Here are the emojis coming with iOS 10.2, including an astronaut emoji

 Apple dropped the first beta for iOS 10.2 today. And it comes with the latest update in emoji innovation. You may have noticed that Apple already redesigned most of the core emojis and added new gender and race options with iOS 10. But the company didn’t stop there. With iOS 10.2, Apple is adding full Unicode 9.0 support. Given that hundreds of millions of people use Apple-flavored… Read More

source https://techcrunch.com/gallery/here-are-the-emojis-coming-with-ios-10-2-including-an-astronaut-emoji/?ncid=rss

When President Obama leaves office, his @Potus tweets leave with him

 When President Obama turns over the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he’ll also handing over a number of high profile social media accounts. Eight days ahead of the election, the White House is outlining how the transfer of social power will go when the commander-in-chief steps aside early next year. The President’s Twitter account, for one, will be getting a fresh start of… Read More

source https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/31/potus-social/?ncid=rss

Standing Rock pipeline protest was absent from Facebook Trends

 A massive social media protest is exploding on Facebook, not Twitter for a change, yet Facebook’s dehumanized Trending system wasn’t picking it up. People around the country are checking in on Facebook at the Standing Rock Native American Reservation in an effort to supposedly hinder local Morton County police from targeting protesters attending in person to fight an oil… Read More

source https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/31/broken-pipeline/?ncid=rss

Sheriff’s department denies surveilling Standing Rock protesters via Facebook check-ins

 Like wildfire, the latest viral protest spreading across the internet involves Facebook users checking in at Standing Rock, ND en masse to “confuse” and “overwhelm” law enforcement authorities seeking to disrupt ongoing protests against the proposed path of an oil pipeline. The viral Facebook post claims that the local sheriff’s department in Morton County is… Read More

source https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/31/morton-county-sheriffs-department-denies-that-facebook-check-ins-are-a-tactic-in-use-at-standing-rock/?ncid=rss

Standing Rock pipeline protest absent from Facebook Trends

 A massive social media protest is exploding on Facebook, not Twitter for a change, yet Facebook’s dehumanized Trending system is failing to pick it up. People around the country are checking in to Facebook at the Standing Rock Native American Reservation in an effort to supposedly hinder local Morton County police from targeting protesters there in person to fight an oil pipeline… Read More

source https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/31/broken-pipeline/?ncid=rss

Here’s 5 Smart Ways to Plan Your E-commerce Sales Promotion

Ready for your next sales promotion?

For some ecommerce teams, it’s a time-consuming task deciding which items to markdown and how to publicize a sales event. However, sales promotions play an integral role in attracting customers.

A survey found that up to 50% of consumers make a purchase only with a promotion. Shoppers desire a good deal before they invest in your products. Moreover, your business may want the additional revenue.

“Sales promotions can give you the edge you’re looking for when it comes to revenue. Successful companies know that sales promotions are among the most effective methods of increasing sales and building customer satisfaction,” writes Emily Weisberg, content marketing manager at ThriveHive.

Take a strategic approach when planning your sales promotions. Below are five smart ways to help your team.

1. Select Specific Incentives

Sales promotions take various shapes and forms. Cater your incentives to fit your consumers’ needs.

Start by using customer analytics. Historical purchasing habits can uncover what promotions performed well. Social media comments also provide first-hand details on whether customers possess interest.

Next, match your findings with a sales initiative. From mystery discounts to purchased-based donations to bundle sales, several options exist.

Monetate “found that 56% of businesses agree that flash-sale campaigns are better received than regular campaigns.” Limiting the timeframe creates urgency for the customer to act now.

(Image Source)

Thinking about free offers? PaySimple’s Vice President of Knowledge Lisa Hephner explains the power of free incentives:

“Everyone loves free. Whether it’s free gifts, free refills, or free service segments, free sells. One of the most powerful free offers is free shipping for online orders, as evidenced by multiple studies where respondents highlight it as the most important factor in making a purchase decision.”

Figure out the best promotions for your customers. Review your data before moving forward.

2. Cross-Sell With a Purpose

Every sales promotions doesn’t need to involve discounting your signature product. Instead, it can focus on secondary items.

Cross-selling is another opportunity to provide value to your customers. Buyers love convenience, and they want to save time shopping at one place. And it eliminates the hassle of sifting through multiple ecommerce sites.

Align your promotions with products that complement one another. Give consumers the chance to buy everything they need from your store.

“Savvy marketers use this concept to increase sales by informing consumers how one product complements another. Cross selling can take several forms. Understanding your customers’ motivations helps you choose which approach to take,” says Sara Huter, a contributor at BusinessBee.

For example, if your company sells cell phones, your team can offer a promotion on the accessories, like bluetooth earbuds, phone cases, or charging cables.

(Image Source)

Research found that “cross-selling was shown to be much more effective when presented on the checkout pages versus the product pages.” So, add images of promotional products in the sidebar menu.

