The fifth edition of the eCommerce Awards Gala, an event dedicated to online store performances took place Thursday, September 2, at the Ramada Hotel Bucharest Parc, where a series of conferences were held by professionals in the field, both Romanian and from the international sphere.
Among those expected to be there, and who was there during the event, we can include Mr. Bryan Eisenberg, an expert in optimizing the conversion that spoke about “21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites”, Todd Watson, expert from IBM which talked about “Turbo’s Top 10 E-Commerce E- Marketing Lessons”, live streaming from United States of America and Julian Harris from Google UK.
The first speaker came from the Romanian part, and here I am referring to Bogdan Manolea, which explained something about “Legal stories for online buyers”. “The direct advice is to register the domain as a mark”, said Manolea to have exclusivity over a certain domain.
The points outlined by the Romanian leader emphasize some rules that online merchants must follow, namely the domain registration for the mark, to avoid copy and then paste and the existence of a clear privacy policy (where the store briefly explains the area of activity, collects data from the client, including those relating to IP, who has access to data and user rights). Also, the online stores need to protect personal data and have good security measures in order to avoid any irregularities.
Iustin Priescu from Outpost24.com, spoke about “What has resulted from scanning several stores participating in this project of scanning their activity?” “All the businesses are important and all must be protected”, says Priescu.
He presented the study undertaken for companies that entered the competition. Thus, the tests were conducted so that the perimeter was scanned and the results were presented as a matter of fact, to draw some conclusions, without having to make customizations on firms.
The survey had 22 participants volunteers to this study in 2010 and scanning of 30 IPs with Outscan, followed by finding 2035 computer vulnerabilities.
The study revealed that 21.5% of the companies have vulnerabilities with a maximum risk factor, while 14% do not have a high risk. Also, they found vulnerabilities from the period 1995 – 2000, which means that the systems were not updated.
Although the solution is a technical one (which would require upgrades or updates), this is also a basic problem of management in the context in which managers direct the security departments inside the company.
The third speaker, Petre Datculescu from IRSOP, spoke about six broad categories of problems that can be encountered by a Website. First the distraction (too little essential things are viewed), the discrepancy between the logic of the designer and that of visitors (parts that are important for designers are rarely important for users) and the unconscious intervention (a lot of insignificant things from a Website has a great effect on the cognitive processing).
The fourth category is the semantics category, which refers to words that people do not understand from the site, while the fifth refers to the complexity of the site (a site too difficult generates cognitive instability). The last category refers to intellectual stimulation, namely the degree at which the information on the site causes the user to search on this site for more information or not. He recommended that the text on the site to not be written in a scientific language and to not be too long.
Bryan Eisenberg continued with “21 Secrets of Top Covering Websites”. “No site is perfect,” notes the expert. Eisenberg believes that sites with high conversion use a set of 21 simple rules.
1. They communicate valuable content.
2. They have persuasive and relevant offers
3. Their offer is present on all pages on the site, thus constantly it is pointed out, without regard to user behavior on the site.
4. The entire site must have the same design, colours, text format, and if the ad promises something, the user finds on the Website the product or service promised.
5. The sellers whose sites have high conversion understand the customer buying process.
6. Have a wider target audience. Dealers take into account the customer behavior and what makes them buy, and they do this spontaneously or methodically.
7. Do not use excessive optimization tools.
8. They listen to the consumer’s voice. Consumer opinions are very important and influences how the product is seen by other potential buyers.
9. The use filters used for navigation, thereby they increase the access to some pages.
10. Consumer reviews are used to promote products.
11. They use forms and questionnaires to find what their customers really want.
12. Customers are also used for feedback and they are the basis for a future research.
13. They use persuasion principles – reciprocity, authority, consistency, consensus. They have a page where they thank the customers for shopping, where they mention a special offer.
14. Even the forms on the site are attractive and show interest. The forms must be simple, without too many fields to fill in. If the form requests more information, the specialist point out that there must be a distance between the fields, in order to make it easier for the reader to fill in the blanks.
15. The Websites must specify that the client data is confidential and what are the security measures taken by the company.
16. The interaction on the site is continuous. For example, if a customer adds items to his shopping cart, the site automatically do not send him to his cart page, but shows the similar products that he might be interested in.
17. They show the customer a preview of mail they will receive, on the order placed.
18. Have a budget that looks at the consumer’s behavior on the site during time.
19. They use a prioritization system for the ease of selections.
20. They take decisions based on existing data. For a correct analysis and optimization, you should always put up a list of “to do”. If you have a Website, that is…
21. They process quickly the order and consistently update the information.
After the break, the conference session was reopened, the first speaker being the CEO from 2Parale, Dorin Boerescu, who talked about “Ideas for marketing e-commerce in 2010″.
More about this conference in a future article. That’s it for now.