*Abandonment rate:

• 72.31% according to Fireclick / DigitalRiver in 2012
• 62.31% according to Coremetrics / IBM in 2011
• 72.00% according to SeeWhy in 2011
• 71.00% according to SeeWhy in 2010
• 55.00% according to Forrester Research & Shop.org in 2010
• 63.68% according to Coremetrics / IBM in 2010
• 69.38% according to Fireclick / DigitalRiver in 2010
• 62.14% according to MarketLive in 2009
• 71.00% according to Forrester Research in 2009
• 63.19% according to Coremetrics / IBM in 2009
• 68.00% according to SeeWhy in 2009
• 62.01% according to Coremetrics / IBM in 2008
• 61.36% according to Coremetrics / IBM in 2007
• 59.80% according to MarketingSherpa in 2006

Average: 65.23% abandonment rate (Source: Baynard Institute)

Why do customers’ abandon their shopping carts?

There are many reasons for this happening, and many studies and research projects have been undertaken. Combined with our own 17 years worth of experience as online storeowners and e-commerce developers, we have a fairly firm grasp on the causes of shopping cart abandonment. Some of the main causes are:

• Shipping and handling costs were listed too late in the transaction process
• Checkout process was too long or confusing
• I didn’t want to register with the site
• Website was too slow
• Website did not allow me to ship to an address different to my billing address
• Plus many more

What does this mean for your business?

65% is a staggering figure, but what does that represent in terms of revenue? Well for example let’s take XYZ Ltd. XYZ Ltd receive 150,000 unique visits to their site per year. The average online conversion rate is 2.13%, and the average online value of an order is $116.58.

So 2.13% of 150,000 are 3195 paying customers, and when multiplied by $116.58 gives XYZ Ltd yearly revenue of $373,335.75.

So it’s fair to say that this $373,335.75 represents the 35% of customers who do not abandon their shopping cart and complete transactions.

But what would happen if the abandonment rate were, say, 50%?

If this were the case, then XYZ Ltd.’s revenue would increase by a colossal $160,001.04 resulting in yearly revenue of $533,336.79.

What can be done to prevent this high abandonment rate?

For starters, online storeowners can do next to nothing about the carts that have been abandoned in the past, so we have to get proactive! The team at 4Sprung has spent a lot of time thinking about this issue over the last 12 months and we have been slowly implementing features to our cart system to make them user-friendlier for online customers, which will ultimately increase conversion rates. These features include:

• Speed optimising sites to stop customers becoming frustrated with long loading times
• Teaming up with 3rd party security and virus check providers to monitor our clients sites all day, every day and putting seals on our sites to prove it, increasing customer confidence
• Adding predictive quick search to all our carts to allow the online customer to easily search for related products
• A Quick Buy feature so return customers can buy what they want in the fewest amount of clicks possible

All of these small features can add up to make a significant difference to your conversion rates, but now 4Sprung have developed an industry leading checkout system which we believe will make a real difference to how customers buy online through your e-commerce store, the industry leading Express One Page Checkout:

…or view the design here

As you can see, this revolutionary checkout features:

• Very simple, quick to fill out form
• It reassures customers about why all data is needed
• Marks out clearly that all the data transmitted and transaction is secure
• Shipping costs immediately displayed (no hidden costs)
• Very quick to load as its only one step
• Allows shipping to different address to what appears on the billing address

Just imagine what this checkout would mean to your customer satisfaction, and more importantly, your conversion rate! Just a small increase in conversion rates would cover the cost of this checkout in a few months for most online shopping carts, and then you can sit back and reap the benefits.

The Express One Page Checkout system has been developed exclusively as a modification for the 4S Cart and CS Cart systems, so this may just be the time to think about changing cart systems if you have been undecided in the past.

Call us on +61 2 8033 2941 or email us here for further details.

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I don’t know about other people, but my Junk mail folder gets more emails per day than my personal email address. Most of the emails in there are just what they are meant to be, Junk. But lately I have noticed that I have been getting emails from online companies based overseas, and though this could be construed as SPAM, I decided to take a look at their eCommerce websites just to see if their products lived up to the hype they had put in their email.

Rather surprisingly, their products looked good. Good enough to consider buying and not to mention considerably cheaper than buying within Australia, even with shipping added. But if I had found a link to their store, for example advertised on Google and I had clicked through, would I have bought any of the items from these particular eCommerce websites. The answer, in most cases, is no.

