Social Media has proven time and again to be an effective and efficient tool during a disaster as a means of getting information out to the people who need it.

During Hurricane Sandy, NYC’s Mayor’s office used Twitter to communicate vital information.

See the below infographic for the uses on Social Media during a disaster:

University of San Francisco Online Master of Public Administration

Any business selling online should seriously consider ways to decrease customer shopping cart abandonment. If users are visiting your website but are dropping off during the checkout process, you may have to make some adjustments to reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate.

Using tools like Google Analytics or Kissmetrics can give you insight into where your customers are dropping off during the checkout process. Once you have determined where customers are abandoning their carts, you can make immediate adjustments to your e-commerce store.

There are some things you can do now to reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate. Below are 8 simple ways you should take to improve your conversion rate.

1. Clearly display product availability

If a product is out of stock or sold out on your website, ensure that it is marked clearly. Nothing increases cart abandonment rate than trying to complete a purchase of a product that is sold out or out of stock. As simple as this seems, many e-commerce websites continue to make this mistake. Customers expect to complete a purchase only to find the product or products they want are “sold out” only during the checkout process.

2. Offer flat rate or free shipping

Shipping fees are to blame for 44% of abandoned carts according to Forrester Research Inc. Inconsistent and/or high shipping fees will increase a website’s shopping cart abandonment rate. Do your absolute best to ensure you offer flat rate or free shipping on products purchased on your ecommerce website. With this in mind, if you offer free or flat rate shipping, be sure to display it prominently on your website. Customers should be aware of the shipping cost throughout the purchasing cycle and not only at checkout.

3. Reduce the amount of pages in the checkout process

The number of pages involved in the checkout process can increase shopping cart abandonment. As a customer begins to checkout, you want them to complete the process as quickly as possible. Multiple pages and forms can be overbearing and feel like a never ending process which will increase the likelihood that the customer will simply walk away.

Clearly display the number of steps required to complete the purchase. Show the customers where they are in the process. For example Step 2 of 4 etc.

4.Offer Express Checkout

Offer an express checkout option where you collect the minimal amount of data required to complete the purchase on your ecommerce website.

While it’s very important to increase the lifetime value of every customer by collecting as much data as you can, remember, some customers simply just want the product.

5. Optimize for mobile

Increasingly more and more customers are shopping from their mobile devices. Be sure your ecommerce website is optimized for mobile and displays products properly. Many ecommerce websites today are still not optimized for mobile and as customers go through the checkout process they run into glitches that forces them to abandon their purchases.

6. Offer multiple payment options

Every customer is different and each has a favorite method of payment. Be sure your website is accommodating to all payment methods and it’s prominently displayed on your website. Your website becomes more inviting as customers see that they have multiple payment options. Today there are multiple ways a customer can pay in order to complete a purchase thereby reducing your shopping cart abandonment. Credit cards and other growing payment options such as Paypal and Google Wallet are staples in an ecommerce website checkout process.

7. Offer a solid refund and return policy

With selling online, customers are not able to touch or directly interact with your products. For this reason, it’s very important to have a “customer friendly” return policy. For example Zappos.com offers 365 day free return on everything. It’s not necessary to offer a policy as drastic as this but, even if you have a return policy already, making sure that it is explicit during the checkout process may make it easier for customers to complete their purchase.

8. Use email retargeting tools

Email retargeting tools allows you to capture the email of a customer who entered it into the checkout pages but then did not complete their purchase. An automatic email is sent to them, inviting them to come back to your store and offers assistance in completing their purchase and perhaps even a discount coupon.

While there are no silver bullets to completely alleviate your shopping cart abandonment, the above steps will certainly help to reduce it.

Facebook is an absolute powerhouse around the world and the facts are astounding. With 44% of internet users having a Facebook account, social media is here to stay.

Infographic Source: Mashable

The internet has several hundred million websites, and it can be a challenge to get your website noticed among so many others. The success of your website is directly associated to the amount of traffic it generates, and you need a solid online strategy if you want more traffic.

