10 Ways to Optimize Your E-Commerce by James Brockbank #342

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebResults. I am Charles Lewis, your client results advocate. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. This is podcast number 342. 342. We're already like just eight away from eight away. As always, we do have a tip from our previous podcast, and that tip is include a CTA at the end of your blog post. Look, if you're taking the time to write this blog post and somebody's actually taking the time to read the entire thing, give them a call to action at the end. I don't know, at least back to your phone number or form or download or whatever your action is. Boom. Please remember, we are filmed live here in Houston, Texas. And Chuck and I, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. And our mantra is... Do not be a douche. Don't be a douche. It is not a good look. Not at all. We have an article for you. So this is interesting because the last podcast that I was in... It was on 340. Right? Yeah. The podcast after that, I was not in, and it was you and Daniel kicking in here. And then so we're back to it, and we're... Got an article. Got an article, man. We're back on Search Engine Journal. I want to give a punch in the face to James Brockbank. Posted this article a couple days ago on the 3rd. 10 tips for mastering e-commerce conversion rate optimization. Ooh. That's good. 10 tips for mastering e-commerce conversion rate optimization. So we'll get in and see. Really good. We'll have something to add because we've struggled in the past with an e-commerce site and getting it to convert. So we'll have some great... Yeah. A lot of the things he mentioned, we implemented over time just trying to do things. Exactly. So... Now we know when we get e-commerce that they're done right. So, hey, if you're in a position, you have some

sort of electronic device, go ahead and tweet. Yeah. Tweet us. Make sure you tweet us. Use the hashtag SEOpodcast. This is number 342. And tag us in it at eWebResults at BestSEOPodcast. That way we can follow you back. And do all of our social networking stuff. Excellent. If you noticed... Yeah, I saw the tear. I was like... You heard the tattoo got fired up. I think I got a little blood there, too. He was... It was a new guy. New guy. New guy. Not good at adding tattoos. Yeah, I get a tear tattoo every time we don't get a review. And if we don't get a review and we don't get 10 shikos... 10 shikos. Yeah, those are shares, likes, and follows. I don't know what I do then. Well, what I do is I tell you how you can leave a review so I don't have to get another tear tattoo. That's what I do. So, here's how you can leave us a review. One of them is real easy. It has three steps. Go on to iTunes. Create an account. Write a review. Hopefully, you will make that review. Five stars. And if you want to, send us an email. Podcast at... eWebResults.com And, you know, we'll read it. Charles, normally we have reviews from iTunes. iTunes, that's the one place we didn't check, could have prevented a tear tattoo. We did. But you got it. Didn't check iTunes. Just had a little situation. Yeah, frustrating. Took us offline from iTunes. And I'd just rather not discuss it. I'm healing. I'm trying to get past it. Just let it go. Breathe in, breathe out, let it go. So, we will tell you. That's one of the ways you can leave us a review. Another is... Unless somebody find it in their heart, just feel like donating your boy Chuck a brand new MacBook Pro, then we can find our reviews. This is a dual purpose, right? So, his car got jacked, MacBook Pro missing, and that's usually where he checks the reviews. And

when he checks the reviews, I often don't get tatted. So, it's like a win-win-win situation, mostly for us. And, you know, if you want to do that, you know, we'll make arrangements. The next place you can leave us a review, it's on Google My Business. It's usually incredibly hard to get to somebody's Google My Business page. We've made it very easy for you. All you need to do is go to ewebresults.com slash... Google Plus. Or slash... Google Plus. Or slash... You saw my one-finger puff mark right there. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly the sound I had in my head. And G Plus. Or... G Plus. All of those will take you to... Actually, it'll take you to a search result page and then a pop-up that says, hey, click here to write a review. And the reason that happens is because if you know, finding your actual Google Plus page has become amazingly difficult. If you don't search and include the words Google Plus in your search, that page will never show up. Even if you click it on the Maps listing, it still won't show up. You literally... I think they're probably about to do away with it. It'll just disappear. Well, Google My Business will stay, though, right? Yeah, but I mean, the whole plus aspect of it, yeah, I think that's about to be 86th. Yep. What does that look like? Let's see. There's another place you could leave us a review that we would really appreciate. And that's Stitcher. Yeah. The best way to get to Stitcher is go to our website, eWebResults.com. Click past the homepage, and then you'll find the Stitcher link. I think at the bottom footer, you'll find it. And that will land you right there. Press the stars to leave a review. Those are the places that we would prefer. Hey, you know, if you want to leave us a Yelp review, good luck. Yeah. Good luck. Hey, we got somebody tuning in on Facebook Live. Welcome, Daniel. All right. So next, we're going to get into,

