In amongst all the doom and gloom of the current financial crisis there is some good news for retailers as we head into the Christmas period.

Research suggests that e-commerce sales will not be too harshly affected by the credit crunch as consumers turn to online stores instead of their offline counterparts.

Consumers are showing no signs of reducing their online spend this Christmas and a recent report from Verdict Research predicted a 39.9% growth in online spend during the festive period.

E-commerce websites give retailers the ability to react quickly and effectively to any change in the market – new promotions and sale items can be quickly and easily edited within the site to respond successfully when needed.

Shopping comparison sites will benefit from the credit crunch as consumers look online for where to find the best priced products. Retailers should ensure that their website is offering competitive prices for those must have items this Christmas.

Along with meeting the needs of those bargain hunters surfing the web it is a good idea for retailers to explore bundling as a potential money spinner. Consumers will feel they are getting a good deal if relevant products are bundled together a discount price – this is a highly profitable way of selling your goods online.

To maximise the potential revenue of this continued online spend from consumers, retailers must ensure that their website is as easy to use as possible and customers are encouraged to proceed through the site to the checkout process. Customers need to have a pain free experience of shopping on your e-commerce site so that they feel they are avoiding the depressing world of the high street.

To find out how Motive can help you with your e-commerce strategy, please get in touch with our E–commerce Team.

Retailers are guilty of not properly preparing for Christmas with their online store like they do in the offline world. It is important that online vendors use the months leading up to Christmas to research and test all areas of their online campaigns as well as the website itself to ensure they maximise sales over the festive period.

There are several areas that retailers need to pay attention to. The search market is key to locate what words you need to be focussing on to capture your customers. Looking back on last years search data will help greatly to work out what worked and what didn’t. Look at what keywords you were focussing on last year and analyse the success of these words - retailers should be learning year on year for Christmas.

On the run up to Christmas, retailers should test out various adverts and offers to see which converts the best for them. Trial and error is the best way of discovering what is going to bring potential customers to your site.

Along with ensuring that search campaigns are fully optimised, retailers need to ensure that once they consumers have reached their site every step has been taken to keep them there.

Landing pages are very important in your Christmas strategy – any offers or discounts that you refer to in your Christmas campaigns need to be confirmed on your landing page. You need to continuously motivate your customers to continue through the website and ultimately make a purchase.

To find out how Motive can help with your online Christmas strategy, please speak to the experts.

The layout of your landing page is very important in order to keep your visitors there and encourage them to navigate deeper into your retail site and eventually make a purchase.

Individual landing pages should be created and designed with the aim of making the site as easy to use as possible for your users. The easier the site is to use the more likely they are to proceed with the site and get to the buying stage.

Making your retail site easy to use will involve including your sales messages in areas of the page where they are most visible to the user. Where you decide to put key links and sales messages is crucial to success with your website.

These heatmaps from eye tracking studies to see where users’ eyes are attracted to highlights how people always tend to focus on the main body of text and don’t really stray away from that.

This habit of internet users demonstrates how it is often difficult for banner advertising to be successful as they usually appear on the right hand side of the page or along the top – as highlighted in green in the heatmaps.

This problem also needs to be considered when creating landing pages for campaigns. If you put your sales messages in the areas of the page where they will be missed by users, you will be losing out on precious conversions.

It is essential that users cannot miss links to pages you want them to navigate to. Everything you want your visitors to see and all calls to action should be included in the main body of text - this will guide your visitors through your retail site and lead them to buying your products.

To find out how Motive can ensure you are optimising the conversion capability of your landing pages, talk to our E-commerce Experts.

It is important for online fashion retailers to protect their brand image online. More and more the Internet is being dominated by the user – social networking sites, blogs and forums allow consumers to project their own beliefs about your brand across the Web. This is fine if the opinion is good, however, it is inevitable that some people will have negative comments to make about the service they received with you.

There is no way of stopping your customers from discussing the experience they have had of your brand either in store or through your fashion website, however, there are ways of monitoring and reacting to these discussions in order to minimise the damage caused to your online reputation.

You need to ensure that you are leading the way when it comes to your brand’s online reputation. This can be achieved through basic SEO techniques, ensuring that your fashion website is appearing as high as possible in the search results and therefore higher than other references to your brand.