What are the reasons for not going through with a purchase? Without naming just one site, there were several issues that were apparent on all of the sites I looked at, albeit to varying degrees. Some of the main issues were:

• The websites were not very easy to navigate. This made it very difficult to do the simplest of things, such as view a product page, or find out more information about the company. The main point here is that if any regular web user cannot find what they need from your site, they won’t stick around long. They will quickly navigate away and go to a site they are familiar with or use a search engine to seek out other companies that offer the same product but display their content in a concise and easy to navigate manner.

• Products were not displayed in a way that shows off their qualities. They have small photos and the product description is not very clear to a westernized audience. Obviously this ties into the point above, but this takes it a step further. Any website needs to list its product information in a clear manner. It should have an overview or summary of the product and its main features, and then a separate area for more technical specifications. You need to quickly allow web users to decide if this is the product they are looking for without overwhelming them with realms of information that will only serve to confuse them further. Add to this that the product images were often small, low quality images that could not be enlarged without suffering from pixelation. A visual reinforcement of your product is one of the strongest weapons to persuade buyers to purchase your products and these should be high quality. High quality images equal the perception of a high quality product, and the opposite is equally true!

• Using a SEO add-on on my Firefox browser, I was able to see that most of these sites, with one notable exception, was completely out of touch in terms of their SEO optimisation. Many had no meta descriptions, multiple H1 tags, no ALT text on any image (and some pages were ONLY images), no H2 tags and one was not even indexable. This gives these websites little change of being seen by organic searches, and organic searches are only of the best converted leads available to online businesses. These websites are turning away the chance to be seen by a lot more relevant and higher converting customers by not SEO optimising their site.

• A lot of these websites were just that, only websites. They had no active shopping cart functionality at all. These websites are meant to be eCommerce showcases, they need to sell. However, I could not add a product to a cart, I could not see shipping and handling costs or taxes. Why even bother pointing customers to your store if they cannot buy the product how and when they want it, straight away. You have done the hard work, the customer is checking out your products as they have sparked an interest, but they will simply go elsewhere if they cannot buy from your store. In fact, I will go as far to say that you are actually driving sales to your competitors as you have created an interested party for your products, and now they want to buy, and so will find an online store where they can buy the product from! A lack of shipping costs is also just as bad. When selling to overseas customers, most know your products will be cheaper, but most are sure the cost of shipping will not make the transaction worthwhile. If this isn’t the case and the shipping costs are reasonable, show them! It will encourage sales and you will see the benefits almost immediately.

So in conclusion, there is a need for businesses in developing economies to be able to sell overseas via eCommerce solutions. After all, most of these products end up here anyway, it’s just a case of who provides the product. But if these companies want to make a real impact on The Australian, European or American markets, they really need to meet the expectations of online shoppers from these regions, as a poor eCommerce website insinuates a poor product. Whether these companies will adapt to foreign markets remains to be seen, and those who do will surely reap the rewards that the eCommerce world has to offer.

The post eCommerce – is it a viable option for businesses in developing economies? appeared first on 4sprung web development the e-commerce specialist.

4Sprung have been busy developing a mobile skin that will work on mobile devices and even tablets. The skin does not require another admin area for your cart; it simply takes the content from your existing cart and fits it to a mobile friendly template.

To see our latest mobile skin live, check out Buy Happier on your mobile device, or follow www.m.buyhappier.com.au.

Does my online store really need to be mobile friendly?

In the US, 25% of Internet users ONLY browse the Internet through a mobile device. Numbers such as these are repeated around the world and are increasing month by month, meaning that it is more important than ever that users are able to access and use your website through their mobile devices. Many traditional online stores do not work well on mobile devices. They appear too small, the images do not load and the pages are very difficult to navigate. It is more important than ever that mobile users are able to easily access and navigate your website, and as a result, buy from your website.

How does this work?

Once the mobile skin is implemented on a subdomain of your website, mobile users that enter your URL into their browser will automatically be redirected to the subdomain that is home to your new mobile skin. This makes the user experience a lot less stressful while still retaining the core functionality of your website.

What’s the deal?