hey, we talked about Shikos. Yep. You explained what a Shiko is. A Shiko is the eWeb branded term for social engagement. It stands for shares, likes, and follows. Yep. So there are a number of ways that you can Shiko us, and that starts by getting onto a platform such as facebook.com slash eWebResults. YouTube.com slash eWebResults. Twitter.com slash eWebResults. And Instagram.com slash eWebResults. And LinkedIn.com slash company slash eWebResults. All of those will take you to our portfolio or profile on those pages. Please Shiko us there. Next, we've got, if you're a PHP genius or if you're a WordPress guru, we're probably looking for you and what you can do in order to join our team. Yeah, just hit us up. Give us a call. Leave an audio resume. 713-510-7846. If you would like a free website analysis. Wait, I left out a word. What was that word? Comprehensive. Comprehensive website analysis. Actually, we're going to shift it because it's really going to be a profit analysis, a website profit analysis. How profitable is your website? Just think about that for a minute. Is your website actually generating revenue? Is it increasing profit? Is it turning website visitors into leads, qualified leads that turn into business? If not, then your website needs a profit analysis. How much more profitable does it need to be so that you can hire somebody to take care of the website and the internet marketing for you? Yeah. So, that's the focus on that. In order to get that profit analysis, just go to eWebResults.com. You will see a green button. We are changing the text on it. Right now, it says free web analysis, so get that, but it will be a profit analysis. It will be a profit analysis. Do we have any cat? I'll go. No, I'll go cat today. No, I'll go cat. All right. So, I got a little bit of news. I thought this was interesting. I think we mentioned in our podcast a while back that Elon Musk had said there's like a one in

two billion chance that we are not in a matrix-like simulation. And now there's some article that said two billionaires are actually actively investing and trying to break out of the matrix. So, if it's highly probable that we're in a matrix, then they're trying to find the blue pill? They're trying to find the... They need to find the... What's her name? What's her name? Democulator? No. No. Oh, yeah. Trinity. Yeah. They need to find a lady. What's the lady's name? It's Trinity. No, Trinity was part of the matrix, but they all went to go see the psychic lady. They need to find her. I was going to say the truth-sayer, sooth-sayer. That sounds right. Sooth-sayer. Something like that. Maybe something like that. Yeah. Then you're going to find her. And then take the blue pill. Yeah. So, apparently, they're investing for some sort of Google map to get to the sooth-sayer. Not tooth-sayer. I don't necessarily say I obviously don't believe it, but I will say that there's definitely other dimensions that are happening that I believe affect the things we do now. I think just the whole concept is fascinating. You watch that movie, and you're like, yeah, I would want to know. And I'm sitting here today, and I'm like, hmm. I might not want to know. It might be really, really bad on the other side, and I'm kind of good to say ignorance is bliss. If I'm a battery for someone else, you know, it feels like a decent life. I don't know. It's just interesting. Next, Moore's Law. And this was kind of very interesting. The first company that I started is a carbon nanomaterial manufacturing company. You know, Moore's Law is the law that the speed of calculations or the quantity of calculations that can occur double every seven years. And what that means, what that has meant is that we're getting smaller and smaller and smaller chips, right? And they knew that for silicon, seven nanometers was kind of a cutoff. After that point, you end up getting into,

you know, quantum physics problems, and so it starts falling all apart. They made a, out of a nanotube, they made a stop gate or whatever that's called so that they can actually start to consider making chips out of a, out of like one nanometer thick. So that's, they're thinking going to keep us on track with Moore's Law for a little bit longer. So. Very cool. I saw the new Pixel phone from Google. There's an ad for it. The part I loved about it is when it says, 3.5 millimeter jack. Satisfyingly not new. Yeah, burn, Apple burn, right? So that was good. That's the news that I have. We got a little bit more news. We got a little bit more news. So let's get into some more marketing specific news. Let's talk Google, right? So, so Google is testing, this almost was Algo Cat. Right. It was almost Algo Cat, but not quite. So you know how you can do a search and go to Google, you start typing and you'll get search assist. Right. Now, if you go to Google and you just click your cursor in there without typing anything, your search assist will begin to show you the most recent searches. From you or like? Just period. Trending searches. This is what's trending right now what people are looking for. Great thing to do. Especially if you're in an entertainment company or something like that, you're trying to figure out what content you should be promoting and writing about. Figure out what's trending searching and then write content about that. Absolutely. Here, dig this. This is going to be interesting. We got one client that may be affected by this. So Google is fighting fraud now and cracking down on plumbers and locksmiths in particularly. Okay. Because they got this thing called locksmith fraud, right? You ever heard of locksmith fraud? I have not. So apparently there's this huge scam where you can do a Google search, right, for let's say locksmith in Houston. Right. Right. And so you're going to get

