Archive for August, 2011

This Month’s Second Wave of New Payment Methods.

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

 

Following on from our previous blog posting, we have since added another two payment methods…

AliPay is an immediate authorization eWallet, renowned in Asia, and the most famous and frequently used payment method in China.  Swiff is an offline bank transfer-like payment option available in Canada, with delayed authorization (pending status) and without chargebacks.

 

Further Integration of Payment Methods

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

 

Making sure that the most relevant global and local payment methods are integrated into an ecommerce platform is just one piece of the jigsaw, but a very important piece.

 

We have just integrated two more payment methods into our ever expanding global ecommerce platform, which is good news to vendors who sell where these payment methods are popular.

 

AstroPay Card is a virtual pre-paid card for use in Brazil, while paysafecard is a pre-paid card for use in Europe. Both offer immediate authorization, without chargebacks.

 

The two new additions have already processed a number of transactions in the first few days of operation.

 

 

Active Conversion Service Rolled Out To All Vendors

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

 

Following a comprehensive and successful trial period, we are pleased to announce that our new ‘Active Conversion‘ service is now available to all vendors.  ‘Active Conversion’ is designed to maximize sales revenue by transforming unsuccessful transactions into successful sales.

 

Failed transactions/declines can occur for a variety of reasons, and unless something is done to prevent them, they will continue to cause lost sales.  Gate2Shop now have the tools and a dedicated team of experts to monitor and act on these problematic transactions, resulting in a significant amount of salvaged sales.

 

A decline can now have a happy ending, and statistics show conversions up anywhere between 17% and 35% when using the new service.

 

 

Is your landing page designed to convert?

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

 

 

One of the most important elements for the success of your digital marketing plan are landing pages, especially if you are using paid traffic campaigns such as PPC (Pay Per Click) ads. A Landing Page is a page created for users to carry out a very specific action (an email subscription, a sale, etc.), which –well designed- helps to greatly increase your conversion rate.

 

Designing a landing page is pretty much as designing an ad. And to design landing pages that convert is your responsibility. Here you have the opportunity to tell your customers why your product is awesome and why they must convert.

 

There are some key elements that will help you to design killing landing pages as a Marketing or Ad expert:

 

1. Unique call to action: Make sure the landing page does not have competing call-to-actions. Focus your landing page in a single and clear action on the top of the page –avoid scrolling down-. Keep it simple for customer and drive them to take the action you want without overwhelming them trying to sell many things at the same time. This is not the moment to confuse customers with too much information. Communicate clearly what you want them to do and why.

 

2. Give the customer an enticing reason to convert, now: Incorporate a unique and convincing selling proposition (USP) that clearly communicates why the customer must convert.

 

3. Avoid links that may distract the customer: You are bringing traffic to the landing page with a very clear objective. Do not distract your customer with links that might drive them to other sites. Not even to your home site. Although the visitor might not be familiar with your brand and/or products, you have to design the landing page ready to convince the visitor to convert in a single shot.

 

4. Consistent message. The selling proposition message of the landing page must match the text of the PPC, ad, tweet, email or wherever is the traffic source from which visitors will come from. What you say in your ad must match what customers see in the landing page. So if you ad is offering “Save up to 10% on every antivirus software”, make sure that your customers will land in a page with the same offer. In the case you have different campaigns or offers running at the same time, create a unique landing page for each of them.

 

5. Reinforce trust. Include elements that communicate and reinforce trust and safety to consumers. In this sense, it is strongly recommended to incorporate trust buttons like Verified by Visa logo, BBB badge, antivirus logos or any other industry certifications or awards near the conversion form. Build even more trust by including customers’ testimonials and reviews. Genuine testimonials from respected people in your industry can boost your conversion rate.

 

 

Trust buttons

 

6. Don’t forget SEO: Create unique landing pages only accessible from its coming PPC ad or email campaign and include a custom and descriptive URL using your hottest keywords.

 

7. Plan a tracking method and test. We always insist on the importance of testing all your digital marketing actions. You must test your landing pages specially those coming for a PPC campaign. You are creating landing pages because you want them to convert plus you are paying for this traffic. As you create custom and individual URLs for each landing page inaccessible from your main site, you can easily track its efficiency in terms of views and conversions. Google Analytics and Google AdWords give you valuable data about consumer behaviour that you can use to modify and adjust your campaigns. If you are not sure about which design or selling proposition will convert the most, create different landing pages for the same campaign and modify texts, pictures, composition, colours, etc.; Google will tell you which model is selling more.

 

A/B test

 

 

If you liked this post, share it with your contacts!