Plus, cross-selling aids with bringing in more cash flow for your business. Amazon credits up to 35% of its revenue to cross-selling.

Think differently about ecommerce sales promotions. Don’t remove cross-selling from your list of possibilities.

3. Microtarget Your Customers

Microtargeting isn’t a new technique to your team. Nevertheless, you may be failing to put it into practice.

Segmenting your audience lets your business offer the right promotions to the right individuals. Customization speaks directly to consumers—signaling that you know exactly what they need.

Melissa Jenkins of Mel Jens Designs believes “running a successful promotion is all about finding that delicate balance between audience segmentation, great timing and setting the perfect price or placing the perfect offer.”

Examine your data to segment properly. Try geographical locations, buying habits, income levels, or even past purchasing behavior.

Dealers United Auto Group created mock ads targeted for car shoppers within 25 miles of the dealership that possess an interest in pets. Specificity is vital for effective micro targeting.

(Image Source)

A study reveals that 51% of marketers believe sharing data across their organizations is a major issue. Avoid data limitations that will hinder segmentation for your sales promotions.

Create an open dialogue across departments to gather all data about your customers. You’ll have more knowledge to build an accurate buyer persona.

Pinpoint who needs to know about your sales event. Microtargeting is a benefit to your company.

4. Hype Up Engagement

Draw attention to your sales promotions with social media and email campaigns. This extra engagement will get people interested in your sales incentives.

Facebook users spend an average of 50 minutes a day on its multiple platforms. Work with your team to promote sales on your social pages. Or even enlist the help of industry influencers to spread the word.

User-generated content (UGC) is also another way to lure shoppers toward your brand. Actual consumers enjoying your products authenticates your value to hesitate buyers.

“User-generated photos are a great way to generate social proof. Prospective customers see that your products are regularly being purchased people just like them, and feel more comfortable doing something that others are doing,” says Dan Wang, a content specialist at Shopify.

Big box retailer Target retweeted a post from loyal shoppers who made a funny video in one of its stores. Encourage customers to submit UGC of them unboxing your products.

when @Target is having a sale pic.twitter.com/RIUu6p3zLs

— spooky addie |-/ (@blurrytylerjosh) October 15, 2016

Also, keep your email subscribers in the loop about promotions. Craft engaging emails that explain the benefits, provide social proof, and use a distinct call-to-action.

“When it comes to creating a high-converting marketing offer email, the final piece of the puzzle is using a prominent call to action button. This is important because buttons make it clear to the reader what the next step is and encourage them to click-through,” states Aaron Beashel, director of demand generation at Campaign Monitor.

Shout your sales promotions from the rooftop. Get shoppers excited to participate.

5. Move Toward Customer Loyalty

Returning customers spend on average 67% more than first-time customers. Consider promotions as a pathway to retaining customers.

Give your customers an opportunity to discover your brand’s values and culture. Sign up shoppers for your weekly newsletter, or enroll them in your rewards program.

Customer loyalty centers around building worthwhile relationships. However, buyers may only be interested in your promotions.

“The use of sales promotions can be positively utilised in order to encourage brand loyalty and brand switching by companies. However, academic research suggests that consumers can become loyal to sales promotions rather than a brand,” states Zhorna Ali, a sales and marketing assistant at M3.

To avoid consumers from brand switching, companies must thoroughly personalize their sales promotions strategy. Focus on specific product categories to remain competitive within the market.

Rather than giving sales incentives to everyone, Bare Escentuals limits its promotions to its loyal fans called Beauty Insiders. In the example below, customers received three free items with any order.

(Image Source)

Create plans to engage customers beyond your sales promotions. Earn their loyalty.

Prep for Sales Promotions

Planning for your next sales event involves lots of time and decision-making. You want to boost your revenue and satisfy customers.

Choose buyer-specific incentives that will attract people. Cross-sell products that complement one another. And think beyond the promotion by focusing on customer loyalty initiatives.

Upgrade your sales promotion. Prepare for it today.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

source https://blog.kissmetrics.com/plan-your-ecommerce-promotion/

Vine founders’ Hype app blends live video into a rich multimedia mix

 Does the world need another live video app? Meerkat’s demise might suggest not, but that hasn’t stopped Vine’s co-founders from screwing their courage to the sticking place and stepping into a highly contested space with the launch of an iOS app called Hype — days after Twitter announced it would be shuttering their looping video app, apparently without even doing them… Read More

source https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/31/vine-founders-hype-app-blends-live-video-into-a-rich-multimedia-mix/?ncid=rss

Moz Keyword Explorer vs. Google Keyword Planner: The Definitive Comparison

Posted by BritneyMuller

Keyword research, the blueprint to any successful SEO strategy

If you’ve been doing keyword research for a while, you’ve probably fallen into a routine. And that routine has likely been recently disrupted... thanks, Google.