Another crucial part of your online strategy should be interacting with your customers and responding to what is being said. If a negative comment is posted about your brand online, the best way to limit the potential damage to your reputation is to react quickly and effectively.

If a user has talked about a negative experience with you, it is crucial that you can respond and show that customer care is high on your priority list, or if they are complaining about a particular garment, show that you are willing to make improvements in light of their comments.

To find out how Motive can ensure you are promoting the right image of your fashion brand online. Talk to the experts.

In order to be successful in the online word, fashion retailers need to make sure that every step has been taken to mamimise the potential of their website.

Fashion retailers need to optimise their product range for their online e-commerce store. Consumers must be provided with a wider choice along with various offers that make it advantageous for them to buy online rather than in stores.

The average fashion e-commerce site should achieve a minimum average item value of around £12-£15. Lower priced items than this should be avoided when selling online as it is harder to make them profitable than it is in stores. Lower priced items do, however, have potential to be profitable when offered in bundle packages. It is crucial that online fashion retailers maximise the potential of cross-selling and up-selling opportunities that a website offers.

Where possible, fashion e-commerce sites should avoid being out of stock. If a customer comes to your site to purchase an item and it is out of stock, they will leave the site with a negative image of your company. The big advantage the Internet offers consumers is the ease with which they can buy items, if this process is held up for them in any way they will be frustrated and probably not return to your site.

A key factor in the success of a fashion ecommerce site is that every possible effort is made to re-create the in store experience the customer has of buying clothes. In high street stores, consumers are able to pick up, feel and try on garments to decide whether to purchase or not. Online obviously this contact is lost and so to ensure that the customer feels confident enough to buy, they must be shown the product minute detail. This can be done through:

• Focus on key product detail (stitching etc)
• Zoom features to see the product in extreme close up
• Alternative Views (see the product from front, behind, side etc)
• Video – actually use real models wearing the clothes so customers can see what the garment actually looks like on a human being.
• 3D Spin
• Clear size guides – this maximises customer satisfaction and minimises returns

Highlighting to your customers that your website is safe is also very important. Consumers often have concerns over using their card online and so to reassure them that their payments will be secure the latest payment technologies should be used by the website.

To find out how Motive can develop a highly profitable e-commerce store for your company, please talk to our E-commerce Team.

A major factor in online success is testing. Your e-commerce website should be tested on a regular basis in order to ensure your clients are being given the best service and your brand is being represented in the most appropriate, professional manner.

Every aspect of your e-commerce website should be tested and re-tested. Obviously achieving the maximum number of conversions is the main objective for your website and unless it is tested regularly there are countless different ways you could be losing potential business.

The most obvious reason for testing is, of course, to make sure your e-commerce site actually works. Any issues or faults with your site will be easily picked up by the user, therefore regular testing prevents your potential clients from developing a negative image of your brand. If your website is disappointing or faulty it will give the user a negative image of your company as a whole.

The term testing can also relate to other aspects of managing your website, however. Testing out different styles and approaches with your website will allow you to work out which method works best with your targeted audience.

Cookie tracking and various web statistic packages enable you to track precisely what is happening in the site and react positively as a result.

Try rotating different images and headlines on pages within the site then tracking the number of hits and click-throughs achieved with the different styles. This will help to determine what is the most effective strategy for your site.

Calls to action are key when attempting to guide users through your site; you should try out different phrases and see how it affects your conversion rates.

Success with your website is trial and error. Your website shouldn’t be a static thing that once launched is left alone. You should be constantly updating, adding to and tweaking various parts of the site to meet the needs of your users and maximise the revenue you get from it.

To find out how Motive can help you maximise the potential of your website, please get in touch with our E-commerce team.

Clothing retailers selling luxury products have a tough time online both presenting the right image of their brand as well as being commercially successful.

The Internet is often presented as the place to get bargains with companies’ frequently offering discounts if you buy online – this is in sharp contrast to the image luxury retailers want to promote.

On the high street, luxury stores are exclusive and generally only consumers with the necessary funds tend to go in to browse around. The Internet, however, is open to all consumers and so this exclusivity is lost.

