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The average e-commerce site is effective in getting shoppers to buy less than half the time. Web site design gurus say usability testing can help bring profitability up.

Our 2007 study clearly shows that online retailers are not capitalizing on the customer experience and are overly focused on innovation while ignoring the basics.

One of the more popular features with customers on many ecommerce Web sites is "customer reviews." They allow insight into products and help consumers feel more comfortable making purchases. There are several ways online customer reviews are implemented on ecommerce Web sites, some better than others. In this post we look at how different retailers implement reviews.

What does that page look like just before you "confirm" or "finalize" an order? This can be a big deal in ecommerce. Ecommerce Web sites should consider what their confirmation page offers, just before online shoppers are completely committed.

The Internet makes copying photographs, artwork, and words easy, since a relatively unsophisticated user can just browse the web saving or copying nearly anything that suits his fancy. As an e-business owner you'll want to both protect your photographs and, conversely, ensure that your employees are not taking protected work of others. After all, a copyright violation could cost thousands of dollars in legal fees, time, forced subscription fees, and potential fines. U.S. copyright protection extends to all forms of "expression" including software, written papers, charts, digital files, music, video, and presentations. This protection begins the moment a work is "fixed in a tangible medium of expression," and copyrights are federally enforced. Generally, ideas, short phrases, facts, slogans, and useful articles are not copyright protected, but most everything else is.

I've been a big fan of Crutchfield's marketing for a long time - I consider them to be one of the top retailers in that regard. Here's a perfect example of why: Crutchfield recently ran this email incorporating ratings and reviews (an effective and underused tactic for retail email), and includes content that speaks to various buying modes effectively.

One of the many retail emails I subscribe to is Rampage, which recently notified its mailing list of a new brand called Golden State (separate e-store).

Yesterday we posted a Q&A session with Sally Lowery of Bronto Software on trigger email campaigns. Today we have 2 real-world examples from Amazon. These emails followed up the purchase of a camcorder:

Subscription options for consumables is not necessarily a new concept, but certainly an underused tactic of online retailers. It's far more common to see e-tailers offering tiered pricing (discounts on quantity) to increase basket size. But customers don't always want to order a case lot of something - who has room for a year's worth of coffee in the cupboard? Others don't have the cash-on-hand to pre-purchase items.

According to Marketing Experiments' Dr. Flint McLaughlin, whenever you use an X-Y range in your ad, most people will revert to the first number as the mean (average) standard. In other words, on a range of 35-50%, one will assume that 50% off is the exception, and most items are 35% off. (Slide 18 of PPC Live Optimization Clinic replay)

Many ecommerce businesses receive international orders for both single items as well as large quantities. These businesses usually take credit card payments for the orders, which puts them at great risk of incurring chargebacks, especially for large ticket items and large transactions. They do not want to turn away an order, but they are frustrated with the level of chargebacks they receive. Implementing the appropriate payment methods and properly financing your export sales are two key factors to your success in exporting. The most widely used methods of payment instruments in business-to-business international transactions are bank wire transfers and commercial letters ALTof credit (L/C's). Typical financing can either be obtained through the normal lending channels or through the U.S. government when you have exhausted the conventional options.

Fireclick, an industry leading provider of web analytics services, is proud to introduce the world's first publicly-available web analytics benchmark index. The Fireclick Index provides an objective comparison of key metrics across a variety of segments. Compare the performance of your online business to the many successful industry leading web sites using Fireclick today!

We all want to know which sites, search engines and keywords are sending us traffic. But what about direct type in traffic? When people access your site URL by typing it in from memory, it can be a great indicator of your brand preference, success of your offline and online marketing efforts and customer satisfaction. If you're smart and lucky, you named your site your main-keyword-dot-com and you get search traffic from visitors who use their address bars as search engines. For example, a search on "reusable bags" sends you automatically to "reusablebags.com" which sells…you got it, reusable bags.

Customer reviews certainly help shoppers, but they are not substitutes for weak or generic product descriptions. Unique product descriptions help your search engine optimization, help overcome your customer FUDDs and ultimately sell more product! I want to share a few tips for creating unique, compelling product page copy using customer review content - even when your site has few or no reviews.

Once the party's over, are you leaving customers out in the cold? Thank you pages typically don't receive much design or marketing attention. After all, by the time a site visitor sees a Thank You page the chase is over, right? The visitor purchased a widget, filled out the signup form, or downloaded a white paper - in other words, the web site has won, and another conversion stat has been chalked up in the company's analytics package. Success! Check out our positive ROI!

Jason and Carolyn matched 4 well-known celebs to 4 consumer-mindsets that you should know.