Welcome to this edition of Spare Change, valuable information for your ecommerce world. In today’s post:
eMarketer.com has posted a comprehensive and thought-provoking article on The Growing Influence of Online Social Shoppers. Compiling the results of several studies including the Edelman Thought Barometer, the Jupiter Research “Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape” study and their own research, eMarketer asks “Who do consumers trust?” and finds the answer is increasingly, “each other.” Online social network users were “three times more likely to trust their peers’ opinions over advertising when making purchase decisions.”
Staying on the social media theme, hey, ecommerce store owner, do you have a blog? Are you wondering why you need one? Palmer Web Marketing lists 6 Reasons e-Tailers Need A Blog. This informative post helps reinforce the value of blogging for an e-store, from giving a voice to your company, to giving a voice to your customers, to even helping your search engine ranking. Check it out. Palmer has also posted a cool guest post from Linda Bustos from the GetElastic blog on Ways to Improve your International eCommerce Usability. As a Canadian who often browses American websites, I can attest that all of these tips are bang on.
Local exposure but global subject matter: there was a fantastic article in the Ottawa Citizen last week discussing an issue that you’re probably all familiar with: Shopping Cart Abandonment and what one Gatineau company, Sitebrand, is helping people do about it. Sitebrand followed up with an article on their Blog: Shipping Pains to Blame for online cart abandonment, which highlights one major reason why Canadians aren’t buying online in Canada: “When shipping becomes a pain point due to lousy check-out procedures, strict delivery options and exorbitant fees, the odds of cart abandonment increase.”. Read the whole article at Sitebrand. Is abandonment a big issue for you? What have you done to address it?
Finally, do you use PayPal? Have you ever had a customer dispute a payment? Then you should read Practical ecommerce’s short interview with Colin Rule, PayPal’s Director of Online Dispute Resolution. Or even join in on the lively debate that resulted.
Any comments, questions or backtalk? Leave a comment or email me at shannon at jadedpixel dot com!