Why a Mobile Friendly Site is So Important

As technology has evolved, so has how people view businesses in their online presence. The world has become portable, and if you’re website hasn’t followed suit, you could find yourself falling behind on your bottom line. The numbers today are staggering, and they’re expected to continue to grow year after year.

A World on the Go

While the numbers vary, 20% of internet users spend a majority of their time browsing sites through a mobile device. Counting them out is like saying that visitors from Yahoo! and Bing don’t matter to your business. Every visitor should be of equal importance, and if you’re not effectively communicating information about your brand, you could be creating a negative image for yourself.

The Important of Mobile on Local Businesses

While average research indicates that a good chunk of users browse sites via mobile devices, local businesses have a substantially greater need to pay attention to the mobile compatibility of their site. As of recent studies, nearly 90% of users that are on the hunt for a local business (especially those with brick and mortar locations) browse through information on a smartphone or tablet. This essentially means that competition could be beating you out simply with a mobile-friendly site if yours isn’t properly set up.

A majority of site owners that do not have mobile-friendly sites often claim that they don’t have the time or the money to lay out for a site overhaul. However, from a business perspective, most owners can’t afford NOT to make sure that the mobile compatibility of their site is up to par. As we continue to evolve mobile technology, it has no longer become a matter making your website simply look good, but saving the channel that can make or break your business.

3 Basics of Ecommerce Success

When e-commerce specialists come up with new and creative ideas for driving converting traffic to a website, they often roll their eyes and wonder, “Why didn’t I think of that sooner?”However, for those that don’t let their lives revolve around an e-commerce site, the answers aren’t always so clear and up front. There are several basic strategies that a site owner should always look at from an e-commerce standpoint. Both new and old sites often suffer from a lack of these strategies, so if you feel out of the loop, don’t worry; you’re not alone.

Simple Checkout

The faster the checkout, the better; for those that have often wondered why people fall off within the shopping cart area, a majority of the reason lies in the fact that users have to conquer several pages of information before clicking that confirmation button. Focus on driving down the steps that it takes for a user to complete a purchase. One-step checkout pages are all the rage these days.

Competitive Pricing

If you’ve ever wondered how your competition got their price so low, it’s because they get a great deal on the things they sell. They get the great deal because they sold lots of product. They sold lots of product because their price was so low. This infinite circle is a tricky one to master. Inevitably, a majority of big businesses started out as small businesses that offered their products for little margin to make more in the future. It’s an early sacrifice, but one that’s an unfortunate truth in e-commerce. Push harder in the beginning and you’ll be well rewarded in the future.

Good Information

For the e-commerce site owner that sees a lot of bounces on product pages, there needs to be a point at which the content on your site is carefully examined. Users want a lot of information and they want it fast. The more emailing and requesting of customer service they need to do, the faster they’ll fall off your site. Provide as much information as possible on all products. Additionally, the more unique information you can provide, the better you’ll look in the eyes of a search engine.

Awesome New Features!

Our Rock Star tech team has been hard at work and we have released some awesome new features!

MOBILE COMMERCE

This will automatically come with every Ecommerce Plan.  The entire process is automated.  As soon as you activate Mobile Commerce in your Shopping Cart, then customers can follow a beautiful well-designed checkout process on Mobile Phones, such as Iphones and Blackberry's.  It's all 100% secure and with Mobile such a hot market, we hope it helps increase your store's sales!

THUMBNAIL GALLERY

We added a beautiful new thumbnail gallery, you can view an example here:
http://www.lindbergh.co.za/palettes-of-the-skies.aspx

Create any number of galleries and control the size of the thumbnails and larger images.

BULK UPDATES ECOMMERCE

You can now create product options, shipping methods, coupons and discounts and apply to all products at one time!

NEW CATEGORY LAYOUTS

Bigger Category boxes which do a much better job of showing off each category and information about the specific category.

PRODUCT FILTERS

Allow your customers to much more easily filter products to find what they are looking for.  Filter by price, options, category, group, etc.  You can view an example here:
http://www.idolian.com/OnlineCatalog/IdolPad-list.aspx

  

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ADVANCED EVENT CALENDAR

MORE SHOPPING CART FEATURES

STUNNING NEW DESIGN TEMPLATES