Discussed here are four simple yet effective techniques that you can use for your online marketing strategy:

Blog marketing

Blogging has developed from a simple hobby to a very effective marketing technique. Blog marketing can include ad placement on prominent blogs, recommendations, or reviews by bloggers, and promotional articles and posts written by multiple bloggers or guest authors.

Promotion from a reputed blogger can really improve the brand image of a website. Popular reviewers, trusted industry figures, and critics often have their own blogs, and they can be roped in for mentioning or reviewing products.

Blog advertisements can include banners, text links, audio or video clips, plain text, or flash animation. Most blog advertising techniques involve some form of payment to the blogger for every time someone clicks on the advertisement.

Let’s have a look at some of the prominent benefits of blog marketing:

• Improved company visibility: Blog marketing can help a company by making it more visible. Blogs are more commonly visited by people on the internet, and seeing advertisements about a company’s products in blogs can help customers think about that company when they are in need of such products or services.

• Improved product exposure: Another important benefit of blog marketing is that it helps you gain mainstream visibility for your products or services. By marketing your product line on select blogs with high traffic, you can educate customers and prospective customers about the various features of the product. You can also get blogs to write about debut products in your lineup.

Blogs of various kinds are up on the internet. When you get good writers to write about your products and review your company, you get a very effective marketing technique. Many bloggers work with a pay per cost basis, and this is one of the most effective ways to develop product awareness among your target audience at a low cost.

• Better company image: Blog marketing is an effective way of coming closer to customers and prospective customers and letting them get to know about your company and your products and services in a better way. This, in turn, can help you build a much more positive brand image for your company by building relationships with customers.

• Improved interaction with customers: A blog is one of the best ways to get to know more about your customer base and interact with them. If you choose a good blog and publish the right posts and advertising materials, you can engage with customers and know more about their complaints and complements. All this feedback can then be used to fulfill customer requirements further.

Social media marketing

As the name suggests, social media marketing is all about getting traffic or building brand value through social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. Social media includes a number of other websites that provide very different social actions. Twitter, for example, is a site where users can share short updates and messages with each other.

On the other hand, Facebook allows users to share updates as well as photos, events, videos, and many other activities. Social media has become such a powerful marketing tool that even Presidents use it to connect with their community.

Social media marketing is also useful in helping a company stand out from the competition and make a mark for itself. When done properly, you can use social media marketing to create a positive buzz about your company rather than your competitors. With this form of marketing, branding also becomes a lot easier across all platforms and your company’s name is in front of everyone’s minds.

The key to success with your social media marketing strategy is to be consistent in your efforts. You need to be active on your social networking sites and make your presence felt every so often. Most importantly, you need to convey the message to your customers and prospective customers that your company and its products and services are reliable. Respond back to queries sent by your customers on social networking sites, answer their doubts, and engage in active conversation with them.

Twitter and Facebook are two of the best websites to not only engage with customers but also deliver immediate customer service. You can assure customers that their queries are being taken care of through these websites. For this reason, it is a good idea to start an official profile for your business on Facebook and Twitter and include them in your marketing mix.

You can increase website traffic by also linking your official website from your social media sites on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. If you have an engaging profile on these social networking websites, the visitors will most probably click on the links to learn more about your company.

One of the best benefits of social media marketing is that it can really reduce your marketing costs. The tools you can use on social networking websites to market your business are either available for free or for a low cost. At the same time, you get a very powerful medium to reach your customers and connect with them.

Video marketing

YouTube is one of the largest websites on the internet in terms of content and traffic. Every day, over three billion people visit the website to watch or share videos. This is partly due to the easy and cheap availability of video capturing and editing hardware and software, and faster net connections.

Today, you can just as easily make a video and post it on the internet as you can buffer and watch them. Video content is now one of the most flexible and valuable online marketing assets that a company should own, large or small. Videos are easy and quick to digest for a consumer, and they are also more engaging and visually appealing than plain text.

Video marketing has emerged as an excellent and effective online marketing tool these days. According to a popular and authoritative publication, an online marketing and advertising campaign becomes more powerful if it is backed by a video.