If you’re new to keyword research, getting comfortable with new keyword research tools will come more easily to you. Lucky pups. But us change-averse old dogs can still learn new tricks when we need to. Are you ready to see which tool is right for you? --Woof.

My hesitations about writing this article:

• I’m new to Moz and don’t want to be crucified for criticizing our own keyword research tool. This concern has only been met with acceptance and encouragement, so…*fingers crossed* they don’t change their minds. Love you guys!
• My methods of keyword research revolve around finding qualified traffic for increasing conversions, not just any large search volume numbers (to make traffic look good).
• I fear that this will come across as a Moz Keyword Explorer soft sell. It’s not. It’s a very honest comparison of Moz Keyword Explorer versus Google’s Keyword Planner. It's a post that I've been wanting to read for a while.

Here are some great guides if you need a Moz Keyword Explorer refresher, or a Google Keyword Planner refresher.

< << TL;DR Skip to the conclusion here >> >

Google Keyword Planner's recent change

Any habits we’ve held onto with Google Keyword Planner were disrupted early September when they decided to stop providing average monthly search volume data (unless you’re in that special group of higher-paying ad buyers who can still access the more precise search volume data). Instead, we now see huge swings of min-max search volume, which really starts to muddy the keyword research waters. Google recently came forward to explain that this change was done to deter scrapers from pulling their search volume data.

For a more comprehensive write-up on this change, read Google Keyword Unplanner by Russ Jones. He explains a little more about how this change affects various data sources and what Moz has been doing to mitigate the impact.

But, showing is better than telling. So let’s take a look for ourselves:

A 900,000 average monthly search volume swing is crazy! In fact, Google now only provides one of seven volume sizes: 0–10, 10–100, 100–1000, 1000–10000, 10000–100k, 100k–1MM and 1MM+.

Moz’s Keyword Explorer also gives ranges, but they’re not nearly as vast (or as arbitrary). The machine-learning model behind Keyword Explorer is designed to predict monthly fluctuations in search volume. It’s mathematically tied to the most accurate keyword data available, and you can see exactly how, and how accurate Moz gets in this Clickstream Data to the Rescue article.

Which is why I wanted to know:

What's most important to you when doing Keyword Research?
— Britney Muller (@BritneyMuller) September 1, 2016

What are quality keywords?

Quality keywords successfully target your demographic during their acquisition phase (education - purchase), have a specific searcher intent, low-medium organic competition, and medium-high search volume (this will vary based on what part of the acquisition funnel you're targeting).

However, it's important to keep in mind that some longer-tail queries (with little to no search volume) can be highly profitable as well.

---

Tier 1 keyword research setup

Google Keyword Planner:

This is my familiar ol, kooky friend that has been acting very strange lately (anyone else noticing all of the delays and glitches?). I’m a little worried.

Anywho, here’s how I begin keyword research within Keyword Planner:

1. Enter in your keyword under “Search for more keywords using a phrase, website or category.”
2. Make sure the region is set to United States (if wanting to research nationally).
3. Set keyword options to “broad.” --Settle down, we’ll go back and change this to “closely related” after our first swoop.
4. Sort keyword volume by highest to lowest and change the “show rows” to 100.
5. IMPORTANT: Always scroll top to bottom! Otherwise, new keywords will populate from the bottom that you'll miss.
6. Select keywords with unique intents as you scroll down the first 100 rows, click "next," and start again from the top until through all keyword results.

Moz Keyword Explorer:

My hip new friend that I’m not sure I can trust just yet. However, multiple trusted friends vouch for her integrity and... I really dig her style.

Here’s how I begin keyword research within Keyword Explorer:

1. Enter your keyword into the Keyword Explorer search bar.
2. Navigate to “Keyword Suggestions” on the left-hand menu.
3. Set “Display keyword suggestions that” to “include a mix of sources.”
4. Set “Group Keywords” to “no.”
5. Sort keyword list by highest search volume to lowest.
6. Scroll down and select keywords with unique searcher intent.

Either way, this will give you one giant list of 1,000 keywords, which can be tough to pace through (compared to the 100 keyword chunks in GKP). A progress bar of sorts would be nice.

The thing that’s taken the most getting used to is not seeing a competition/difficulty metric adjacent to the search volume. The whole goal of keyword research is to discover opportunity gaps that offer mid-to-high search volume with low competition. If you’re anything like me, you’ve ran hundreds if not thousands of strange SEO tests and are very aware of what you can achieve “competition”-wise (domain-dependent) and what you can’t. (Or when a higher-competition keyword should take the form of a longer SEO plan.)

*It’s important to note that the KWP “Competition” metric is an advertising metric.

Despite this metric occasionally leading to an SEO correlation, it’s often misleading and not an accurate representation of how competitive the organic results are.