several results. You'll get some paid listings, you'll get some local listings, and you'll get some organic listings, right? Well, the locksmith scam kicks in is when you call one of those numbers, it redirects to some call center overseas somewhere, and they get you a locksmith. Right. And that locksmith shows up, and before they can do anything, they just drill your lock and get you in. And so now you have access to your home, but they- Your lock is screwed. Your lock is screwed, and now your build is high as hell because- That's what they did. That's what they did. Instead of using any alternative sources- Because there's lots of alternatives. They don't have to drill the lock. Credit card, that's one. You know, master key and all sorts of other ways, you know. Yeah. And so that's a scam. And so what Google is doing to circumvent that is putting in a tool verification process. First off, your Google My Business page has to already be verified. And if it's verified, then they're going to roll out a third-party verification to verify that you are legit. Right. And they're only doing that for locksmiths and plumbers. There was no information about why plumbers, because they didn't have a plumber scam going around, but pretty sure Google has some sort of information about that. So if you're a locksmith, or a plumber, or frankly, any other mobile service that this will likely roll out to, just be prepared for a third-party verification to make sure that you are legit. More Google news. Yeah. So Google Home. Right. Okay. Google Home is similar- Which I hadn't heard of until just prior to this podcast. So Google Home is the competitor to, let's say, to Amazon Echo and to the other kind of home-based voice-searching technology. Right. Right. And so Google Home, they unveiled it Tuesday, gives you immediate access to Google Assistant whenever you need it. So let's say you ask for a recipe in your kitchen, or ask for the latest sports scores while you're in

your living room, or even current traffic conditions as you're getting ready for work in the morning, just by saying, okay, Google. Right. I thought that was pretty cool. Now what I even like more about it is the fact that if you sync your Google Home with your personal device, then it can access your calendar and your mail, so it opens up a whole new set of questions like, what do I have to do today, or how long, what time should I leave? Right. Those type of answers. And Google Home will access your calendar and then vocalize those answers to you. I just thought it was pretty cool. Very cool. Yeah. It was pretty cool, and it just goes, it's making us more lazy, is what I'm realizing technology is doing. I stopped remembering stuff. I can't. Like, yeah, there's no reason to. Like, oh, let me Google that. Until you can't find your phone. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. That's the worst feeling. So this happened to me. So, you know, the reason I missed the last podcast, I was in Vegas, right? So Vegas, I flew back into Houston on Saturday. So Friday night, I'm out. I'm at a casino, of course, in Vegas, and my phone hit 5%. Oh, okay. So I turned it off, right? I didn't have a charger in the rental car. So when I went to turn it on, just to, like, I knew if I could get pointed in the right direction, I would be good. Then I'd be good, yeah. But, and I've got a pretty good sense, it, like, came on, and as soon as I tried to get into Waze or anything, died. It was done. So I stopped at one gas station, got all the way there, and there's, like, for me, it was an adventure, right? Trying to get somewhere without my phone. Like, that was an actual adventure. So, yeah. Yeah, because your phone, phone dead, missing or lost. Yeah. It's painful. You almost die a little bit. Yeah. Just a little bit.

Because you can't function. You're right. It's like, let me go, no. Hold on, let me call. Oh, yeah. Yeah, don't have a clue what they're going to do. I don't even know if they're in Houston. We got 713-832-217. I don't know if it's 713-832-217. I don't even know the first extension. I don't know the area code of my best friend. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. Yeah, it is. We did have one question. We didn't get this one answered before, right? I think I sent it to you. All right, so, and this could have almost been a review. So, here we go. This is a good question. Hi. Firstly, thanks for the podcast. I greatly enjoy the lively and informative episodes. I have just listened to eight quick checks for duplicate content. This is a previous podcast, obviously. And have some questions. I have looked into the issue quite a lot and discussed it with several experts, but still fail to have a proper answer. I am planning a content hub for a company that operates in several different countries. I want to create a content hub, example, website.com. And depending on the location of the user, he or she will be redirected to the local version. Website.com slash au or au.website.com. You know, whether you're using subdirectors. Yeah, sub.man or director. Okay. Not sure yet. Each local version of the website will have unique content, but also features some articles that are the same on every local version. How can I handle this without fearing to have duplicate content issues? Someone suggested href tag to indicate the difference, but all content will be in English. Any suggestions? That's a mouthful. Yeah. And first off, I'm interested in what type of content. Yeah. Because the concept of content hub first makes me nervous. Yeah. Like that could be a lot of content. And I think duplicate content on your same domain name, it probably is not your biggest issue. Right. Because it's in different languages and different subfolders and everything else. Frankly, you may be

