people tried to make a living online and failed, the promise of making money while you sleep became fiction instead of fact.
So How Do You Do It?
What’s the real truth? How can you make a full-time living online just like me? There are several ways. Let me give you the unvarnished gospel when it comes to online business. You may not like what you hear, but it is fact, not fluff.
ACTION STEP 1
Plan, Plan, Plan – It won’t happen overnight. Nothing good ever does. In the beginning, you’re going to create a plan then be ready to work that plan. You often hear about throwing up a website and making money while you sleep. Technically, yes, that’s all there is to it. But… how does that site get up on the ‘Net?
You have to create your site or have someone else create it. That means you have to take the time to learn professional website development (PLEASE, don’t create some junky, homemade-looking site!), or you have to pay someone who already knows how to create websites. And what will you have on your site? Your own products? (Having your own e-products is highly recommended.) Someone else’s products? You’ll need to decide before your site is created.
How will people pay for the products they buy from your site? Do you have a merchant account? Will you become an affiliate for someone else so you don’t need a payment system?
Will you go for high search engine rankings or rely on word-of-mouth, PPC ads, and other types of paid advertising? If you want good search engine optimization, you’ll have to plan for that upfront. Again, you’ll have to take time to learn how to do it or pay someone else who already knows how.
Before you take one more step toward launching your own Web business, find the answers to the questions above.
ACTION STEP 2
Be Ready to Work – Once your site is ready to launch, how will people find you? How, exactly, will you drive qualified visitors to your site? Will you use organic (free) search engine listings? Will you use Pay-Per-Click search engine ads? Will you buy ezine ads? Do you have other means for getting customers to visit your site? People won’t just come out of the blue, you’ll have to bring them to your site somehow.
Even if you choose to go for the organic search engine listings, you’ll have about a 4-week to 4-month wait before seeing your new site listed. What will you do in the meantime to drum up business?
ACTION STEP 3
How Will You Keep It Going? – Prosperous businesses are continually growing to keep up with customer demands. How will you keep your online business moving forward? Will you do research into what consumers want? Will you guess? Will you just follow the crowd?
You’ll want to have some method for gauging customer responses so you can know what your site visitors want and how to provide it for them.
One such way is to use Survey Monkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com). You can create online surveys in order to keep up with the needs/wants of your site visitors.
ACTION STEP 4
Service Is Key! – In order to make it in the long run, you simply must provide exceptional customer service to your clients. Those who lie, steal, cheat, or hide are destined to fail.
Understand this: Your success depends on your customers’ success. If they aren’t happy, you won’t be in business long. Make every effort to treat them as the kings and queens they are.
See? The people who turned the “make money while you sleep” fact into fiction did so because they skipped all the important information. Now that you know what to expect, you can see that it is most definitely possible to make a full-time living online. It is even possible to make money while you sleep. However, you must have a plan, be ready to work, look for ways to keep your business growing, and treat your customers as true V.I.P.s.
When you do, you’ll have all the tools you need to develop a long-standing business that – with time – will produce for you.
It’s a crying shame really. So many people have tried to follow the Internet dream. They’ve heard the stories of others who quit their day jobs, wake up whenever they choose, take leisurely lunches with friends, shop for hours on end without one worry about how to pay for their purchases, buy new cars and pay cash for them, and make money hand over fist while they sleep. Naturally, these people would drool over the thought of being able to do the same for themselves.
However, as the landslide of people all across the globe began to flock to the ‘Net much like they did to California in the gold-rush days, they find that making money while you sleep might be a myth. They wonder if they’ve just been led astray by wicked, evil people with nothing better to do than make fools out of innocent, hardworking folks.
What is the answer? Can you make money online? CAN you make money while you sleep? I don’t mean an extra $200 a month to pay for groceries, but a real living. If so, how do you go about it?
It’s True! I’m Doing It Myself!
First of all, it’s not a myth. I can honestly tell you that I am making a full-time living online. And yes, there have been many mornings where I’ve awakened, turned on my computer, and found notifications of sales that occurred during the night. I AM making money while I sleep, and you can, too.
Let me tell you what I think probably happened to generate this long-standing myth.
The early Internet pioneers discovered ways to make automated income. They realized this was a wonderful thing and began to spread the news to everyone they knew. Then, however, those unscrupulous types (you know… the jerks) saw this as an easy way to make a fast buck. They began preaching that making automated income online was as easy as pouring yourself a glass of water. In essence, they told half the story. As more and more people tried to make a living online and failed, the promise of making money while you sleep became fiction instead of fact.
So How Do You Do It?
What’s the real truth? How can you make a full-time living online just like me? There are several ways. Let me give you the unvarnished gospel when it comes to online business. You may not like what you hear, but it is fact, not fluff.
ACTION STEP 1
Plan, Plan, Plan – It won’t happen overnight. Nothing good ever does. In the beginning, you’re going to create a plan then be ready to work that plan. You often hear about throwing up a website and making money while you sleep. Technically, yes, that’s all there is to it. But… how does that site get up on the ‘Net?