The KWE “Difficulty” metric, on the other hand, is an organic search metric. It also leverages a smarter CTR curve model to show when weaker pages are ranking higher (in addition to other ranking signals).

That being said, having to wait to find out the competition metric of a keyword until after I add it to a list is frustrating. I can’t help but feel that I’m not selecting keywords as strategically as I could be. Hopefully, Moz will add a historical competition metric up front (adjacent to search volume) sometime in the near future to help us better select ripe keyword opportunities.

The relevancy metric doesn’t do much to help my research because I’m already relying on the keywords themselves to tell me whether or not they're relevant/have a unique user intent.

(I told you guys I would be honest!)

Label by keyword type:

Navigational: Searchers seeking a destination on the web.

Example: "University of Minnesota tuition"

Informational: Searchers researching, getting quick answers, often times using what, who, where, how, etc. modifiers.

Example: "what is a conker"

Commercial Investigation: Searchers investigating beyond an informational query. Comparing brands, searching for "best," researching potential clients, etc.

Example: "ppc experts in london"

Transactional: Searchers looking to purchase something, comparing rates, seeking prices for things, etc.

Example: "affordable yoda action figure"

Transactional and Commercial Investigation types tend to be most profitable (depending on business model). For example, a blog could do very well from Informational-type keywords.

If you want a more in-depth understanding of keyword types; read Rand's Segmenting Search Intent. <-- An oldie, but a goodie!!

Compare results & answer:

• Which tool provided better long-tail results?
• Which tool provided better top-of-funnel queries?
• What percentage of "keyword types" did each tool provide?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of each tool?

For whatever reason, “student loans” painted an accurate picture (of what I’ve found to be true across other competitive keywords) for each prospective tools’ wheelhouse. So, “student loans” will serve as our point of reference throughout this comparative analysis.

---

Tier 1 keyword research overview:

	Moz Keyword Explorer	Google Keyword Planner
Term:	"student loans"	"student loans"
Region:	United States	United States
Spectrum:	Include a mix of sources	Broad
Group Keywords:	No	-
Total Results:	1000	700
#Keywords With Intents:	43	40

---

+ Moz Keyword Explorer results:

Keyword	Modifier	Type	Min Volume	Max Volume	Difficulty	Opportunity	Importance	Potential
student loan consolidation	consolidation	Commercial Investigation	11501	30300	60	83	3	79
student loan calculator	calculator	Informational	11501	30300	75	100	3	76
student loan	-	Informational	118001	300000	82	84	3	82
federal student loan	federal	Navigational	30301	70800	63	48	3	76
student loan refinance	refinance	Commercial Investigation	11501	30300	55	83	3	77
student loan repayment calculator	repayment calculator	Informational	11501	30300	67	100	3	74
student loan interest rates	interest rates	Commercial Investigation	6501	9300	53	54	3	69
student loan hero	hero	Navigational	1701	2900	49	19	3	53
student loan forgiveness	forgiveness	Commercial Investigation	70801	118000	62	86	3	86
student loans information	information	Informational	501	850	90	55	3	39
applying for student loans	applying for	Informational	4301	6500	72	55	3	60
fafsa student loans	fafsa	Navigational	2901	4300	98	56	3	28
bad credit student loan	bad credit	Commercial Investigation	1701	2900	44	83	3	70
student loan websites	websites	Commercial Investigation	851	1700	79	53	3	48
where to get student loan	where to get	Informational	501	850	76	55	3	47
citibank student loans pay	citibank pay	Navigational	201	500	29	94	3	64
how to get a school loan	how to get a	Informational	201	500	68	55	3	45
how to find my student loans	how to find my	Navigational	101	200	54	58	3	48
how to check student loans	how to check	Navigational	101	200	63	55	3	45
discover private student loan	discover private	Navigational	101	200	53	21	3	36
check my student loan balance	check my balance	Navigational	101	200	55	100	3	52
apply for student loan online	apply for online	Transactional	101	200	68	53	3	41
look up student loans	look up	Commercial Investigation	101	200	53	90	3	51
student loan now	now	Transactional	51	100	72	86	3	42
stafford student loans login	stafford login	Navigational	51	100	76	60	3	36
federal student loan lookup	federal lookup	Navigational	11	50	55	100	3	46
how to view my student loans	how to view my	Informational	11	50	57	64	3	39
how do i find out who has my student loan	how do i find out who has my	Informational	11	50	59	86	3	42
apply for additional student loans	apply for additional	Commercial Investigation	11	50	73	64	3	34
what student loans do i owe	what do i owe	Informational	11	50	50	41	3	34
student loan application status	application status	Navigational	0	10	72	100	3	33
what is federal student loans	what is federal	Informational	0	10	78	58	3	25
who services federal student loans	who services federal	Informational	0	10	68	100	3	22
apply for student loan by phone	apply for by phone	Transactional	0	10	86	86	3	11
national student loan locator phone number	national locator phone number	Informational	0	0	58	29	3	11
i owe student loans who do i call	i owe who do i call	Informational	0	0	50	94	3	26
where do i find my student loan interest	where do i find my interest	Informational	0	0	78	58	3	11
how to find my student loan account number	how to find my account number	Informational	0	0	55	100	3	25
how much federal student loans do i have	how much federal do i have	Navigational	0	0	80	46	3	8
where do i pay my government student loans	where do i pay my government	Navigational	0	0	77	55	3	11
student loans lookup	lookup	Navigational	0	0	55	100	3	26
student loans payment history	payment history	Navigational	0	0	66	46	3	14
how many school loans do i have	how many do i have	Navigational	0	0	68	90	3	21