fine there, but I'm more interested in the type of content you plan on creating because if this content is across several other sites, I think that's where your dupe content issue may come or similar content and things like that. Right. In regards to what you've mentioned in the question, whether you go folder structure or subdomain, I think you'll get the same kind of reality either way you go. So, I don't think duplicate content issue will be your challenge. I think one of the things that you can do to help address if there are duplicate content issues, right? Because obviously this ends up being same language, right? U.S., Australia, et cetera. Is that manage or canonical, right? And frankly, you're just going to have to play around with this. So, it's quite possible that you won't be subject to a penalty, right? And we've debated before whether there's a penalty or not a penalty. I'm now a little bit more convinced that there's actually a penalty, even though they say there isn't. And so, if you properly canonical the article, right? So, you've got it on your .au site or your .australia subdomain and you've got it on your main site and you're saying, look, one or the other is the origination of this content, I think you avoid the penalty but still have the opportunity to show up in the search results. But that's a guess. That's a huge guess. And that's an extremely complex .htaccess file, you know, because that's a lot of redirects. No, you can get canonical in the HTML. Okay. Right? So, we could say, hey, the Australian version. And I would play around with this and say, okay, let's look at articles. Maybe they're placing well in the .com, right? In the U.S. version, assuming U.S. version. And then let's say, okay, let's adjust this and say, let's canonical the originator of the content over the .au and see how that starts to place and adjust, right? So, you can, you know, at the end of the day, everything we

do, the reason you're not getting the perfect answer is because everything we do is theory and conjecture, right? It is Google's algorithm. We don't know the algorithm, but we have a lot of experience trying to work around the algorithm or with the algorithm. And so, we would just test and measure, like, anything you said. I'd be more interested in testing coming up with a final URL, whether it's the Australian version or the China version or whatever version it is. If all of this content is in English, then the content on either one of these versions is the same. Right. And so, I'd be more interested in figuring out which one is going to be your primary URL and then redirecting all of them there and just having them still accessible in your menu so people can find them once they land. But there's one final URL that Google understands that this is the main. And that's that canonical tag pointing back to that one URL. So, man, great question. Those are the ones that you've got to research to really understand. Those are the ones that not only you've got to research, you've actually got to try it. Yeah. You've got to try it. You need to write some content and post it. And, unfortunately, hope it gets a lot of traffic and fails kind of in a way just so you can learn what the difference was. The ideal situation is like Australia gets lots of traffic, U.S. doesn't, and then you can switch the canonical in that case if that's what you're going to play with and find out what happens. Exactly. Good question. Great question. That's a little follow-up. That's why that works. Punch in the face. I didn't copy his name, his or her name over here. Punch in the face. I got a pitiff also. Right. This pitiff goes to, hit us up on Twitter. This is at Helpful Lee. He hit us up, man. He wrote a new post called Digital Marketing Podcast. There's that term, Digital Marketing again.

Right, right. I'll tell you, it's changing from internet marketing, online marketing, digital marketing. But he wrote a post, man. Digital Marketing Podcast, you should try. I want to read an excerpt from his post. Okay, yeah. So, he put us number one. There's like 10 of them on there. He has us number one. And, dig this. He says, the show is divided into meat and potatoes. We're still in the potatoes right now. He says, the potato portion comes first. News about searching social media changes and about how to connect with them. Although the self-promotion in the potatoes is a bit much for some, if you step back, you will see that they're putting on a clinic on how to build an audience by providing value and asking for the connection. Dude. Punch in the face. See you, hopefully you've figured it out more. Yeah. Yeah. And the plan is coming together more. You figured it out, man. Punch in the face to you. Appreciate that support and the love, man. We'll be sending you the image that you asked for in a minute. And, of course, we'll be linking to you. Absolutely. That's good stuff. That's great stuff. All right. So, I believe that is the potatoes of our podcast. It is time to get into the meat. Yeah. So, today's meat, man, comes from Search Engine Journal. I want to give a punch in the face to James Brockbank. Yeah. I think I said that right. First time seeing his author there. I was like, ooh, new author. That's a new guy. Yeah. James. Exactly. James posted this article, 10 tips for mastering e-commerce conversion rate optimization. 10 tips for mastering e-commerce conversion rate optimization. What does all that mean? Well, he got some tips, about 10 of them, on what changes and what things you should do on your e-commerce website to increase the amount of conversions you get. All right. Let's dig right in. Number one. Number one. He says, never underestimate the power of a search box. Oh, yeah. Learn. Listen, Lord.

Oh, yeah. I'm not sure we underestimated it. And we're talking about one project that we had a long time ago that we struggled with and eventually got some much better results, not even what we would have wanted. But way better than it was. But way better. And we knew that search box was valuable. We just went through like eight iterations of what the results should look like based on the content of both the blog and the product. And the content. So he goes on to say, with an estimated 30% of visitors using the search box of an e-commerce store to quickly find products which they're looking to buy, it's important to take the time to ensure you are using this to your advantage. And he's right. And to kind of allude to what Chris was saying, we actually experimented with this where we had a site and we had a functional search feature. But in all honesty, it wasn't as functional as it could be. We were dealing with a site that we had merged, right? And so they had tons of blog content and tons of on-page content. And then they had 800 products, right? That also had content and descriptions. And so when using the search, we were pulling information from a blog post, information from a static page, and information from the product store, which is okay. But in a product search, people are looking for products. And so we had to come back and reconfigure it to which order these results should be in with the product becoming first, right? Here's another tip, since you're talking about your search box, make sure that your search captures different variations of the product name. So maybe this product has a hyphen in it. Well, you need to make sure your search is with the hyphen, without the hyphen, with a space, no space, with an underscore instead of the hyphen. However many ways people may type it in searching for one product, however people may type it in searching for one product, you

