At a recent networking event, a panel of the e-commerce industry’s top affiliates and affiliate managers engaged in an open discussion, fielding an array of tough questions gathered from software vendors interested in optimizing their affiliate channels.
The panel discussion included representatives from Download.com, TopTenReviews.com and PC Antivirus Reviews. These affiliates used the discussion as an opportunity to educate e-commerce professionals on important topics that ranged from how to effectively initiate and nurture relationships with affiliates to strategies and tactics for increasing conversion rates and revenue.
The video below shows the full panel discussion. Below the video is a summary of the key questions and take-aways from the panel. Read the rest of this entry »
This video from the Google Analytics YouTube channel is a hilarious satire on the difficulties many customers encounter on their way through an online checkout process. Ideally, your checkout process should result in a win-win situation. If customers are not converting as you hoped and your company is not meeting its expected goals, it’s time to investigate your funnel for where customers are dropping off.
In order to identify the parts of your checkout process that are driving customers away, set goals in Google Analytics. Then examine your traffic sources, prioritize your stronger channels, address those issues you see leading to significant drop-offs in conversions, and meet regularly to review your progress (For more details, read “4 Steps to Use Analytics to Increase Revenue”).
So, why are customers exiting from critical pages on your conversion path? It could be for any number of reasons.
For example, in this video, the customer is forced to:
Authenticate himself through a challenge-response process
Try to understand why various delivery charges are added to his total payment
Accept unintelligible terms and conditions
Start the whole process over when his connection times out
All this, for a simple product he can find almost anywhere. While you may think that all these elements are necessary from an organizational standpoint, as a whole, they frustrate visitors to the point of abandoning cart.
We also kept an eye on the latest developments and insights in how software is sold and delivered online. The links below highlight some of the best articles that we’ve read this month. Use the Comments section below to share your favorite e-commerce articles and videos.
Alex Payne — How Not To Sell Software in 2012: Alex Payne, one of the original employees at Twitter, writes that in our day and age, software vendors need to simplify overly complicated sales processes so that purchasing software is as easy downloading an app.
This quote sums up his position, “Basically, if a given software package or service isn’t free/open, it should be as easy as humanly possible to try it, pay for it, and start using it in production. If it isn’t easy to get started with your product, I’m going to find another vendor.”
The post continues with a list of eight “Don’ts,” those companies that are getting it right, and those companies that are doing it wrong.
