When it comes to online shopping there’s never been a better time to buy on the Internet (and not because of the recent snow J), surprised? Well, although we’re all concerned about the recent state of the economy, there are always products, gadgets and bargains to be found just a click away.

So, follow these simple ideas, grab a bargain online and when you find one, don’t forget to share!

Research well and find the best offer

1. Search Engines Ads – Even if you’re familiar with one particular site, it never hurts to research the price on other websites. Many shops use the search engine ads (you know, the ads on the right hand side and above the search result you never look at J) to list site promotions, product prices and other special offers. These ads usually look almost like a price comparison chart which will save you some leg work.

2. Google Base – Google Base is an online database provided by Google where any user can add almost any type of product and as of 2008, is available to the public as a beta version. What makes Google Base stand out is its advanced sort by options, product images and options to subscribe to product offers by RSS. Many shops add their products (for free) and it’s easy to compare and find the best deal.

3. Shopping Engines – Great for comparing cheap insurance, but also for product searches and comparisons. Shopping comparison services lets shoppers see lists of prices for specific products together with their estimated delivery costs and offer great refined search options to find the best offer. Most price comparison services do not sell products themselves, but source prices from online stores using their affiliate programme. Shopping.com and PriceRunner.co.uk are two examples, though the market is full of niche specific shopping engines as well.

4. Forums – User generated forums provide fresh product offers and list big savings every day. Websites such as MoneySavingExpert.com founded and owned by ‘ultra-specialised’ journalist Martin Lewis in February 2003 aims to provide information enabling people to save money, however recently the forums at MSE have grown in popularity. Others such as HotUKDeals.com offer an option to search by store name.

5. eBay – Online auction website, eBay is still a great alternative to many traditional online shops. It seems like eBay is now trying to appeal to the more novice online shopper, offering both UK phone support and discount codes on almost a monthly basis.

Get the product for even less

6. Discount Code / Voucher Code – Now that you’ve done some research and found a great offer, use a discount code for the online store through one of the many discount code websites such as MyVoucherCodes.com and VoucherCodes.co.uk. Those websites are free to use and the discount codes in most cases are valid, but do read what other shoppers have commented on that voucher.  Most voucher codes I found were between 5% to 10% discount.

7. Cash back offers – Cash back websites are a type of reward website that pay shoppers a percentage of money earned, hence cash back when they purchase goods and services. Normally the cash back is credited to your account within 30 to 60 days, so no quick wins here. There are plenty of cash back sites and most are free to join. Quidco.com and GreasyPalm.co.uk are considered the market leaders, though Quidco has an annual £5 fee which is taken from the shoppers first earnings.

8. Credit card cash back – Though becoming rarer of late, some credit cards still offer cash back together with the added benefit of free legal protection, as an incentive.

9. Negotiate – Yes, even when buying online the great art of negotiation can come handy. Many online shops encourage the shopper to report the product price on other sites in order to price match while others will send you a discount code when available just for asking… eBay even offer an option to counter offer and after trying it myself, it works so why not try?

Now all you have to do is pay

10. PayPal - There are a few great reasons to pay using PayPal. Firstly PayPal recently launched PayPal-Offers.co.uk websites offering cash back and discount codes (some exclusive) to shoppers paying with PayPal and online shops offering it. Paying with PayPal makes sense as similar to credit cards, the purchase is protected and there’s no need to submit your credit card details to another website.

11. Credit cards – When it comes to paying online, try to use your credit card as opposed to your debit card as it comes with free legal protection. As long as you pay the full balance on the purchase within the first month, there should not be any additional interest charge.

As an Online Marketing Consultant myself, advising retailers on their online e-commerce development and search engine optimisation strategies, I have seen many online shops reacting to the recent market developments and offering fantastic offers and promotions.

For online shoppers, there’s never been a better time to spend cash online.

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Image by flickr under CC

THE goal of any online retailer is to increase revenue and emphasis is often made on increasing conversion rates (rightfully so in most cases). However, many disregard the ability to increase the bottom line by increasing the customer’s average order value (aka basket size) which in many cases requires only online merchandising work, analytics reporting and some elbow grease.