want to make sure that that result is actually being returned. Take advantage of the search box, because people can look for it. And by the way, let's just be very clear about this. Out of the box, WordPress search needs some work. Needs some work. Needs some work. Our coders spent a lot of time, especially in this case, it was the blend of WordPress and the blog content associated with it. And WooCommerce with all of the products. Yeah, and so that was non-trivial changes that our programmer made to that. Yeah, so yeah, upgrade your search box if you're using WordPress. But if you've got an e-commerce site, take advantage of a search box. Number two. Two. Offer universal free shipping. Yes. Seems obvious, right? Yeah. He says charging for shipping, especially when your competitors aren't, can be a conversion killer for e-commerce stores. It is absolutely vital that you regularly monitor what your competitors are offering in order to be able to at least match what they're doing or ideally better it. He's right. Look, offer free shipping, period. I mean, overstock, everybody, everything ships free, right? Unless you're on Amazon and if you're a Prime member, then it still ships free in two days. And so you want to make sure that you're taking advantage of free shipping. Worst thing you want to do is offer a similar product. Maybe even at a better price than your competitor and you have a better customer service experience and overall better system, but their shipping is free and yours isn't. Yeah. I'm just going to shop with them. That's just how it works. So you want to offer free shipping, period. Like I said, unless you're in a situation where you're shipping freight, right? This is not coming on a FedEx truck. It's coming on a FedEx flatbed. That's a little different. Obviously, you can probably lose money if you offer free shipping then. But any other thing, offer free shipping. Don't debate it. If you're going to lose a couple of dollars, then lose a couple

of dollars. Number three. Three. Implement independent reviews, right? Independent. He says, at the end of the day, if you read a review directly on a merchant's e-commerce store, what's to say that this is genuine and hasn't been left as a result of gifting or offering a financial incentive? He's right. I've never trusted on-page reviews or testimonials or whatever you want to call them. Everyone goes to Yelp or they go to Google or they go to Angie's List. They find some third-party review, you know, TripAdvisor, wherever I can get a review about your business, I'm more prone to respect it and believe it from a third-party than what's posted directly on your site. Like, especially in a position where you're selling products because you're going to tell me anything so I can buy. And so it's more important that you get, like, reviews from people who've used the product. Make sure they post them on third parties. And then you want to link to those third-party reviews from that product page, especially if that review references that specific product. And so that way, the person who is on your site and looking at that product can actually see the review from someone who actually used that product. Send those conversions up. But it only works if they're third-party reviews. So as you try to post a review on your site that somebody's written, and even though it may be legit, they really emailed you this praise report for the simple fact that they emailed it to you and didn't post it online themselves, kind of takes away some of the value, unfortunately. Did you just say praise report? Praise report. That's a praise report. They emailed you, I love this product. I like it. It's a praise report. Yeah. It has no value because they didn't post it publicly. So you should reply to them and be like, great, share this on here with a link. Copy-paste this, right? It sounds easier. Copy-paste. Copy-paste this on this link with a link to your Yelp, link to

your Google+, link to wherever you want that review to be at. And please make it five stars. Definitely. Number four. Four. Offer live chat support. Another thing we learned on the same e-commerce site. Look, he says if a user has a quick question which they won't answer before completing the purchase, they may not have the time available to pick up the phone or wait for an email response. Live chat, however, can usually deliver an answer in these cases within just a few minutes. Yeah. He's right. We learned that. Listen, I am definitely a fan of this. I live chat with people all the time prior to searching or prior to completing the purchase. I'll literally search, find, read, add to cart, begin checkout process, and think of a question. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And now, I really... And that's where they could lose you. Definitely. If you don't have instant chat. Because, yeah, I'm not about to call because I usually search, you know, late night or I just don't like to talk on the phone. Right. And so... Watching the game, you don't need any distractions. Don't need no distractions. Yeah. I'd rather just chat you real quick. Hey, you know, does this come with blah? Yep. Offer live chat support. He buys a lot of blah. I got a closet full of blah. For real. But offer live chat, man, is kind of self-explanatory. It's just necessary. Anytime you can give someone the option to engage with you immediately, take advantage. Here's an example. So, a service that we offer our clients is actually concierge chat. And it can run a couple of different ways. One of the ways is, if you've got somebody who can man it from 9 to 5, great, man it. Because you can answer all the questions. Oh, yeah. Exactly. Really, we're our concierge. After hours. People aren't going to be able to answer the questions as in-depth as you. We can handle it after hours and on weekends and on holidays for you so that

