Click to Play

Understanding Bing's Toolbox
Before Bing launched, many people speculated what it would offer. Webmasters, developers, and advertisers were primarily concerned with...

Recent Articles

Keeping Your Customer Engaged During Checkout
Moving customers through the checkout process effectively is a critical element toward closing any sale. Throughout this process you will need to...

How To Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment
If you run a retail/ecommerce website, cart abandonment is the one of the most frustrating parts of your business. Imagine getting someone all the way to your web checkout with a cart full of products or services...

Consumers Researching Products Indepth Before...
Econsultancy has the results of a survey by Channel Advisor (PDF) on online shopping in the US. The semi-annual survey shows that online shopping is...

Ensuring Your Ecommerce Growth In A Weak Economy
It's no secret that the internet can enable small business to compete on an equal playing field with larger online competitors; however, due to budget differences between the two the approach might be a bit different...

Investing In Bing For Ecommerce Strength
Over the past month several of our customers have been interested in how Microsoft's advertising push for Bing has affected their site traffic. Overall, there have been...

Ecommerce Sites Need Continual Analysis To...
As more and more retailers feel the effects of this difficult economy, there is a ray of hope that radiates to those utilizing the internet for a source of sales (often...

09.22.09

How To Quickly Increase Your Sales 11%

By Andy Beal

If you're B2C web site is not displaying McAfee's SECURE trustmark you may as well pack up the shop and go live off the land. At least, that's what McAfee would like you to believe.

In its new (somewhat self serving) report Digital Window Shopping: The Long Journey to Buy, McAfee found that in a study of 165 million shoppers-my, what a big number you have-sales conversions were 11% higher on those sites that displayed some kind of security seal. In addition, 65% of shoppers take their sweet time making their final purchase-with an average delay of almost 34 hours from decision to handing over their credit card digits.

McAfee goes on to share some rather vanilla advice to etailers, but here's my take on the topic.

Secure your shopping cart: if you're asking for a credit card number, you'd be better be showing https and not http in the navigation bar.

Use a padlock: that little yellow padlock that displays when a web site is secure? Yeah, use it too!

Be transparent: I'm not entering my credit card until I know what tax and shipping you're going to charge.

Don't make me register first: look, it's OK to ask me to create an account, but do so only AFTER I have completed my transaction. Asking me prior, may scare me away.

Who, where, how? Who are you, where are you located, and how do I reach you if I have a problem? If your site doesn't answers those basic questions, I'm off!


Privacy & T&C: We both know I'm not going to actually read this stuff, but if I don't see the links anywhere in your footer, it will raise a red flag.

Sealed with a kiss: OK, yes I admit, some kind of pretty security seal-a la McAfee-will help too! ;-)

Those are my tips. What tips do you have for securing retail transactions and improving conversions?

Comments

About the Author:
: Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world's most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian. You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.
About EnterpriseEcommerce
EnterpriseEcommerce provides the news, expertise and information needed to integrated eCommerce into the enterprise. EnterpriseEcommerce knows that Integrated eCommerce Drives Business.
iEntry





EnterpriseEcommerce is brought to you by:

ActivePro.com EnterpriseWebPro.com
AdvertisingDay.com EntrepreneurNewz.com
CareerNewz.com ERPupdate.com
CRMNewz.com InsideOffice.com
EcommNewz.com WebproNews





 
-- EnterpriseEcommerce is an iEntry, Inc. publication --
iEntry, Inc. 2549 Richmond Rd. Lexington KY, 40509
2009 iEntry, Inc.  All Rights Reserved  Privacy Policy  Legal


archives | advertising info | news headlines | free newsletters | comments/feedback | submit article


Enterprise Ecommerce Home Page About Article Archive News Downloads WebProWorld Forums Jayde iEntry Advertise Contact WebProWorld Forum Intergrated eCommerce Drives Business Enterprise Ecommerce News Archives About Us Feedback