A part of my work at Conversion Counts which falls under e-commerce development is to help online retailers increase average order. The list below includes some of my favorite methods which any online retailer big or small can implement quickly. 

1. Product bundles – the idea behind product bundles is to combine complimentary products which the combine price of the new bundle product is slightly less than the price of the two (sometimes three) products separately. Product bundles appeal to many online shoppers, especially bargain hunters and to become a successful online retailer you should always cater for as many demographics as possible.

2. Cash back over a certain amount – cash back offers are a great incentive for encouraging customers to spend more. The idea is the set a minimum order value for when the cash back comes to fruition and is quite easy to set up. If you’re using an affiliate network you can work with one of the cash back sites or if you’re accepting PayPal setting up cash back is a 10 minutes work.

3. Free delivery over a certain amount – online shoppers place great emphasis on the delivery and shipping costs, and I often find that excessive delivery costs are a direct cause for high drop off rate during the checkout process. Bearing this in mind, customers are easily encouraged to spend more when the delivery cost is waved.

4. Price discount over a certain amount - similar to the above, a discount offer over a certain threshold tends to create the desired effect. When implemented wisely in a tier structure and placed during the checkout process (i.e. from the moment a product is added to the basket) it could be kept in place for some time. For example, when a customer’s basket has a value of £50 offer 5% should the basket exceed £60, if a customer’s basket has a value of £70 offer 10% should the basket exceed £80 etc so you’re in fact creating a global site promotion system.

5. Price increase - no joke, when did you last looked at your margins and competitor prices. Sometimes a slight price increase is the answer, just avoid site wide price increase which might have an opposite effect.

6. Add new products – one of my favorite methods is the ability to increase basket value by introducing new desirable products which either have a higher value than the site’s average order or compliment the site’s current range of products. For example, if you’re selling LCD monitors, you’ll be looking to add premium cables in addition to the standard cables (complimentary products) or introducing new monitors which have a higher value like a premium brand. To find these ‘desirable’ new products, I often look at the internal site search queries to see what customers are looking for, especially when no results are found. You can also use Google Analytics to view your internal search results by enabling site search.

7. Cross selling other products – a great cross selling scheme depends on two things (well more, but let’s keep it short for now). First where the cross selling products are placed on the site and second how well you’ve defined the synergy between various products.

8. Limited edition products (limited stock) – creating a sense of urgency is a great way to push customers towards the right products. Assuming you’ve got your hands on a limited edition or limited stock product with high desirability this method has been known to increase basket size, though granted you’ll find it hard to maintain the uplift due to the nature of the offer.

9. Drive more qualified traffic – if you’re looking at your average order in total and not based on traffic sources, you’re not seeing the big picture. Some traffic sources will convert better and spend more while other traffic sources will convert less and spend less. For example, you might find that your affiliate marketing channel has a high average order compared with social networks so naturally you should invest more in this qualified traffic source.

10. Launch a reward system – tier based reward system is normally associated with increasing conversion rates, however I found that implemented in a tier structure based on the number of products in the basket together with its total value, a reward system can increase average order value as well. There’s also that little issue of what value these points have i.e. what is the reward, which is a subject of another blog post

11. Bonus tip – give some back! Offer to give a percentage of any order value above a certain amount to charity. I’ve had some experience trialling this method and the results were great, though we’ve only implemented it for a few days and tied it with a calender event such as red nose day.

Whether you’re looking for conversion rate optimisation or crafty ways to increase your average order value Conversion Counts can help so do get in touch today. If you’re interested in ways to increase conversion rates, read my post 25 ways to increase conversion rates.

Online PR is now becoming more popular and more affordable, though many agencies and individuals are still struggling to measure the effect online PR has on brand revenue. Normally, PR is the practice of managing the flow of information between an organization and the public, however online PR is the practice of managing the flow of information and its direct effect on an organisation’s bottom line.

Brand, Product and Service Web popularity

Understanding how online PR has increased the popularity of an organisation and its service. Google trends: Website and keywords based Google Trends Tool. Google Trends analyses a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for a term, relative to the total number of searches conducted on Google over time. It then shows a graph with the results.