Additional tool features:

The Importance metric: ...is powerful! However, I’ve left all my results at a neutral Importance (3) so you can see downloaded results without any customization (and to keep things fair, because I’m not prioritizing GKP keywords).

If you choose to use this metric, you set a priority level for each keyword (1=not important, 10=most important) that will then influence the keyword's Potential score. This allows you to more easily prioritize a keyword plan, which is very helpful.

https://moz.com/blog/moz-keyword-explorer-vs-google-keyword

Let your Vines live on forever with this Giphy conversion tool

 The death of Vine was perhaps not entirely unexpected, but it’s sad nevertheless. Luckily, six-second videos are pretty easy to archive for posterity, and all-purpose GIF platform Giphy wants you to do just that. Read More

source https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/28/let-your-vines-live-on-forever-with-this-giphy-conversion-tool/?ncid=rss

Facebook draws criticism for ‘ethnic affinity’ ad targeting

 ProPublica pointed to some potentially problematic Facebook ad capabilities today — specifically, the ability to include or exclude users from a given ad campaign based on their “ethnic affinity.” These capabilities have existed for a while (Facebook told ProPublica’s Julia Angwin and Terry Parris Jr. it began offering them within the past two years as part of its… Read More

source https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/28/facebook-ethnic-affinity/?ncid=rss

How to Find the Conversion Drivers of Your Website with the Funnel Report

There may be a lot of unanswered questions you have about some the big-picture questions with your website. Perhaps you’re asking:

Do demo requests or signups lead to more paying customers?

Does that product video lead to more signups?

Does the self-service onboarding plan lead to more customers?

Does offering a buy one, get one sale increase purchases?

In cases like this, there are options that a visitor can take to reach conversion. But, it’s often difficult for marketers to know which one has a better effect on the funnel.

The Kissmetrics Funnel Report answers these questions. Here’s how.

Finding the Biggest Conversion Drivers on Your Site

The traditional SaaS Funnel looks something like this:

• Visited site
• Signed up for a trial
• Used product
• Upgraded to paying

But what if a visitor could sign up or schedule a demo before using the product? The only solution to knowing which one converts better would be to create two separate funnels and compare the results. That is, until now.

The Kissmetrics Funnel Report allows you to add and/or statements in a step. So our hypothetical funnel could look like this:

• Visited site
• Signed up for a trial or Scheduled demo
• Used product
• Upgraded to paying

Here’s how to set that funnel up, and how to view the results:

View the Funnel Results

I’m not going to bore you with the details of setting up a Funnel Report. We’ve covered it before here and here. As long as you have your events and properties set up, creating a Funnel Report is as easy as putting shoes on. Let’s get straight into the results.

We’ll first look at the people that signed up:

And scheduled a demo:

Notice a difference?

Looks like signups drive significantly more product usage and customers (54 compared to 0). If this was your data, you’d know you should remove demo requests from the website so 100% of users go straight to signing up.

What’s Holding Back Your Marketing Site?

How many elements are on your website, seemingly harmless but actually detracting people from signing up or converting? They’re there, but you don’t know how they’re affecting the rest of your funnel.

Using the Or statements (like we did) in the Funnel Report is a great way to find the best performing elements on your site. Best of all, you don’t need to run an A/B test. All this data is already in Kissmetrics, and as long as you’ve been tracking it, you can see the performance.

Happy optimizing!

About the Author: Zach Bulygo (Twitter) is the Blog Manager for Kissmetrics.

source https://blog.kissmetrics.com/find-the-conversion-drivers/

WhatsApp-Facebook privacy U-turn now being probed by EU data watchdog

 A seismic shift in privacy policy by messaging app WhatsApp this summer, when it said it would begin sharing user data with parent company Facebook including for ad targeting, has now attracted the attention of European’s data protection watchdog group, the Article 29 Working Party. Read More

source https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/28/whatsapp-facebook-privacy-u-turn-now-being-probed-by-eu-data-watchdog/?ncid=rss

