Innovative Shopping Cart Implementation

An important element of selling online is making it easy for shoppers to buy your products. Success in online retailing hinges in large part to providing a convenient shopping experience for customers -- and one of the ways to achieve this is by addressing the problem of shopping cart abandonment.

According to Jupiter Research, only 64 percent of shopping carts filled on an e-commerce site will ultimately result in a purchase.

To make sure that the number of customers abandoning their shopping cart is minimized, here are what some of the top retailers are doing to improve their shopping carts and increase sales:

• Retailers such as Overstock.com and the athletic shoe and apparel store FinishLine.com both include a thumbnail image of the item in the shopping cart. Having a small photo of the item being ordered gives customers the assurance that they are ordering the correct item. For FinishLine.com, the implementation of this strategy increased their conversion rate by 10 percent.
• Diane von Furstenberg http://www.dvf.com is one of the online retailers who have moved away from page-based HTML shopping carts to perpetual or floating ones using advanced technology such as AJAX or Adobe Flash. Termed as "perpetual" shopping carts, the cart is then available onscreen no matter where the visitor travels on the site.
  
• Skymall.com makes it easy for customers to change or add products in their shopping carts when they hit the proceed to Checkout button. Instead of the first step of the buying process which is the filling up of registration information, the customer can fill up the form and still see the items in their cart.

New Coke: Lessons in the Power of Branding

The New Coke is considered as one of the worst marketing fiascos in history. More than anything else, it conveyed so strongly the need to protect the image of your brand.

PowerHomeBiz.com has an interesting article on what small businesses can learn from the miserable failure that was the New Coke. Read "Lessons from the New Coke: The Power of Your Brand A Public Relations Morality Tale"

Western Union: Success after Finding a Profitable New Target Market

A business can re-energize itself by finding a new profitable target market and reinventing itself. Western Union is an example of a company that has successfully reinvented itself by going after a new market: the foreign born workers.

The company was at one time the monopoly national communications company, especially in the 19th century up until 1930s. During the heyday of telegrams, Western Union was the mammoth company of its times.

But as modernization ensued, the company struggled and even went into bankruptcy in the 1990s. By then, they have refocused their business to moving cash from one part of the country to the other, done through credit cards, ATMs and other forms of electronic payment. Alas, even this business failed to push Western Union back into black. The company sent its last telegram on January 2006.

Until Western Union decided to change its target market. Charles Fote of First Data Corp which acquired Western Union (then spun it off to shareholders in 2006) saw a great opportunity for Western Union: become the chief money-mover for foreign-born workers, one of the fastest growing segments of the country.

The number of immigrants in the US is rising dramatically, and while "cashless society" is the mantra of Americans used to carrying plastic all the time, cash still reigns supreme to many immigrants. And immigrants often send money back home (in cash) to their country to support the parents, families and children they've left behind. Thus, they need services that could facilitate this transfer of money.

The good news for Western Union is that this market has long been ignored by most banks and businesses. And the results showed that they were right. Way back in 2003, the company earned $3 billion in fees on cash transfers and the market continued to grow as the company posted transaction growth in the international business of about 23% in the Q4 of 2006. Western Union had became a trusted household name among foreigners.

So what lesson can this give us small businesses? If you want room to grow, look for a market or a niche that is largely untapped by the industry and your competitors. Western Union found that among the foreign born workers. It may be an offbeat market, or even an unglamorous market, but see its growth potential. If the market seems to be getting bigger and stronger, then capitalize on that market. Be different, and serve that market really well and your business can find its way on the road to success.

You can find the complete article on Western Union at Business 2.0 archives

Adding Alternative Payments to Your Online Store

Many online retailers are finding that adding alternative payment schemes to the traditional credit card payments is beneficial to their businesses. Hence, more etailers are using services such as Bill Me Later, eBillMe, Paypal, Google Checkout, PaidByCash, and others.

Customers are more likely to buy when offered various payment options. It's all about making the transaction easier and smoother for the potential buyer. Plus, many of these alternative payment options charge cheaper rates compared to credit card processing.

According to Internet Retailer magazine , here are the four common alternative online payments:

• billing services that e-mail an invoice following purchase and let shoppers pay through credit cards, direct account debits or mailed checks ;
• services that let consumers pay cash for a temporary debit card;
• mobile payments charged to credit cards or debited from bank accounts;
• mobile payments for digital content charged to telephone bills.

So what has been the impact of accepting alternative payments to online retailers?

• Footsmart.com, which now offers PayPal, Google Checkout and Bill Me Later, says that alternative payments comprise about 12% of all transactions. Adding alternative payment schemes, in addition to new features they've rolled out, has increased their web sales by 46% in the first quarter.
• Lingerie retailer Bare Necessities saw a 3% increase in average order value for orders placed through Bill Me Later
• LuggagePoint.com saw a sharp increase in the number of their customers with the $10 coupon for $50 purchase using Google Checkout