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Selling online – Where to Start with eCommerce?

Posted on by Phil Robinson

Online sales and contactless purchases or contactless transactions have become all the rage since the inception of COVID-19, but where do you start if you want to sell online with e-commerce?

We believe if you’re running a business and selling a product, or even a service, it’s imperative that you strongly consider e-Commerce and how you could sell it online? If you think that leap of faith seems too much or is overwhelming, don’t worry. You are not alone. We talk to business owners all the time who are not sure where to start when it comes to e-commerce and selling online.

The best place to start is to understand first and foremost what you want to achieve, and make a plan to achieve that! There are multiple factors to getting set up to sell online. Things like:

The list goes on…

Are all e-commerce platforms created equal?

A lot of people may just think it’s easy to purchase (well, actually license – you won’t own it) a pre-existing templated platform. Platforms such as Shopify, Squarespace or Wix, can be good starting points, but beware! There’s a lot of pitfalls when it comes to these prebuilt, proprietary systems. If you’re tech-savvy with a can-do, do it yourself attitude you may be able to work it out and that’s cool, fill your boots. But if you really want to succeed when it comes to e-commerce and selling online, you may want to think about bringing in an expert. And by an expert, we mean someone with experience, with a proven track record in building, maintaining, and marketing e-commerce websites.

Of course, there are a lot of cowboys out there in the marketplace. From my experience they may have what it takes to put your information into a pre-existing template such as the ones mentioned above, however, simply adding products to a predefined template, does not an e-commerce website, make!

Before you jump in and engage the services of a designer or marketing agency, ask them some (or all) of the following:

  1. How many e-commerce websites have you built?
  2. Do you actively help manage these and/or drive sales?
  3. What sort of return should I expect from an e-commerce website?
  4. What platform do you use for e-commerce?
  5. Will I pay a license or will I own my website?

We’ve written an in-depth article about some of the most popular e-commerce platforms that you can read here, Which eCommerce platform is the best for me?

Which-Ecommerce-Platform-Is-Best

Why choose Back9?

At Back9 we have built and maintain a number of e-commerce websites for a range of clients. We understand what it takes to succeed in this space and you need to be prepared to invest in order to see a return…

A great place to start is with an e-commerce Strategy! This will help you define your objectives, figure out the best platform to use, and how much it will cost. Ultimately how you will market your business online and succeed. We’re here to help and to challenge our clients to visualise their potential.

E-Commerce doesn’t need to be hard or overwhelming. Especially with the help of a virtual marketing department like us.
We can work with you to help bring your story to life, come up with a plan, and put that plan into action. So feel free to get in touch with us and book a Free consultation to see if and how we can help you and your business!

Book a FREE consultation


Conversion Paths and Writing Style

Posted on by Phil Robinson

We’ve talked about conversion paths in a few places lately, like on design for conversion paths and a blog explaining conversion paths in-depth. For a recap, a conversion path is every path a visitor takes before taking the desired action like registering, contacting you, or making a purchase. Pretty much every step of most conversion paths involves writing of some kind. It might be the written part of a Facebook post, information on a blog, or a description of a product or service. One important thing to keep in mind with conversion paths is the style of the writing.

You might remember a few different styles of writing in school, like persuasive writing, informative writing, and so on.  If you try to sell to someone who doesn’t even know what your product is, they’ll be unlikely to commit. And reminding someone ready to about the very basics of the product instead of a way to purchase won’t do much good. The video below touches up on a couple writing styles for conversion paths.

Informative Writing

Informative writing is all about teaching and education. For informative writing, you should be writing about something you know about. Imagine a business owner who is a professional painter with 20 years of experience. This person could be considered an expert or authority on the subject of painting. What they say will be more valuable than some guy who threw paint on his wall once. Informative writing can be giving helpful tips, explaining the benefits of a product or service, or refuting bad information or myths that are out there.

Persuasive Writing

Persuasive writing is all about convincing people to do something. A lot of business Facebook pages and conspiracy theory videos are trying to persuade you to do something or stop doing something. Persuasive writing sometimes gets a bad rap for being “salesy”, but that’s only one way it’s used. Those long rants that are usually shared around Facebook with some emotional “tell it how it is” tend to be a kind of persuasive writing too. It’s okay to use persuasive writing; especially when someone needs that little extra convincing!

Which writing style is right for a conversion path?