You have to create your site or have someone else create it. That means you have to take the time to learn professional website development (PLEASE, don’t create some junky, homemade-looking site!), or you have to pay someone who already knows how to create websites. And what will you have on your site? Your own products? (Having your own e-products is highly recommended.) Someone else’s products? You’ll need to decide before your site is created.
How will people pay for the products they buy from your site? Do you have a merchant account? Will you become an affiliate for someone else so you don’t need a payment system?
Will you go for high search engine rankings or rely on word-of-mouth, PPC ads, and other types of paid advertising? If you want good search engine optimization, you’ll have to plan for that upfront. Again, you’ll have to take time to learn how to do it or pay someone else who already knows how.
Before you take one more step toward launching your own Web business, find the answers to the questions above.
ACTION STEP 2
Be Ready to Work – Once your site is ready to launch, how will people find you? How, exactly, will you drive qualified visitors to your site? Will you use organic (free) search engine listings? Will you use Pay-Per-Click search engine ads? Will you buy ezine ads? Do you have other means for getting customers to visit your site? People won’t just come out of the blue, you’ll have to bring them to your site somehow.
Even if you choose to go for the organic search engine listings, you’ll have about a 4-week to 4-month wait before seeing your new site listed. What will you do in the meantime to drum up business?
ACTION STEP 3
How Will You Keep It Going? – Prosperous businesses are continually growing to keep up with customer demands. How will you keep your online business moving forward? Will you do research into what consumers want? Will you guess? Will you just follow the crowd?
You’ll want to have some method for gauging customer responses so you can know what your site visitors want and how to provide it for them.
One such way is to use Survey Monkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com). You can create online surveys in order to keep up with the needs/wants of your site visitors.
ACTION STEP 4
Service Is Key! – In order to make it in the long run, you simply must provide exceptional customer service to your clients. Those who lie, steal, cheat, or hide are destined to fail.
Understand this: Your success depends on your customers’ success. If they aren’t happy, you won’t be in business long. Make every effort to treat them as the kings and queens they are.
See? The people who turned the “make money while you sleep” fact into fiction did so because they skipped all the important information. Now that you know what to expect, you can see that it is most definitely possible to make a full-time living online. It is even possible to make money while you sleep. However, you must have a plan, be ready to work, look for ways to keep your business growing, and treat your customers as true V.I.P.s.
When you do, you’ll have all the tools you need to develop a long-standing business that – with time – will produce for you.
Increase Conversion’s by Decreasing Shopping Cart Abandonment – Part 1
Andy MacDonald asked:
This isn’t simply how many people don’t complete the buying process. A Checkout process can be a number of steps, and each step is its own little mini-conversion. You really want to know where in the shopping cart process folks get frustrated enough to say goodbye, because thats the point where the carts conversion process is failing. So check your metrics. If you’ve got a tidy little cybershop and still want to improve your shopping cart abandonment rates, then here are some ideas on how to fix your cart:
1. Check how many steps are in your checkout process.
This is usually a prime “knee-jerk” target for results. But we have found that whether you have one step, or seven, it is not all that critical. We had one client whose checkout process we were able to bring down from six steps to one, but there was no correlation in reduction of the abandonment rate to the number of steps. Once people found what they came for, they found a way and the time to checkout no matter how many steps were involved. Should you change the number of steps? No. It may not be worth the time, effort, and expense of trying to reduce the steps in the checkout process. Try some of these other ideas first.
2. Include a “progress indicator” (e.g, “step 2 of 53) on each checkout page.
No matter how many steps you have in your checkout process, keep shoppers oriented by letting them know exactly where they are in the checkout process by step number. Be sure to clearly label the task to be completed at each step. Always give them an opportunity to review what they did in the previous steps and a way to return to their current step if they do go back.
3. Provide a link back to the product.
When an item is placed in the shopping cart, include a link back to the product page, so shoppers can easily jump back to make sure they have selected the right item. Your own experience probably parallels ours. Recently, while shopping for a CD/DVD printer, we wanted to know how many and what color cartridges come with the printer. It wasn’t obvious where we should click to review what came with the printer, so we had to navigate using our “back” button until we were able to get our questions answered. Not all consumers are willing to take on this navigational challenge and choose, instead, to abandon their carts.
4. Add pictures inside the basket.
Just as adding a link back to the product details page inside the checkout process reduces abandonment, placing a thumbnail image of the product inside the basket can increase conversions by as much as 10 percent.
5. Provide shipping costs as early in the process as possible.
If possible, provide an estimated cost while they browse. Your visitors want to buy; they just want the answers to all their questions, when they want it, and total cost is one of those critical questions. Also, if the shipping information is the same as the billing information, include a box that shoppers can check to automatically fill in the same information. Don’t waste their time while testing their keyboard skills.
6. Show stock availability on the product page.
Shoppers should not have to wait until checkout to find out that a product is out of stock. One thing that we also like to see is “Estimated Delivery Date” or “this product usually ships in x days.” Deal with the “I want it now!” mentality, and let them know when they should expect to get their product.