Gfycat brings its higher quality GIFs and DIY creation tools to iMessage

 Gfycat, the startup that recently raised a whopping $10 million for its user-generated content platform that lets you creating silent, looping animations and videos, has now launched its first mobile app. Designed for iMessage, Gfycat lets you search for, send and create your own “Gfycat Loops,” which you can also augment with your own emojis and captions. There are already a number… Read More

source https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/28/gfycat-brings-its-higher-quality-gifs-and-diy-creation-tools-to-imessage/?ncid=rss

Facebook tests Snapchat-style camera special effects with ephemeral sharing

 Facebook is overhauling its in-app camera to embrace the next era of augmented reality visual communication pioneered by Snapchat. The new features include Snapchat-style animated selfie masks, overlaid graphics, and geofilters; Prisma-esque fine art-themed style transfer filters and some innovative new “reactive” filters that respond to your body’s movements. What Facebook… Read More

source https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/28/the-new-facebook-camera/?ncid=rss

How to Craft the Best Damn E-commerce Page on the Web - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

From your top-level nav to your seal-the-deal content, there are endless considerations when it comes to crafting your ecommerce page. Using one of his personal favorite examples, Rand takes you step by detailed step through the process of creating a truly superb ecommerce page in today's Whiteboard Friday.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy all and welcome to a special edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Rand Fishkin. I'm the founder of Moz, and today I want to talk with you about how to craft the best damn ecommerce page on the web. I'm actually going to be using the example of one of my very favorite ecommerce pages. That is the Bellroy Slim Wallet page. Now, Bellroy, actually, all of their pages, Bellroy makes wallets and they market them online primarily. They make some fantastic products. I've been an owner of one for a long time, and it was this very page that convinced me to buy it. So what better example to use?

So what I want to do today is walk us through the elements of a fantastic ecommerce page, talk about some things where I think perhaps even Bellroy could improve, and then walk through, at the very end, the process for improving your own ecommerce page.

The elements of a fantastic e-commerce page

So let's start with number one, the very first thing which a lot of folks, unfortunately, don't talk about but is critical to a great ecommerce process and a great ecommerce page, and that is...

1. The navigation at the very top

The navigation at the top needs to do a few things. It's got to help people:

• Understand and know where they are in the site structure, especially if you have a more complex site. In Bellroy's case, they don't really need to highlight anything. You know you're on a wallet page. That's probably in Shop, right? But for Amazon, this is critically important. For Best Buy, this is hugely important. Even for places like Samsung and Apple, critical to understand where I am in the site structure.
• I want to know something about the brand itself. So if this is the first time that someone is visiting the website, which is very often the case with ecommerce pages, they're often entry points for the first exposure that you have to a brand. Let's recall, from what we know about conversion rate optimization, it is uncommon, unusual for someone to convert on their first visit to a brand or a website's page, but you can make a great first impression, and part of that is what your top navigation needs to do. So it should help people identify with the brand, get a sense for the style and the details of who you are.
• You need to know where, broadly, you can go in the website. Where can I explore from here? If this is my first visit or if this is my second visit and I'm trying to learn a little bit more about the company, I want to be able to easily get to places like About, or I want to be able to easily learn more about their products or what they do, learn more about the potential solutions, learn more about their collections and what other things they offer me.
• I also, especially for ecommerce repeat visitors and for folks who are buying more than one thing, I want to have this simple navigation around Cart. I don't, in fact, love how Bellroy minimizes this, but you want to make sure that the Search bar is there as well. Search is actually a function. About 10% to 12% of visitors on average to ecommerce pages will use Search as their primary navigation function. So if you make that really subtle or hard to find or difficult to use, the Search feature can really limit the impact that you can have with that group.
• I want that info about the shopping process that comes from having the Cart. In Bellroy's case, I love what they do. They actually put "Free shipping in the United States" in their nav on every page, which I think, clearly for them, it must be one of the key questions that they get all the time. I have no doubt that they've done some A/B testing and optimization to make sure, "Hey, you know what? Let's just put it in front of everyone because it doesn't hurt and it helps to improve our conversion rates."

2. Core product information

Core product information tends to be that above-the-fold key part here. In Bellroy's case, it's very minimalist. We're just talking about a photo of the wallet itself, and then you can click left or right, or I think sometimes it auto-scrolls as well on desktop but not mobile. I can see a lot more photos of how many cards the wallet can hold and what it looks like in my pants, how it measures up compared to a ruler, and all that kind of stuff. So there's some great photography in here and that's important, as well as the name and the price.These core details may differ from product to product. For example, if you are selling a more complex piece of technology, the core features may, in fact, be fairly substantive, and that's okay. But we are trying to help. With this core product information, we're trying to help people understand what the product is and what it does. So wallet, very, very obvious. If we're talking about lab equipment or scientific machinery, well, a little more complicated. We better make sure that we're communicating that. We want...