That depends on what your goal is for the specific conversion path. And you can have several different paths with different writing styles for one website. One path might be informing someone on Facebook about what you do. Then that link could go to a form that they fill out to get an eBook with more information. Since these people are still researching, getting information might be most important. They may not be ready to buy yet, but maybe after learning more!

Other conversion paths might be directed towards people that want to buy something. Email newsletters with discounts can use a persuasive writing style to convince someone to buy something now. Or you might just want to convince them to come and meet with you in-person.

There are plenty of opportunities to use different writing styles in your conversion paths. If you want to learn more about this, feel free to get in touch with us and let’s talk!

Design for Conversion Paths

Posted on by Phil Robinson

Design for Conversion Paths

Conversion paths are the series of steps that a visitor takes before converting and becoming a lead or making a purchase. There’s a lot of elements that go into making a conversion path effective, and one of these is design.

Here at Back9 Creative Studio, we create custom websites because they offer a lot of advantages. A custom design lets us plan from the very beginning how to use design to accomplish your goals.

Planning is key

Before doing any kind of design or building the website, you need to define and plan what your goals are. Do you want to sell products straight from the website? Do you have services and want people to get in touch with you by filling out a form or making a call? The more detailed your plans, the more targeted your conversion path can be and your design will reflect that.

What kind of design elements help with conversion paths?

There are a lot of different design elements that can help customers get through your conversion paths and some might of them may be specific to you and your goals. But there are some common things that are effective.

  • A typeface and font that is easy to read. Text that’s too small can be difficult for some people to see. Font choice should also prioritise readability, especially if the site will have a lot of written text.
  • Using your brand colours. Your colours are an important part of your brand, and those colours will be used to accomplish different things to help customers along the conversion path.
  • Let images paint a picture. Images are more engaging than text alone. These don’t necessarily have to be photographs either. Icons are another good way to guide visitors through the conversion path.

By knowing what you want your customer to do, you can use design to help visitors through the conversion path and give you the leads and sales that you’re looking for.

 

SMART Goals for your Business Plan

Posted on by Phil Robinson

Does your business have the right kind of goals?

One of the most essential parts of any good plan is to have goals. What do you want to achieve? What do you want to accomplish? Do you want an 8-figure yearly revenue with a 7-figure salary? Do you want to be the go-to company in your industry for your region? Having goals helps your plan stay on track, but having the wrong goals can set you on the wrong track. So how do you be SMART with your goals?

Watch the video below, and read on to find more detailed information about these types of goals.

Creating SMART Goals

SMART goals don’t just make you feel intelligent, they help your business run more efficiently too. A good goal should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound… SMART.

Let’s start with a simple goal, “I want to get more website traffic” and then make it SMART.

Specific – Getting more website traffic is something most people want. But it’s not a very specific goal. More traffic than when? Yesterday? Last year? From where on your website? Your homepage? Resources page? A more specific goal is to “Get more people to read the monthly blog.”

Measurable – “More” readers is a very general number. By making it a measurable numeric amount, you can easily find if you’ve met or didn’t quite reach your goal. “I want 500% more people to read the monthly blog.”

Attainable – It’s great to push your team to their limits. But you want to make sure that the goal is something that they can accomplish. “500% more” readers might be a bit much, especially if the blog has been around for a couple of years. “I want to have 20% more regular readers for the monthly blog.”

Relevant – Accomplishing your goal won’t mean too much if it isn’t relevant to your business. Getting more readers is helpful, but why do you want readers in the first place? In this case, it’s probably because you want those readers to become leads. So that should be part of your goal. “I want to have 20% more regular readers for the monthly blog because blog readers are 3x more likely to become qualified leads.”

Time-Bound – Putting an end date on your goal lets you know if you achieved it or not. Without an end date, the goal can be pushed out forever. And it if wasn’t met (or if it was exceeded by a lot), when the end date comes you can evaluate and adjust it to be a better fit. “I want to have 20% more regular readers for the monthly blog in 6 months because blog readers are 3x more likely to become qualified leads.”

By making your goal SMART, you can go from something very simple, “I want more website traffic”, to something that is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound for your business, “I want to have 20% more regular readers for the monthly blog because blog readers are 3x more likely to become qualified leads.”

I’m having trouble making my goals SMART

Making sure your goals meet each of the areas might be a challenge, but we have a template that can help. If you visit our SMART Goals template page, you can download a template from Google Sheets or Excel that will guide you through the process. Simply fill in the prompts with information about your business and you’re on your way to making SMART Goals and running a smarter business. We’ll also able to work with you to help you develop these goals if you’d like, get in touch now to learn more or to get started.