In fact, many internet marketers have now realized the importance of video in their marketing campaigns and the significance of viral videos. For this reason, many online marketing campaigns now include video marketing as well. Even large companies are focusing on making viral video to promote their products, translating to greater website traffic and millions of dollars in revenue.

Here are some reasons why companies should invest in video marketing:

• It provides massive exposure to your company and products/services: Greater exposure to your company and its products or services means greater revenue, and the more viral your video gets the greater traffic your website will attract. With so many ways to spread and share videos these days, viral videos have become more achievable. Videos can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites, as well as other major video sharing websites like Hulu, YouTube, and Vimeo.
• It is cheap to make: Most people believe that videos are a really costly investment, which is why so many small and medium sized businesses opt out of video marketing. The truth, however, is that marketing videos do not need a lot of money to produce. Some of the most popular videos today are made with low costs, and video making software programs are now cheaper than ever. In fact, many good video making software come pre-installed in most computers.
• It builds authority for your business: People are more receptive to information when it is presented in video format. ‘Seeing is believing’ for most people, so videos give your company greater legitimacy. You can use videos to not only promote your products but also promote your business as an industry leader.

Email marketing

Email marketing is one of the oldest online marketing techniques, but it still holds a lot of importance. With the right strategy and target audience, email marketing can prove to be very successful and give a good return on your investment.

Targeted email marketing is very different from bulk email marketing in that it sends emails that are customized for a certain demographic based on their needs. For example, if your products or services are best used by young people between the age of 18 and 24 years, you should make them your target audience.

You can even target people of certain locations. When you have a specific demographic to market your products, the chances of readers seeing and buying your product or service are higher. When you look at offline direct marketing communication methods like telesales and print postal mails, you will see that they require a lot of time, money, and effort.

However, with email marketing, you can create a marketing piece in as little as a few hours. With the help of recurring email templates, you can quickly make a unique marketing email with graphics and send it to your database of potential and existing customers.

Another benefit of email marketing is that you can communicate in real time with your customer base. Unlike offline communications, there is no time period between development of a campaign and its implementation. Therefore, you can send out daily promotional emails as well with limited period special offers. You can even send out emails to customers for anniversaries or their birthdays. The short time frame for developing and sending out emails helps you see quick results on your website traffic.

Telesales, telephone, radio, and other traditional offline marketing media require a single format, which makes it difficult to reach out to customers personally. Email marketing is different, however, and it offers quite a few dynamic opportunities. You can send out personalized emails with the name and login names of your website users and also use personalized information of customers, like their sales and purchase history, to deliver targeted emails.

Creating emails is also a lot less challenging than setting up print emails or television ads, so you can segment your customer base into small lists and send personalized messages to them. For example, you can segment customers by their geographical location or the product types they choose, and send them emails about their location or offering offers on their favorite products.

Simply put, email marketing lets you speak to existing and potential customers in a more personalized way that is difficult and even impossible through other marketing mediums.

By segmenting your customer database for personalized emails, you can not only increase your website traffic but also increase sales conversion rates. For example, if your business involves selling flowers, you can find customers in your email database that bought roses and send them emails whenever you get a fresh shipment of roses coming in. With database segmentation, you can send these emails to those who are most likely to respond, and this improves website traffic and makes for a successful marketing campaign.

Since emails in a marketing campaign can be prepared and sent out so quickly, you can improve communications with your customers. You can send them promotional offers every week or so, and inform them of the latest news in your company and your product range whenever it happens. It is important to note, however, that most email marketing campaigns are designed so as to not send to many emails to customers. In general, it is just one email in a week.

Email marketing is also really useful for spreading useful and enticing pieces of information. If a customer finds some of your promotional emails or special offers useful, they can forward it to others within seconds and your message spreads further. In other words, your marketing campaign gets a wider reach and you also get more traffic to your website as more people check it out to see your offers.

Mobile continues to impact the future of ecommerce. Be sure you have a plan in place for your Mobile Commerce explosion. Infograpic by Kissmetrics

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Source: How Mobile is Changing Business – Infographic