• Visuals that are going to serve to... in this case, I think they do a great job, but comprehensively communicate the positioning, the positioning of the product itself. So Bellroy is clearly going with minimalist. They're going with craft. They're a small, niche shop. They don't do 10,000 things. They just make wallets, and they are trying to make that very clear. They also are trying to make their quality a big part of this, and they are trying to make the focus of the product itself, the slimness. You can really see that as you go into, well obviously, the naming convention, but also the photography itself, which is showing you just how slim this wallet can be in comparison to bulky other wallets. They take the same number of cards, they put them in two different kinds of wallets, they show you the thickness, and the Bellroy is very, very slim. So that's clearly what the positioning is going for.
• Potentially here, we might want video or animation. But I'm going to say that this is only a part of the core content when it truly makes sense. Great example of when it does make sense would be Zappos. Zappos, obviously, has their videos for nearly every shoe and shoe brand that they promote on their website. They saw tremendous conversion rate improvements because people had a lot of questions about how it moves and walks and how it looks with certain pieces of clothing. The detail of having someone explain it to you, as I'm explaining ecommerce pages to you in video form, turned out had a great impact on their conversion rate. You might want to test this, but it's also the case that this content, that video or animation content might live down below. We'll talk about how that can live in more of the photos and process at the very bottom at the end of this video.
• Naming convention. We want price. We want core structural details. I like that Bellroy here has made their core content very, very slim, just the photos, the name, and the price.

3. Clear options to the path to purchase

This is somewhere where, I think, a lot of folks unfortunately get torn by the Amazon model. If you are Amazon.com, which yes, has phenomenal click-through rates, phenomenal engagement rates, phenomenal conversion rates, but you are not Amazon. Repeat after me, "I am not Amazon." Therefore, one of the things that Amazon does is they clutter this page with hundreds of different things that you could do, and they built that up over decades, literally decades. They built up so that we are all familiar with an Amazon page, ecommerce page, and what we expect on it. We know there's going to be a lot of clutter. We know there's going to be a ton of call-to-actions, other things we could buy, things that are often bought with this, and things that could be bundled with this. That is fine for Amazon. It is almost definitely not fine for you unless you are extremely similar to what Amazon does. For that reason, I see many, many folks getting dragged in this direction of, "Hey, I want to have 10 different calls-to-action because people might want to X, Y, and Z." There are ways to do the "might want to X, Y, and Z" without making those specific calls-to-action in the core part of the landing page for the ecommerce product. I'll talk about those in just a second.

But what I do want you to do here is:

• Help people understand what is available. Quick example, you can select the color. That is the only thing you can do with this wallet. There are no different sizes. There are no different materials that they could be made of. There's just color. Color, Checkout, and by the way, once again, free shipping.
• I am trying to drive them to the primary action, and that is what this section of your ecommerce page needs to do a great job of. Make the options clear, if there are any, and make the path to purchase really, really simple.
• We're trying to eliminate roadblocks, we're trying to eliminate any questions that might arise, and we want to eliminate any future frustration. So, for example, one of the things that I would do here, that Bellroy does not do, is I would geo-target based on IP address. So I'd look at the IP address of the visitor who's coming to this page, and I would say, "I am pretty sure you are located in Washington State right now. Therefore, I know that this is the sales tax amount that I need to charge." Or, "Bellroy isn't in Washington State. I don't need to charge you sales tax." So I might have a little thing here that says, "Sales Tax" and then a little drop-down that's pre-populated with Washington or pre-populated with the ZIP code if you know that and "$0." That way it's predictive. It's saying already, "Oh, good. I know that the next page I'm going to click on is going to ask me about sales tax, or the page after I enter my credit card is." You know what, it's great to have that question answered beforehand. Now, maybe Bellroy has tested this and they found that it doesn't convert as well, but I would guess that it probably, probably would convert even better with that messaging on there.

4. Detailed descriptions of the features of the product

This is where a lot of the bulk of the content often lives on product pages, on ecommerce pages. In this case, they've got a list of features, including all sorts of dimension stuff, how it's built, what it's made from, and what it can hold, etc., etc.

What I'm trying to do here is a few things:

• I want to help people know what to expect from this product. I don't want high returns. Especially if I'm offering free shipping, I definitely don't want high returns. I want people to be very satisfied with this product, to know exactly what they're going to get.
• I want to help them determine if the product fits their needs, fits what they are trying to accomplish, fits the problem they're trying to solve.
• I want to help them, lead them to answers quickly for frequently asked questions. So if I know that lots of people who reach this page have this sort of, "Oh, gosh, you know, I wonder, what is their delivery process like? How long does it take to get to me because I kind of need a wallet for this trip that I'm going on, and, you know, I'm bringing pants that just won't hold my thick wallet, and that's what triggered me to search for slim wallets in Google and that's what led me to this page?" Aha, delivery. Great job. You've answered the question before or as they are asking it, and that is really important. We want answers to the unasked questions before people start to panic in the Checkout process.

