Here’s what you do and how important each part of the process is for sales.
1. Traffic – generate traffic to your site, especially from Google.
What you do:
- Google Adwords (Pay Per Click advertising or PPC)
- Yahoo PPC
- MSN / Bing PPC
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): meta tags
- SEO: URL
- SEO: Headline and body copy
- SEO: xml sitemap for search engines
- SEO: well chosen directory listings and external links
- Shopping Comparison Site Integration (e.g. with the likes of snooth or wine-searcher)
- Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, Blog (social media is a whole process in itself)
How important it is for sales:***A*** very important to have leads but still need to turn them into revenue
2. Conversion – convert this traffic into sales.
What you do:
- User Experience:
- Easy to understand Navigation
- Advanced Search capabilities
- Reviews (from you, your staff, customers, and experts)
- Ratings (from you, your staff, customers, and experts)
- Recommendations (from you, your staff, customers, and experts)
- Upsell / Cross Sell
- Web (or ‘content’) Pages for articles, images and video.
How important it is for sales:***AA*** hugely important to funnel your leads into purchasers.
Catalog:
- Category Management
- Product Management
- Easy Custom Attribute Setting (e.g. new custom field like “brand” or “appellation”)
- Bulk Product Upload/Download
- Bulk Inventory Upload/Download
How important it is for sales:***B*** important, still no revenue and most systems can do this.
Shopping Cart:
- Upfront shipping cost estimation
- Guest checkout (no registration required)
- Easy one-page-checkout process
- Discounts and coupons
- Gift messages / wrapping
- Payment methods: Credit Card (directly with your merchant account)
- Payment methods: PayPal (and if applicable Google Checkout, authorize.net …)
- Payment methods: Cheque / Bank transfer; Purchase Order
- Security: SSL (i.e. the “s” in https://)
- Security PCI (a tough credit card security standard)
How important it is for sales:***AA*** 60-70% of shopping carts are be abandoned!
3. eCommerce Administration – easily administer orders and stock through:
What you do:
Order Management:
- Shipping: Pre setup major couriers
- Good Invoice / Credit process
- Legal Compliance: minimum age and shipping laws
How important it is for sales:***B*** important for everyday use but does not directly increase revenue.
Set up:
- Design
- Ease of use
- Simple to maintain (through “cloud computing”)
- Bulk Product Upload
- Multiple Websites / One Admin (“multi-store”)
- International Currencies, and Languages if needed
- Third Party Integration (“API”)
- Bulk Content Upload
How important it is for sales:***B*** important but its spending money not making it
Reporting:
- Analytics
- Adwords
- Conversion
- Bestsellers, Search
- Top Customers
How important it is for sales:***A*** need to continuously improve by analyzing what works and what doesn’t.
4. Repeat Purchase – turn new customers into repeat customers through:
What you do:
- Email Marketing (i.e. an pro service with double “opt-in” and auto unsubscribe etc)
- List building for your email marketing
- Testing and Analysis
How important it is for sales:***A*** it’s your existing (and local) customers that will provide 80% of your profit.
So that’s the process for a small ‘bricks and mortar’ wine retailer to sell wine online – profitably.
Of course retailers also need assistance and support which is what MyLocalWineStore.com is all about.