you've got a chat feature 24-7. What we've noticed is that just getting somebody to engage with what we believe, because there's no real way to test and measure this. What we believe is that when somebody engages, like Charles at midnight and gets some, you know. Even if it's not an answer. Yeah. I've engaged with somebody, so I'm not going to search for some other place where I can do that. Yeah. And so, yeah. Even if that engagement said, you know what, I don't know if it comes with blah, but I'll have someone respond to you in the morning. Yeah. I'm subject to complete my purchase. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Or you might just put it on hold and not search some other site. I might inflate your time on site, because I let my computer screen up for the rest of the night. But that page is still there, and I will eventually check out. Yeah. Because in-chat can do that. Absolutely. Number five. Five. Communicate your value proposition. That's a good one. Your value proposition could be your own products, your price point, your knowledge and experience, or even your ability to have a purchase delivered faster than anyone else. Jimmy John's. Right? That's their value proposition. But if users aren't aware of it, then how can they use it to make a purchase decision? Yeah. How many sites do we see that don't have a value proposition or a unique selling proposition or a credibility piece? And all of these things contribute to your value proposition. Absolutely. You have to tell people why they should buy it from you instead of your competitors. Yeah. You can't just present the product and a great price and free shipping and expect them to purchase. Not if you're not Amazon. Not anymore. Yeah. I mean, consider this. People like Walmart and Overstock and huge big e-tailers can't even do it anymore. They have to display a value proposition. Yeah. They just have to. Yeah. And so that means you need to also highlight your

unique selling propositions for better engagement. Let people know that we will deliver this freaky fast. Right? Let people know whatever your value add is, make it known. Make it prominent. Make it visible. And weave it throughout the checkout process so by the time they check out, they're fully aware of it. Number six. Six. Improve the quality of your product images. This is a good one. Learned this lesson. We had to go back in and can't have a site with, you know, some images are straight, others are sideways, some are big, some are small. It just makes for a really clunky looking checkout process and order process and it's just not a good experience. Matter of fact, consumers want to not only, consumers want to see not only the very highest quality images alongside a product, but those which present it in an in-use setting. Right? So not just a white background, black background, green background of product. Right. Right, but actual picture of person using product, picture of person drinking product, picture of person cleaning product. Wearing blah. Wearing the blah, exactly. Multiple uses as well. So multiple pictures. Maybe you do have a blah picture on a white background, but that blah picture has multiple angles, top, bottom, left, right, side. And then you have multiple images of blah being cleaned, being used, being put up, being repaired, you know, whatever it looks like. Those type of images can sell your product for you. And like pro tip, because this is one of the lessons. Well, we were working with this client very diligently to get actual non-stock photos. Get your own images. Yes. Make them real. Because we had all these stock photos. This was a hair weave product. And all we had was stock photos. And in fact, I got a prospect right now that's got stock photos on their website. My first advice to her is going to be get rid of the stock photos. You've got to have your own photos. Especially if you offer an exclusive product like that.

If you're not selling a product that's not found everywhere, right, like a broom or a hammer, it's going to look the same whether you get it from Lowe's, Home Depot, or the Dollar Store. I don't know. If you get it from Dyson, it's going to look different. It's going to go different. It's going to perform a little different also. And I bet Dyson has an original exclusive image, right? And they won't have a stock photo. And so the point is, if you're selling products, you're in an e-commerce situation, especially if you're dropshipping, right? If you're dropshipping, then you probably have access to a whole slew of stock photos and descriptions, which we'll get into in one of these next coming points. Change that stuff. Like, do not use that default stock images that all of your, ironically, colleagues and competitors have. Right. Because if you're dropshipping, then technically y'all colleagues, because y'all are using the same manufacturer and distributor. Well, yeah. And then y'all competitors, because y'all want to steal each other's business. Exactly. Desperately. And the way you can steal their business is take your own pictures. Yep. Take your own pictures. And here's the pro tip. How about this? Engage your buyers to supply those pictures. Yes. Some sort of social incentive. Some sort of take a picture and send it back with this and get some sort of percentage off deal. Now you have a great, original, user-generated product image that you can use on your site. I definitely do that. Yeah. That's a great tip right there. Yes, it is. Number eight. Eight. Invest in product video content. Yeah. Yeah. Product video content. We missed seven. Seven. I did miss seven. I flipped pages already. I was like, I had the wrong fingers. I screwed this up. How did I miss seven? Seven. Take time to perfect your product descriptions. I said that was coming up. Yeah. Yeah, your product description. Yeah, your product description. So, not only using the stock photos that come from your manufacturer or your distributor, but