The mobile skin includes:

• A customized template to match the style of your store
• Your store logo and colour scheme integrated into the mobile skin
• A special mobile banner that will be displayed throughout the mobile skin
• Compatible with all unmodified carts and most other carts

This is all included for the price of AU$1499.

Additional charges will apply for SSL on subdomain, changes to design or functionality of mobile skin, extra work required to make the mobile skin compatible with heavily modified carts.

If you have any questions, or just want to get started on your mobile skin right away, please contact us or call us on +61 2 8033 2941

The post 4Sprung launches new mobile skin available for 4S Cart and CS Cart. appeared first on 4sprung web development the e-commerce specialist.

Creating quality content is the most important element of your website and indeed your online presence. You need to understand how content is indexed by search engines and how you can ultimately make more money through your website. In order to successfully achieve this you need to build up a successful following. As a result, Google will look on the website more favourably. Google is a leading search engine and in order to retain the share of the market, it needs to create quality search results so steps are taken to sift out poor quality website content.
Content may be in many forms; articles, multi media, blogs, or social media. Your website needs to have a significant amount of content, much more than your competitors. If you achieve this successfully your site will inevitably rank above the competition.
Google however doesn’t just look for any content. The content needs to be quality, unique and relevant to your market.
Quality Content
Quality content needs to incorporate many different things. Exceptional, well written copy should portray your company as a professional organization. There are many avenues on the internet where you can purchase good quality content which are known as Private Label Right databases. With PLR content you can modify and use it however you wish once it has been purchased. Certain restrictions do apply such as the resale of the content or ensuring that you verify the license of the PLR content you are purchasing. Many businesses endeavor to build up the content on their website using PLR which can be an extremely effective way of expanding your website whilst ensuring that the content is of high quality.
Unique Content
There are a few methods of ensuring that your web content is unique. The first and perhaps most time consuming one is to create the content yourself. If you choose this option, ensure that the content is well researched and relevant to your market. You also need to be fully conversant with Search Engine Optimization Strategies otherwise the time and effort spent constructing the content will be wasted. Another option is to employ a professional SEO writer or copy writer to create unique articles for your website. Ensure that the writer is reputable and ask for samples to ensure that they can create well written, optimized content on your website which will benefit SEO purposes. The second method of content creation is to use a source of PLR and use the articles as a starting point to create your content. From here you can craft your own unique content. However with this option there is the risk of duplicating the content or closely copying it. Always ensure you run your work through Copyscape to ensure that it is completely unique.
Relevance
Comprehensive research will ensure that your content is fully relevant to your market and most importantly your website visitors. Take time to plan, research and collate your content which will ensure that it is relevant as it can be. Creating relevant content is a skill and one which takes time and commitment.
There are many ways to create quality content but as long as it is quality, unique and relevant Google will reward your website for your work.

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WordPress is a popular piece of software which is used by many people to create professional websites. However, whilst it is free to install, you need several different components to enable it to work effectively. Each of these components incur a cost on top of your domain name and web hosting. What’s more, if you are not familiar with website design or development, you will need to hire a developer to professionally install and set up your WordPress site which can considerably add to the overall cost. The work doesn’t stop there, however.
Websites need regular maintenance; content needs updating, pages need to be constantly optimised and new layouts tried and tested to improve the browsing experience for your web vistors. In addition, WordPress Plugins need to be constantly updated to ensure that they remain as secure as possible and incorporate all of the latest advances in technology. If you cannot do this routine maintenance work yourself, you will need to pay a developer to complete the updates and maintenance for you which in turn adds to the cost.

Hosting and Domains

In order to download and install WordPress you need a domain name and hosting as mentioned above. A domain name can be purchased relatively cheaply from around £2.99 but hosting can range anywhere from £10 a month, so over a year it can amount to quite a bit. If you use a good WordPress host, they will have a feature known as ‘One Click Install’ which will quickly and simply upload the content management system to your server.

A Theme and Plug-ins

Once you are set up you need to search for an appropriate theme in a vast library. A theme is a website template which you can choose. This takes time and you may have to work with a few different ones trying them to see which works best for your website. You then need to search for plugins which are small add on pieces of software which allow you to run certain features on your site such as ecommerce or member pages.

Not so ‘Free’

Subsequently, WordPress is not as free as it may at first appear, with hosting and domains and a web developer if needed not to mention the time commitment required to search for appropriate themes and plugins it requires a significant amount of resources.

