Watch out for key areas of growth…

After an August break, we’re back in business!  This month, with the release of our e-business benchmark report, we’ve been looking at the latest trends, techniques and behaviours that are delivering success across ecommerce.   We’ve also spoken to some of the most savvy e-tailers in the country to find out their ecommerce ‘pearls of wisdom’.

One of these businesses is Breo, a unique lifestyle brand that trades online, face-to-face and has distributors all around the world.  Web development manager Jamie Wright provided us with a look into overseas opportunities and how to tackle barriers and challenges to these markets.

Jamie told us “It’s vital that you understand the idiosyncrasies of each local market and adapt the       functionality of your service accordingly.”  Jamie has given us plenty of tips for moving your businesses overseas but we don’t want to give you that!  You’ll have to download the 2011 e-business   benchmark report to read more…

Well done Breo for being awarded our August/September Business of the Month!

Take part in our Industry Benchmark Report…

Last year we introduced you to our very first E-Business Benchmark Report  – a study of views and opinions of over 2000 online businesses currently operating in the UK.  This report uncovered what makes an e-commerce business successful – from attracting people to a site through to delivering the goods.  

The secret to success
If you didn’t manage to download a copy of last year’s report, you can find a summary of our top tips below:
1. Providing on-site reassurances such as customer testimonials, next day delivery and a money back guarantee will improve checkout success.  We found that if your e-business doesn’t offer any value added features, you are twice as likely not to complete the sale.  However, be warned, loyalty points appear to not add any value in terms of promoting sales conversions.

2. E-businesses with fewer checkout pages convert more sales.  Reducing this number of pages, can improve conversion and won’t cost the earth.

3. Successful e-businesses customise their payment pages.  Suddenly being forwarded to a payment interface that has a different look and feel could cause shoppers to be concerned and drop out of the purchase.

4. Providing multiple payment methods, to give people more choice in the way they pay, improves transaction rates.

5. Social media can heavily influence purchasing behaviour by building trusted relationships and subsequently loyal customers.

Help us and win!

Well it’s that time again where we’re asking for your help.  If you are an online retailer – we need your help in gathering information so that we can provide you with a report focused on checkout conversions and the factors that contribute to visitors dropping out of the purchase process.  We’ll then compile our second report helping you to navigate through what successful businesses do to maximise their conversion rates.

By taking part this year, you could also be in with a chance of winning an Ecommerce health-check worth £1000 or £500 towards your business or one of ten £50 Amazon vouchers!  You will also receive a complimentary copy of the report once it has been published!

You can’t say fairer than that!

Take Part Now!