those descriptions that come from that. I'm trying to think. I used to drop ship from one company some years ago. I saw the infomercial late at night and it sold me. Right. It was like, you know, the one with the guy who used to be on Star Trek. Oh. No, he used to be on Star Search. Star Search. Ed McMahon. Yeah. And so, remember, he had a little kind of drop shipping. Yeah. Business. Yeah. Business. And so, I bought into that. Right. And so, they sent me the catalog. They sent me the CD. They sent me all these images. And then, I began searching and finding other sites who had all of the exact same images with the exact same description with the exact same layout. And I was like, okay, this is not going to work for me. Right. And so, I ordered my favorite products. Yeah. Took my own pictures. Right. Kind of wrote my own descriptions. And then, I got off the business. Yeah. Because that was way too time consuming. But the point I'm making is, like, you have to do those things. Yeah. Like, if you're drop shipping or if you're just in e-commerce and maybe you're not drop shipping. Maybe you do have these products in-house. But, other companies sell them also. Change your descriptions. Do not use the same description for this product that all your competitors have. That the manufacturer has. Because, you're killing your chances of ranking, first of all. And secondly, if people find your site, you want to present them with some information that they can't get anywhere else. Right. Something unique to you. I don't know. Maybe you highlight your value proposition in that description. In association with the product. Yeah. Exactly. So, now that description is unique and it's associated to you. Don't use the same descriptions. Take time to perfect them. Take that time. All right. Now, number eight. Eight. Invest in product video content. Look, he says, video is the closest a consumer can get to a product without actually

holding it in their hands. And, it's one of the main reasons why those retailers who make the investment in videos are showcasing significant levels of growth. This is the other advice we gave to the hair weave customer. Like, dude, you need videos. You need videos of people running their hair through, their fingers through it, combing it. Yeah. Preferably styling it. Styling it. Cutting it. Washing it. Because people, you know, they need that experience. Yeah. They need to see it. They don't have the option to do that online. Yeah. Not get anyways. I don't know. It's probably coming soon. You know. Maybe the drone drops it off. You can run your hands through it. It can say, oh, no. Take that back. Or, there'll be some kind of virtual, you know, situation where I can put on some goggles and I can look at myself and, you know, there'll be something like that that'll likely be here in the next five years. Yeah. And then, that, but even then, it's virtual. Yeah. Right? And that's just another. And you have to put it together. Exactly. That's just an enhanced form of video. The point is, video helps sell products. Yeah. Right? Maybe you're selling lawnmowers. Well, video of somebody cutting the grass and raising the levels and how clean this cut is. And how easy it is. Yeah. Think about putting another infomercial, right, that would actually sell your product so that it, I don't know, will sell your product. Yeah. Well, the selling point is, what he's saying is, make sure the video captures the selling point. Yeah. Right? So, if your selling point is that this is easy to use, show how easy to use it is in a video. Don't make a 10-minute video. No. Exactly. Yeah. It's so easy. It takes 10 minutes to explain. Yeah. Your video should be less than 90 seconds. Yeah. Period. Especially on the e-commerce site. Yeah. Because this is not the time to show the infomercial. Show that after they check out. Like, hey, here's the

most stuff you might want to do with this. Or maybe on that product page, perhaps. But like on your cart pages and things like that. Quick 90-second video about this particular product. Done. Number nine. Nine. Use clear progress indicators at checkout. Oh, yeah. Look. He goes on to say, in 2015, the average basket abandonment was 68%. Right. That's high. Average basket abandonment. That's like people abandoning their baskets. It's like what you described. You got it put together. There was no chat. Look, I've added to the cart. I'll begin a checkout process. The first straight. The credit card may even be in. Yeah. I just haven't hit checkout. Yeah. You know? And I'm about to abandon this cart. And why does that happen? Because you didn't use a progress indicator. Like, something that told me, Chuck, you almost done. Yeah. Right? Something. We've added that to some of our forums on our sites. So, as soon as you open this forum up, it says, hey, thank you. You just not getting started. You put your name in. It jumps to 40%. Right. You only have one more field to go. You're almost done. That's definitely a form of encouragement to go ahead and finish it. Everybody likes to complete something. Yes. So, give people the option to complete it. Show a progress indicator at the checkout screen. Let them know that you're almost finished. Or even if you wanted to do it before. Right? I've been reading a lot of blog posts lately that say, as soon as you start reading it, it'll let you know up front. This is about a 10-minute read. Oh, yeah. Right? And so, that preps me for the next 10 minutes. All right. Do I save it? Do I schedule the time? I look at the clock. Oh, I got 10 minutes. Let me read this. And so, maybe you add some feature like that. You know, checkouts happen in less than 30 seconds. Oh, okay. Let me just go ahead and get this done. The point is, let people