It is important therefore that luxury retailers re-create an opulent online experience for consumers that reflects the atmosphere of their high street stores.

Another stumbling block for luxury brands is how to convey the quality of their clothes online. The consumer isn’t able to actually see the item and try it on for real, it is therefore absolutely vital that every step is taken to ensure the user is shown each product in minute detail.

There are various ways to present products to the consumer so that all the characteristics of the item are fully displayed. Such as:

• 3D spin – allowing the user to look at the product from every angle and get a feel for how the item would look if it was in their hands
• Zoom – zoom features permit the consumer to look at each item in close detail e.g. stitching, quality of fabric etc
• Colour – the ability to see the same item in various colours

Along with these features, there are several Web 2.0 elements that could greatly assist a detailed representation of a product. For example:

Videos – having videos of a model wearing the items of clothing lets the user see how the product would actually look when it is worn. Often it is very hard for the consumer to make an assumption of how a garment would look without seeing it on a real person.
Podcasts – a retailer could feature podcasts with information and/or tips on how best to wear products, accessories etc.

For information on how Motive could help you create the right representation of your luxury brand online, get in touch with our E-commerce Team.

Ensuring that visitors have a good experience of your ecommerce website is key to online success. This experience will greatly impact on both a decision to buy from you and a visitors perception of your brand.

More and more consumers are choosing to buy their products from the internet and as a result retailers must focus the same level of attention on their ecommerce website as they would their high street stores.

A recent poll conducted by technology provider RightNow and the Loudhouse organisation found that 72% of people who shop on the internet believed that a good online user experience would be the second highest influencing factor when deciding where to buy a product.

Enabling your customers to easily find the product they want through simple and logical navigation of your website is obviously crucial but it is also highly worthwhile to display associated promotions and incentives alongside your products to increase conversion values. Without the personal interaction that occurs in the store it is important that users feel that you are informing them prior to purchase and supporting them throughout the entire sales process.

If a user doesn’t find what they are looking for early on in their visit to your website they will leave and look elsewhere online. This will drive consumers to your competitors and mean that users leave your website with a negative image of your brand.

To find out how Motive could improve the online experience of your brand, get in touch with our E-commerce Team.

When it comes to PPC advertising, it is crucial to achieve a high Quality Score for your adverts. The Quality Score Google assigns your keywords affects several aspects of your advertising campaign, including; how much you pay per click, if your advert shows and if it does, in what position it appears.

Google assigns a Quality Score to each keyword in your campaign. The Quality Score ranges from; Poor, OK, Good to Great.

There are various factors that affect the Quality Score of your keywords. These include the historical click through rate of your adverts, the keywords relevance to the adverts you are running and the content quality of your landing page – i.e how many times your chosen keywords are appearing in the text on your landing page.

A recent addition to how Google calculates your overall Quality Score is the time it takes your landing page to load. This hasn’t been widely publicised and many advertisers are probably unaware that this is now an important factor in the Quality Score.

There are various ways of improving the load time of your landing page. These include:

• Avoiding the use of redirects
• Keeping the page size as small as possible
• Compressing images to reduce the file size
• Keeping the use of flash to a minimum
• Not having third party content on the page

To find out more about optimising your website to assist your PPC campaigns, speak to our Marketing Team.

A highly effective strategy in e-commerce is multiple channel selling. This involves having several niche websites targeting different demographics, displaying specific product ranges. This allows you to create completely focused websites with a high sales conversion rate.

It is often helpful in the retail space to appear to your consumers under a different persona. This could be for various reasons – sometimes political but sometimes simply aesthetically. It is important that you project the right corporate image for the individual products you are selling. For example, you might have redundant stock that you want to get rid of; this technology would enable you to develop a bargain website where people can buy items at discount prices, without devaluing your parent brand.

This strategy is also effective when you need a microsite specific to a particular marketing campaign or particular product which still links in to your main corporate website. This allows you to have fully branded sites specific to one product brand without increasing the administration or management as the content can be driven by your main database.

Having these various websites means that you can target individual affiliate campaigns, pay per click campaigns and other online marketing strategies to drive traffic with a high potential of converting to the right website.

To find out more about Motive’s multi channel e-commerce platform, please get in touch with our e-commerce experts.