Twitter buzz: Another way of monitoring a website’s popularity is to see if people on Twitter are talking about it using tools such as TwitterHolic.com , TwitGraph.com and TweetStats.com

Trendrr: A free web based service which tracks and compares data. Use Trendrr to identify trends across social graphs and networks, realize the potential of p2p and track engagement metrics all in real time. ROI: Can be calculated based on website conversion rate taking into account medium and long term additional traffic. Popularity following PR – Popularity prior to PR * lead value = ROI.

Website Traffic & UVs

Understanding how online PR has increased the number of website visitors. Using a client’s own analytics either by creating a unique landing page (www.example.com/offer) or simply monitoring uplift in traffic to an existing page. 3rd party tools such Compete.com can provide an indication of uplift in traffic, though slightly delayed and not as accurate as a client’s own analytics.

ROI: Assigning the campaign a unique URL or adding a tag to an existing URL, Google Analytics (or any other analytics package) can track the uplift in website traffic as a result of PR activity. Website traffic following PR – Website traffic prior to PR * Website conversion rate = ROI

Phone and Lead Prospects

Understanding how online PR has increased the number of phone leads. Either by assigning a phone number in a PR creative, at the dedicated landing page or comparing calls prior to and after PR activity, phone calls and conversions are measured.

ROI: Measured using a client’s phone system. Revenue from calls following PR – Revenue from calls prior to PR = ROI (unless unique number is used).

Coupon Redemption and Mail Order

Understanding how online PR has increased the organisation’s revenue by using coupons and mail order. Either by providing a discount code or by measuring the uses of an active coupon prior to and after PR (promotion code).

ROI: Measured by the amount of uses. Total revenue = ROI.

Social Bookmarking

Understanding how online PR has increased the popularity of the organisation and its service in social media. Social bookmarking is a method for internet users to store, organize, search and manage bookmarks of web pages on the internet with the help of metadata. Users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public (can be saved privately) and shared with other people or groups. The end result is quick and easy access to a URL.

Socialmeter is a web tool that scans how popular a web page is throughout major social websites such as Digg, Stumbleupon, and Delicious. It gives the matrix a “socialmeter” which can help determine how popular a website (or product is) within the social landscape. Popuri.us is another tool which checks at-a-glance the link popularity of any website based on its ranking (Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati etc.), social bookmarks (del.icio.us, etc), subscribers (Bloglines, etc). However and perhaps quite suprisingly, QuarkBase seems to offer the most accurate reporting for social popularity. quarkbase is a mashup of over 30 data sources and many algorithms gathering information from the internet on various topics like social popularity, traffic, associated people, etc.

We expect a PR campaign to generate more brand searches and generic searches, this is easily compared with historical and seasonal data to demonstrate uplift. Specifically we look to measure, search inventory, CTR, leads and sales for brand and generic terms.

ROI: Harder to demonstrate direct ROI, however it is possible when using website conversion rate / revenue per user.

Pay Per Click Uplift

Understanding how online PR has increased the popularity of the organisation and its service in the search engines by increasing CTR and reducing CPC.

ROI: Historical data. Revenue from PPC following PR – Revenue from PPC prior to PR based on generic and brand keywords (comparing the same relative dates) = ROI.

Affiliate Marketing Uplift

Understanding how online PR has increased the popularity of the organisation and its service within the affiliate channel. Similar to PPC uplift, we expect a PR campaign to generate more brand searches and generic searches which will reach affiliate websites as well. The uplift is easily demonstrated by comparing historical and seasonal data to demonstrate uplift. Specifically we look to measure, impressions, clicks, sales, conversion rate, clickthrough rate and average EPC.

ROI: Historical data. Revenue from affiliate channel following PR – Revenue from affiliate channel prior to PR based (comparing the same relative dates) = ROI.

Blog and Forum Buzz

Understanding how online PR has increased the popularity of the organisation and its service in the blogs and forums. An effective way to determine a website’s popularity is by tracking its RSS feed subscriber trends. If a website uses feed burner, the leading provider of RSS feeds services – the matrix will use a “score” which is currently just a summation of the results found (useful for comparing social media website popularity of different websites).

ROI: Using analytics software, it’s easy to show revenue by source and link it back to the referring website or blog. The matrix suggests the more blog and forum buzz, the more sales the client will see. Of course negative buzz could also occur which might result in less or no sales from blogs and forums.