know how far they are throughout the process, and more importantly, how close they are to being finished, so that way they can check out. Yeah. Last one. Number 10. 10. Offer multiple payment gateways. Obvious answer. Right? He says, by offering more than one payment gateway, you're effectively covering all your bases can ensure that the basket and checkout drop-offs are not caused by issues relating to accepted payment methods. Duh. All right. Give people multiple options for checking out. Don't just offer PayPal because it's easy to implement, don't cost you nothing, and you can get up and going right away. You should do that, so you can't get up and going right away, but set up that merchant account. Make sure it's right. Accept our credit cards. Offer some things like Amazon Pay. Accept Bitcoins. Whatever you have to do to get people's money, accept it. Yeah. Like, just invest the resources to make it so you can accept more resources. I don't know how it works. Like, people, everyone doesn't shop different. Everyone, like, for example, my mom will buy, she uses prepaid cards. Right. She will buy a prepaid Visa card, load up money on that, and use that to shop with. Yeah. So she don't use her personal card. Yeah. Or she will, or she just won't shop online at all. Right. You know, then I got me on the other hand, I, yeah. There you go. Oh, wait. You didn't need it? Exactly. I don't, you know, it is what it is. And so that's a generational difference. Right, right. But the point is, you know, my dad only uses PayPal. Only. Yeah. Only. Even if he don't have no money in PayPal, he knows that PayPal syncs his bank account. And so it's going to pull it out. Yeah. And he'd rather do that because it's a little bit safer. PayPal can get his money back from him if there are any problems. Right. And so you just need to make sure you're offering all these different payment gateways because people shop

online differently. Absolutely. Man, dude, James Brockbank. Punch in the face to you, man. 10 tips for mastering e-commerce conversion rate optimization. This is articles on Searching the Journal. Great article. And I can honestly say that we learned these lessons the hard way. Yes. But for the most part, you were on point with it. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Do we have any what news? Um, no what news. No what news. All right. So, hey, if you like this podcast, I feel like I skipped some part. Yeah, we skipped the part where I say, well, howdy, welcome. Hello. You know, you miss one episode and all of a sudden I've forgotten everything. So if you like this podcast, we're going to ask you to do something really simple for us, please. Yes. Share it. Share it. Share the podcast. Go ahead and share it right now, actually. That'll help us out. And there's a couple of ways, just, you know. With three people. Tag somebody. Share it from Facebook. And tag people there. Retweet it if that's how you got access to it. The key is to tag three people in it. I don't care how you share it, but tag three people in it. Do us that favor. Thank you so much. Let them know about us, please. Hey, if you're looking to grow your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet. The internet. Call eWebResults for increased revenue in your business. Our phone number is 713-592-6724. Just for the record, we make websites. Let's throw that out there. We do a whole lot of other things. Just every now and then, somebody's like, do you guys make websites? Yeah. Why are you asking? You're a podcast listener. Oh, wait. Maybe they've stopped listening by that time. I don't know. We make websites. We do SEO. We do pay-per-click. We do email marketing. We do social media marketing. We can create drip campaigns and anything that involves digital marketing. Hit us up. If we can't do it, we can certainly point you in

the right direction. By the way, we can do it. If you have a referral, that's somebody who's interested in internet marketing, anything that Charles just described. You send them to us. They pay their bill. We pay you. We have a referral strategy in place. I am part of a networking organization here in Houston called Up Social Network. It is fantastic. It's unique. It's different. Up stands for unleashing your potential in your social network. Yes, it means your social network in the room when you're doing business networking, and it means your social network online. If you're in Houston, come check it out. If you're flying to Houston, come check it out. Totally worth your time. This is not some kind of standard networking mixer where you'll stand around and talk to some people, maybe eat something and pass some cards around and hopefully find a prospect. Take that totally different idea for business networking. We're talking about taking that level of networking to the next level, doing it online and presenting content that you can share across your social network. You can share on your website, and that we will promote for you. Yeah. Take advantage. Pretty big. If you're in Houston, come check that out. Please remember, we are filmed live at 5999 West 34th Street, Suite 106, Houston, Texas, 77092. You can get audio, video, and a transcription of this podcast on our website, eWebResults.com. Hey, thank you for making us the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. Thank you. Punch in the face to you, you, you, you, you, you, and everybody else who's listening right now. Punch in the face to you guys watching live right now. Daniel, Francis, Bruce. Thank you all so much. Really appreciate it. Excellent. And, you know, your help and participation has helped us to get on a couple of lists here recently. Yeah. Hey, go find those lists. Share them. Maybe even comment. Comment on them. Comment, yeah. And say, hey, number one is the best, or I can't remember. Matter of fact, I would

do this. If you guys follow us on Twitter, I'll tweet out the list that we have. Yeah. Go comment on our list. Just make us awesome. Awesome. All right. Until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burris. Charles Lewis. Bye-bye for now. Balance check. Balance check. 4-2. Balance check. 1-2. It's your podcast, 342. Entertaining you is what we're about to do. We're doing it on purpose so don't get nervous. It's Charles Lewis, and we're kicking it with Chris Burris. Yeah. It's your podcast, 342. Let's go. Boom.