The team at 4sprung are dedicated WordPress experts who can use their high levels of expertise to guide you through setting up WordPress and we can even manage it all for you as well as taking care of the development and design as well as the implementation of themes and plugins.  What’s more we’re extremely affordable too.

If you are interested in developing a unique WordPress website, or would like help with your current WordPress website, feel free to contact us and we will be more than happy to help.

The post The true cost of maintaining a WordPress site appeared first on 4sprung web development the e-commerce specialist.

Get your new store online for a small set up and monthly fee – ideal for those store owners with big plans but small budgets!

We realise that around the world, consumers are spending less as the economic climate continues to deteriorate. As a result, small business are having to constrict their already limited budget to make up for this loss of revenue. With this in mind, 4Sprung has developed a  set of new Pay Monthly Shopping Cart Plans.

These plans mean that for a small set up fee, and then an ongoing monthly fee, businesses can have a top of the line, custom designed shopping cart solution. Not only is the our cart incredibly powerful, we also have the advantage of a in-house development team which means we can customise your cart in almost any way to suit the individual and unique needs of your business.

All of our new shopping cart plans are either based on US or Australian servers of the highest quality, servers that we only use exclusively for our own clients. This means that our servers never exceed 40% capacity, and once this point gets close, we start a new server to maintain the highest levels of service for our customers. You can also rest assured that your new shopping cart will be secure on our servers as both the US and Australian based servers have a range of features as standard such as Magic Spam, Unlimited Mailboxes, constant pro active service monitoring, 99.99% uptime guarantee, virus protection and much more.

The actual shopping carts use the powerful 4S Shopping Cart system, which means you get a whole host of features that come as standard, and also means that you will be hard pressed to find such a wide range of custom features on any other cart system that is on the market at the moment. Some of the features include a Dynamic Homepage Banner Manager, Youtube/Vimeo addon, MailChimp integration, advanced predictive search and many, many more features. For an extensive list of all the features that the 4S Cart has to offer, compared to other shopping carts on the market, have a look at this comparison table (correct at time of publication).

We have 5 different plans available to suit a wide range of budgets so to get started with one now, or to inquire about further details, contact us or call us on +61 2 8033 2941

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For the last few months, our team has been diligently using White Hat SEO techniques to deliver both Waterskiers World and DigiFrame to the number one spot of Google search rankings for their specific keywords.

DigiFrame SEO keywords ranked at #1: Digital Scanner and Photo Scanner

Waterskiers World SEO keywords ranked at #1: Water Skis and #2: Water Skis

But how did we achieve these results? Well, at 4Sprung our experts use a variety of different techniques, but in a nutshell we have been able to establish these sites web presence, get the pages of these site indexed and noticed by the search engines as well as driven link traffic and revenue to these two sites. In the upcoming months our experts will be continuing on this path, since they have already established the sites web presence and our experts will now be moving towards increasing the two marketing campaigns to get faster and better results.

As part of our SEO package, our experts have conducted in-depth research and analysis on the niches of DigiFrame and Waterskiers World and selected a new set of keywords with higher traffic, commercial value and potential revenue. The next step for our SEO team will be to start working towards high rankings of these keywords, whilst maintaining the rankings of the keywords already at #1.

Ongoing alongside these online marketing efforts our team have created and started distributing contents for the two sites, contents which follows the new standard quality we have set (which was implemented due to the new updates of the search engine algorithms) and we are in the process of conducting an on-page optimization on the different pages of www.waterskiersworld.com  and www.digiframe.com to increase the sites SEO readiness and make them better geared towards targeting the new set of keywords.

If you are interested in our packages just send us an email us or call us on +61 2 8033 2941

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An email newsletter is an ideal way to engage your customer base and get them back to your online store, whether it be through interesting content that they want to read more of, or a special promotion or offer that you want to offer exclusively to your loyal customers. An custom newsletter email template has many benefits for you and your customers, just one benefit could be be providing genuinely interesting information that your customers will be interested in, but might not ever know about unless you tell them about it, and an email newsletter is also a great way to make your brand a part of your customers every day lives, meaning that you are front of mind when it comes to their next online purchase. As long as you don’t spam your customers, you will build a stronger bong between your customers and your brand which will only help your online presence in the long run.