While people stay in all day the scammers come out to play

Posted on by Phil Robinson

Dear Sir and/or Madam,

My name is Sir Richard Wellington, Knight of the Round Table. I am writing to inform you that as the last surviving heir of the late King Arthur Pendragon, you are entitled to the inheritance of the treasure of Camelot, amounting to approximately 3.2 Trillion Great British Pounds. Having newly-arrived to this century via portal, I am still familiarising myself with modern contrivances such as electronic currency centralised wealth depositories. As a result, I have a proposal by the which I believe we may assist each other. If you would kindly send me your credentials for a so-called “online banking account” including the username, password, and name of first pet, I will, in turn, send you the treasure that is rightfully yours via carrier pigeon. The Legendary Wealth of Camelot awaits you. 

Best Regards,
Richard Wellington, Sir Knight of Camelot

If only all scams were that easy to spot. Some scammers target large groups of people in the hopes of picking up one or two unsuspecting people. They don’t bother wasting time with spelling, grammar, or reasonable requests. Other scams are more intricate, and can even make the most cynical among us do a double-take before noticing that something doesn’t feel quite right.

Whenever there is a major event, there will be people trying to profit off it. And COVID-19 is no exception. In the UK, scammers have already gotten away with over 1.5 million pounds. And some of these are in NZ too. With the country on lockdown in Level 4 alert, there are some scams in particular that you should know about to stay vigilant in these tough times and not have to endure any more hardships from people trying to profit from it.

The Bad Bank Account Scam

This one is dangerous because it looks official. If you get an email from your bank asking for details, you should always be wary. They’re the ones that created it after all, so why would they ask their customers to provide that information?

It’s not so easy to think about all of that when you’re presented with an email with the bank’s logo saying there’s an issue with your account though. The links in the email will take you to an official-looking but fake site, and once you enter your credentials, you’ll get a message confirming that your account is safe–safe in the hands of a scammer, that is.

With events like COVID-19, you might see more specific wording in your bank scam emails. The bank might reference that certain policies are changing due to the virus or that your account will need to be migrated or in danger of closing. They may also reference safety measures via a link that you click–which will give your computer a virus.

If you ever do decide to change your password or update your details, go your bank’s website from a browser, not by clicking the links in the email. (Actually, this is good advice for any time you update your info, not just with your bank!)

The Fake Donation Scam

The fake donation scam preys on the goodwill of people wanting to help in hard times. Fake charities have been around as long as charities have existed, but some of them are more nefarious than others.

COVID-19 has already had its fair share of fake charities. Some of them are asking for help to fund research on a vaccine, others say that you can help the victims themselves with your generous donation; which will go straight to the scammers pocket.

How can you know if a charity is legitimate or not? The most straightforward way is to donate to organisations you already recognise, or reputable organisations that have been around for many years like The Red Cross or The Salvation Army. If you want to donate to somewhere specifically about COVID-19, take the time to research any new organisations to make sure the money goes to the right place.

One of the worst parts about this scam is that many victims are unware that they were duped. The scammer gets the money and the victim feels good they could help… Only the funds don’t end up going to a good cause.

The Health Worker Impersonator Scam

Many governments around the world have put strict policies in place to try and stem the spread of COVID-19. Leading up to the Level 4 lockdown, for instance, food places and other places in NZ with many visitors had a sign-in sheet asking for personal information. The idea was that if a person with a confirmed case visited the location, other people could be alerted and get tested.

Some scammers have used this principle to their advantage and began contacting people asking for personal information. And people unaware with the scams have given them that info in an effort to help.

There are a few variations of the scam. Emails with officially looking headers–like The Bad Bank Account Scam–are one method. Another is to get a phone call from someone from an organisation like WHO asking for this information. Some bolder scammers even go door-to-door in a double scam; first, they get your info, then they case your place and see if you have valuables worth stealing.

Other Coronavirus Scams

There are a lot of other scams related to the Coronavirus going on right now. Scammers are selling fake “medical-grade equipment” that is unsuitable to protect from the virus (if it ever arrives at all). Fake test kits and “cures” are also being sold online. Some apps that claim they’ll track the pandemic simply put malware on your device. And then there are “guaranteed investments” claiming that increased demand for items like pharmaceuticals means investing now will guarantee a huge payout.

Know of any other scams? Have you or someone you know dealt with a COVID-19 scammer? Let us know! And if you want help protecting your website against security threats on the virtual end, our team is here to help!