Website Backlinks Count and Analysis

Understanding how online PR has increased the number of links pointing to the organisation and its service. By using Yahoo Site Explorer and other tools, it’s possible to inspect aspects of a client’s URL. The “Inlinks” feature will show details about web pages that link back to the particular URL. By doing this, Site Explorer gives highly relevant insights on how popular a website is based on how many web pages are linking to it.

ROI: Comparing backlinks prior to PR and following PR based on URL keywords ranking. Then applying 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%, 10% search engine click heat map / conversion rate or using website analytics and again comparing dates.

Search Engine Page Index

Understanding how online PR has increased the number of organisation’s indexed pages. Number of index pages prior to PR compared with the number of pages following PR. Consider using a query like ” site:domain.com” which will show you a list of the number of pages indexed.

ROI: Revenue from new indexed pages according to analytics software.

Increasing website revenue doesn’t always mean generating more traffic and spending more money. Many ecommerce websites use little or no on-site promotions which is a great shame as these promotions will increase conversion rates by converting more existing visitors into customers. The list below covers both conventional ideas to create a great website promotion and how to market the promotion once everything is ready.

Discount Promotions

1. Website wide discount – offer a discount across the website
2. Category wide discount – offer a discount across one category
3. Product wide discount – offer a discount for one particular product
4. Time limited discount - offer a discount across the website, category or product time limited for one day, weekend or week
5. Discount over a certain amount - offer a discount for customers spending over a certain amount
6. Discount on second product – offer a discount on the second product within one order
7. Discount on future order – offer a discount on any future order, though in my experience it won’t convert as well as the other forms of discount

Product Promotions

8. Buy one get on free - one of my favorites and has the added value of increasing CTR in AdWords (yes, do use it in your AdWords copy)
9. Product bundles – take 2 or three similar products which complete themselves and offer the three at a reduced price (taking onto consideration that delivery costs are reduced)
10. Free gift with any product – offer a free and highly relevant gift when buying any product
11. Free gift with a certain product – same as above, but based around a certain product
12. Product of the day - offer one product every day at a super competitive price which has the added value of increasing the website’s stickiness
13. Category around an event – offer highly desirable products around one calendar event, mothers day for example

Delivery Promotion

14. Website wide free delivery - offer free delivery across the website
15. Category wide free delivery - offer free delivery across one category
16. Product wide free delivery - offer free delivery for one particular product
17. Time limited free delivery - offer free delivery across the website, category or product time limited for one day, weekend or week
18. Free delivery over a certain amount – offer free delivery for customers spending over a certain amount
19. Free delivery entire order when a second product is added – offer free delivery when 2 or more products are brought together
20. Competitions – any paid customer will enter into a prize winning competition
21. Price drop – great for discontinued products, reduce the price further with every purchase until the product is out of stock
22. Cash back offer - offer percentage of the purchase price back (also available via PayPal)
23. Double loyalty points – double the loyalty points given (when applicable)

Channel Promotions

24. Affiliate marketing channel – offer any of the discount, product or delivery promotion just to your affiliate programme
25. Pay Per Click channel - offer any of the discount, product or delivery promotion just to paid search traffic

How to promote the offer

26. On site banners – list the promotion across the website internal banners
27. Website service emails and newsletters – add a link to the website service emails such as account confirmation, forgot password etc and of course to the website newsletter
28.  Affiliate programme – communicate the promotion to the affiliate channel and consider adding incentives for promotion conversions from the affiliate channel
29. Pay Per Click Advertising – list the promotion in ad creative and drive traffic to the precise promotion
30. Display Advertising – same as above
31. Website blog – list the promotion on the blog
32. Company official email signature – ask all company employees to include a short message and a link back the promotion
33. Google Checkout icon (for discount code) - Google Checkout offers a neat option to include a discount percentage within its icon (when the promotion is discount)

Finally

While there’s no dispute that search engine optimisation and other online marketing services are a great way to get qualified traffic, website owners often overlook the potential to increase conversion rates and generate more revenue by optimising the merchandising offer and converting more visitors into paying customers. What has been working for the high street for ages, can work even better online.

Hope you find our tips useful.

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Image by Flickr