4Sprung now offers custom designed newsletter email templates for MailChimp that are branded to suit your website. The email templates are editable in MailChimp so you can add as much content as you like.

How does the custom email template work?

Basically, we will send you a small questionnaire about the style of the newsletter you would like, including what layout you had in mind, what colour scheme to use (most clients choose one to match their website but it could be completely different, its all up to you) and other items such as providing a copy of the logo so we can brand the newsletter and MailChimp account accordingly. If you have your own in house design team, they can even provide the design files and we can implement them into the correct format so it is fully editable in MailChimp (although we may not be able to match the designs perfectly due to the complexities involved in designing a fully editable, WYSIWYG template in MailChimp, we will be very close!).

The best thing about these (apart from it being free on certain pricing plans) MailChimp email newsletter templates is that once you choose your template in MailChimp, you can edit the content through the WYSIWYG editor which means you can add new images, link lines of text to your website’s blog (or any other link you want to link to), and if you know HTML then pretty much anything goes. But whatever your skill level, from complete novice to expert, MailChimp makes the entire process extremely user friendly.

MailChimp also offers a great tool for stats and reports on your campaigns. You can see who clicked what link, which link was the most popular, which geographic locations had the most interest in which links, which emails bounced or were never opened, the information at your fingertips is extremely helpful as you learn to tailor your campaigns to make them as interesting as possible to your database of contacts.

If you are new to MailChimp we can even set up your account and mailing lists for an additional fee, making the entire process incredibly straight forward for you. This is because although MailChimp is extremely user friendly once you have had time to explore, we realise some people simply do not have this time and want everything ready so they can just start their email marketing campaigns from the get go, so for an additional fee we will do all the leg work for you. Prices start from as little as $699 for the fully customisable, custom coded template.

For more info on our MailChimp newsletter email templates just send us an email or call us on +61 2 8033 2941.

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Readysteadyprint.com.au is a project that has been complex but extremely rewarding for 4Sprung. Ready Steady Print founder and owner, Joshua Kamil, was looking to revamp his website to take his business to the next level, but it also had to be able to match the needs of a growing business and so chose the 4S cart system.

“This heavily modified version of CS Cart is absolutely fantastic. It’s rich with features, good ranges of add-ons are available and up to date, and we have experienced no bugs or major errors. We really couldn’t be happier.”

             -Joshua Kamil, CEO & Founder, Ready Steady Print

This custom designed cart utilises some of the 4S cart systems most powerful tools such as our Dynamic Banner Manager as well as some custom designed features such as an Artwork Proofing Module, new in-depth product variation options through the admin area and a new Payment Gateway. We are extremely proud of the end result and wish Joshua and his team the best of luck for the future.

To see the site live click here.

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Google consistently releases new updates of their algorithm, and even more so this past few months. One of the most recent updates that have created a big buzz is the Penguin Update, released on April the 24th. This update has many sides but simply it is a penalty that is applied automatically to pages and sites that are not following basic and standard SEO principles, as well as sites that are implementing spamming techniques.

Google has been increasing the intensity of their campaign against SEO malpractices, and prior to the Penguin update Google released an update, which caused big service providers such as BuildMyRanks to stop operating. Google infiltrated their blog network and penalised them by deeming them a spam network.

What can I do to avoid being penalised?

Google updates follow the same theme, meaning the updates are aimed towards sites that implement spamming techniques or practice Black Hat SEO. If you follow standard SEO techniques and strategies then you should not encounter any problems.

There are sites that claim to follow above board SEO marketing principles but have been penalised, and this is unfortunate. Because of this Google has provided a Penguin Feedback Form where in you can raise your concern if you think your site has been targeted by mistake, this gives a hint that Google has not yet really fully completed this update and will address this issue in the coming updates.

Other tips;

1. Re-evaluate your site make sure to remove spamming techniques like keyword stuffing and other Black Hat techniques.
2. Based on results of tests conducted it would help not only to have diversity in link sources and diversity in linked pages, but diversity in anchor text as well. So make sure you get links from quality and different sites, drive them to your main page as well as your inner pages and make sure to alternate using keywords as anchor text to make your SEO campaign look more natural.
3. Whether it be Penguin, or any other update, wherever you can – use White Hat techniques, as no matter what changes Google makes, putting in quality content yourself in relevant areas and of relevant topics will always pay dividends over time.

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