Happy Cyber Monday everyone! In honor of this glorious web-selling day, I thought it’d be appropriate to spend a little time talking about your own e-commerce efforts. It’s obviously a little late to cash in on today’s sales-induced spending frenzy, but with plenty of online stores making a killing today, now is a good a time as any to think about and plan ways to improve your web store. Here are a couple pages pulled from my bookmarks folder that offer some great jumping-off points for boosting your online sales:
Top 5 Web Design Mistakes Small Businesses Make
From Mashable, a quick run-through of some major e-commerce errors to avoid. Some of the advice I thought was pretty basic (“make sure to have clear navigation”), but other points, like making sure you have a clear call to action and adding color and contrast to your site, were interesting and cover less well-trod site design advice.
Translating Viral YouTube Videos Into Sales
From Inc., two short case studies about physical product-based companies landing huge marketing successes with YouTube videos. They’re quick reads, loaded with hard numbers like cost vs. customers reached, and include a bunch of other helpful pointers as well. If you’re considering doing any video marketing at all, I highly recommend giving this article a read.
Zappos CEO Speaks at Net Promoter Conference
A great 10-minute speech from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh about how Zappos.com has achieved such dominance with its online store. He talks a bit about building Zappos’s famous customer service, which probably most people are at least loosely aware of, but more interestingly he also talks about customer-service focused web design and how important building customer loyalty has been to the company’s marketing and bottom line.
Thanks for reading everyone, and I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving!
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MONDAY MIKE FACT: If I don’t by Skyrim and Batman: Arkham City today off Amazon.com at a huge discount, I will honestly be able to say that I don’t know who I am anymore.