7. Make it obvious what to click next.
Include a prominent “Next Step” or “Continue with Checkout” button on each checkout page. If possible, give the shopper a visual cue as to where they are in the process. Make the button you want them to click next the most obvious. One Top 50 e-tailer mistakenly placed visually similar “Remove from Cart” and “Checkout” buttons right next to each other. As you can imagine, many people click before they read. At this site, they ended up clearing their cart. And when they want to checkout and found nothing in their shopping cart, they immediately abandoned the site in frustration.
8. Make it easy for the shopper to edit the shopping cart.
If a product comes in multiple sizes or colors, make it easy to select or change values in the shopping cart. How many times have you bought a pair of trousers online, and wanted the same shirt in two different colors? Make it easy for your consumers to add to and edit the contents of their shopping carts. It should be simple to change quantities or options or to delete an item from the shopping cart.
9. Make it your fault.
If information is missing or filled out incorrectly during checkout, give a meaningful error message that is distinctly visible. It should clearly tell your visitor what needs to be corrected. The tone should intimate that the system was unable to understand what they entered, not that they made a foolish mistake.
10. Make shoppers aware that you are a real entity.
Checkout is the time when peoples concerns start to flare up. Let them know you are a real company by giving full contact info during the checkout process.
Look out for part 2 of Increase Conversion’s by Decreasing Shopping Cart Abandonment, where we have another 10 top tips for you to increase your conversion rates.
This isn’t simply how many people don’t complete the buying process. A Checkout process can be a number of steps, and each step is its own little mini-conversion. You really want to know where in the shopping cart process folks get frustrated enough to say goodbye, because thats the point where the carts conversion process is failing. So check your metrics. If you’ve got a tidy little cybershop and still want to improve your shopping cart abandonment rates, then here are some ideas on how to fix your cart:
1. Check how many steps are in your checkout process.
This is usually a prime “knee-jerk” target for results. But we have found that whether you have one step, or seven, it is not all that critical. We had one client whose checkout process we were able to bring down from six steps to one, but there was no correlation in reduction of the abandonment rate to the number of steps. Once people found what they came for, they found a way and the time to checkout no matter how many steps were involved. Should you change the number of steps? No. It may not be worth the time, effort, and expense of trying to reduce the steps in the checkout process. Try some of these other ideas first.
2. Include a “progress indicator” (e.g, “step 2 of 53) on each checkout page.
No matter how many steps you have in your checkout process, keep shoppers oriented by letting them know exactly where they are in the checkout process by step number. Be sure to clearly label the task to be completed at each step. Always give them an opportunity to review what they did in the previous steps and a way to return to their current step if they do go back.
3. Provide a link back to the product.
When an item is placed in the shopping cart, include a link back to the product page, so shoppers can easily jump back to make sure they have selected the right item. Your own experience probably parallels ours. Recently, while shopping for a CD/DVD printer, we wanted to know how many and what color cartridges come with the printer. It wasn’t obvious where we should click to review what came with the printer, so we had to navigate using our “back” button until we were able to get our questions answered. Not all consumers are willing to take on this navigational challenge and choose, instead, to abandon their carts.
4. Add pictures inside the basket.
Just as adding a link back to the product details page inside the checkout process reduces abandonment, placing a thumbnail image of the product inside the basket can increase conversions by as much as 10 percent.
5. Provide shipping costs as early in the process as possible.
If possible, provide an estimated cost while they browse. Your visitors want to buy; they just want the answers to all their questions, when they want it, and total cost is one of those critical questions. Also, if the shipping information is the same as the billing information, include a box that shoppers can check to automatically fill in the same information. Don’t waste their time while testing their keyboard skills.
6. Show stock availability on the product page.
Shoppers should not have to wait until checkout to find out that a product is out of stock. One thing that we also like to see is “Estimated Delivery Date” or “this product usually ships in x days.” Deal with the “I want it now!” mentality, and let them know when they should expect to get their product.
7. Make it obvious what to click next.
Include a prominent “Next Step” or “Continue with Checkout” button on each checkout page. If possible, give the shopper a visual cue as to where they are in the process. Make the button you want them to click next the most obvious. One Top 50 e-tailer mistakenly placed visually similar “Remove from Cart” and “Checkout” buttons right next to each other. As you can imagine, many people click before they read. At this site, they ended up clearing their cart. And when they want to checkout and found nothing in their shopping cart, they immediately abandoned the site in frustration.
8. Make it easy for the shopper to edit the shopping cart.
If a product comes in multiple sizes or colors, make it easy to select or change values in the shopping cart. How many times have you bought a pair of trousers online, and wanted the same shirt in two different colors? Make it easy for your consumers to add to and edit the contents of their shopping carts. It should be simple to change quantities or options or to delete an item from the shopping cart.
9. Make it your fault.
If information is missing or filled out incorrectly during checkout, give a meaningful error message that is distinctly visible. It should clearly tell your visitor what needs to be corrected. The tone should intimate that the system was unable to understand what they entered, not that they made a foolish mistake.
10. Make shoppers aware that you are a real entity.
Checkout is the time when peoples concerns start to flare up. Let them know you are a real company by giving full contact info during the checkout process.
Look out for part 2 of Increase Conversion’s by Decreasing Shopping Cart Abandonment, where we have another 10 top tips for you to increase your conversion rates.