You can go through this with folks who you say, "Hey, I want you to imagine that you are about to buy this. Give me the 10 things in your head. I want you to say out loud everything that you think when you see this page." You can do this with actual customers, with customers who are returning, with people who fit your target demographic and target customer profile but have not yet bought from you, with people who've bought from your competitors. As you do this, you will find the answers to be very, very similar time after time, and then you can answer them right in this featured content. So warranty is obviously another big one. They note that they have a three-year warranty. You can click plus here, and you can get more information.

I also like that they answer that unasked question. So when they say, "Okay, it's 80 millimeters by 95 millimeters." "Man, I don't know how big a millimeter is. I just can't hold that information in my head." But look, they have a link "Compare to Others." If you click that, it will show you an overlay comparison of this wallet against other wallets that they offer and other wallets that other people offer. Awesome. Fantastic. You are answering that question before I have it.

5. A lot of the seal-the-deal content

When we were talking before about videos or animations or some of the content that maybe belongs in the featured section or possibly could be around Checkout, but doesn't quite reach the level of importance that we've dictated for those, this is where you can put that content. It can live below the fold, scrolling way down. I have yet to see the ecommerce page that has suffered from providing too much detail about things people actually care about. I have seen ecommerce pages suffer from bloating the page with tons of content that no one cares about, especially as it affects page load speed which hurts your conversions on mobile and hurts your rankings in Google because site speed is a real issue. But seal-the-deal content should:

• Help people get really comfortable and build trust. So if I scroll down here, what I'm seeing is more photos about how the wallet is made, how people are using it. They call this the nude approach, which cleverly titled, I'm sure it makes for a lot of clicks. The nude approach to building a wallet, why the leather is so slender, why it adds so little weight and depth, why it lasts so long, all these kinds of things.
• It's trying to use social proof or other psychological triggers to get rid of any remaining skepticism. So if you know what the elements of skepticism are from your potential buyers, you can answer that in this deeper content as people get down and through this.

Now, all right, you might say to yourself, "These all sound like great things. How do I actually run this process, Rand?" The answer is embedded in what we just talked about. You're going to need to ask your customers, your potential customers, your customers who bought from you before, and customers who did not buy from you but ended up buying from a competitor, about these elements. You're going to need to test, which means that you need some infrastructure, something like an Unbounce or an Optimizely, or your own testing platform if you feel like building one, your engineers do, in order to be able to change out elements and see how well they convert, change out pieces of information. But it is not helpful to change things like button color, or to change lists of features, or to change out the specific photos when the problem is, overall, you have not solved these problems. If you don't solve these problems, the best button color in the world will not help your conversion rate nearly enough, which is why we need to form theories and have hypotheses about what's stopping people from buying. That should be informed by our real research.

SEO for ecommerce pages

SEO for ecommerce pages is based on only a few very, very simple things. Our SEO elements here are keywords, content, engagement, links, and in some cases freshness. You hit these five and you've basically nailed it.

• Keywords, do you call your products the same thing people call your products when they search for them? If the answer is no, you have an opportunity to improve. Even if you want to use a branded name, I would suggest combining that with the name that everyone else calls your things. So if this is the slim sleeve wallet, if historically Bellroy had called this the sleeve wallet, I would highly recommend to them, "Hey, people are searching for slim wallet. How about we find a way to merge those things?"
• Content is around what is on this page, and Google is looking for content that solves the searcher's problem, the searcher's issue. That means doing all of these things right and having it in a format that Google can actually read. Video is great. Transcripts of the video should also be available. Visuals are great. Descriptions should also be available. Google needs that text content.
• Engagement, that is going to come from people visiting this page and not clicking the back button and going back to Google and searching for other stuff and clicking on your competitor's links. It's going to come from people clicking that Checkout button or browsing deeper in the website and from engaging with this page by spending time on the site and not bouncing. That's your job and responsibility, and this stuff can all help.
• Links come from press. It can come from blogs. It can come from some high-quality directories. Be very careful in the directory link-building world. It can come from partnerships. It can come from suppliers. It can come from fans of the product. It can come from reviews. All that kind of stuff. People who give you their testimonials, you can potentially ask them for links, so all that kind of stuff. Those links, if they are from diverse sets of domains and they contain good anchor text, meaning the name of your actual product, and they are pointing specifically to this page, they will tremendously help you rank above your competition.
• Freshness. In some industries and in some cases, when you know that there is a lot of demand for the latest and greatest, you should be updating this page as frequently as you can with the new information that is most pertinent and relevant to your audience.

You do these things, and you do these things, and you will have the best damn ecommerce page on the web.
All right, everyone, thanks for joining us. We'll see you again hopefully on Whiteboa

source https://moz.com/blog/how-to-craft-the-best-damn-ecommerce-page-on-the-web-whiteboard-friday