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6 Tips to Help You Prepare For Cyber Monday

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday around the corner, we have compiled a list of six tips to help you make the most out of the busiest shopping period of the year.

Create an Early Buzz

Shoppers are looking for deals.

Creating an early buzz by advertising Cyber Monday deals along with offering special discount codes will help draw customers into your store with the clear intention of getting an “as advertised” deal.

Cyber Monday ads do not require a user click through, and can include a discount code in the ad, which in some cases will help you get cheap and even free viewing eyeballs.

In fact, Cyber Monday coupons are the almost only exception to when cold emails are effective!

Limit Quantity

Limited quantity creates urgency.

Limiting, along with displaying your inventory can help tip over a customer’s decision. Showing a phrase like “Only 4 left!” in your store is a proven way to increase conversion rates.

Offer Black Friday Deals

To skip the lines at the malls, many black Friday shoppers prefer to shop online. Offering online Black Friday as well as Cyber Monday deals will help your customers avoid the hassle of the busiest day of the year.

Bring Deals to the Front of Your Store

Customers that used a coupon ad to visit your store expect to see the product they are interested in immediately and will navigate away to another deal if they cannot find it.

Bringing your deals to the front, and even creating a special category for Cyber Monday deals can help your customers find deals quicker.

Upsell

Along with deals, upselling complimentary products or services are a great way to increase your revenue; in fact you may design your deals to match upsold products.

For Example: if you know that customers that purchased a camera body also purchased a lens, you can offer a deal on camera bodies and upsell matching lens.

Ship Immediately

As the holidays are the busiest shopping and shipping time of the year, delays and mix-ups with your shipping provider can happen.

It’s better to ship early, so that if any issues occur, both you and your customers still have time to correct them.

Conclusion

At ShopSnap we are always here to help and support you through this holiday season.

Marry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

#ecommerce #blackfriday #cybermonday #shopsnap

How to Engage Users and Drive Conversions to Your Mobile Store

As most ecommerce traffic today is mobile, engaging users to increase conversion rates is more important than ever.

Merchants have less screen real estate to create a first impression; and stores need to concentrate on the features that are the most important to a customer’s decision making process.

There are two main factors in a customer’s purchase decision, get them right and watch your conversion rate increase tenfold!

Trust and Convenience

Customers are more likely to buy from you if they trust you.

For example: Amazon has one of the worst shopping user experiences out there, yet great conversion rates.

Amazon users trust the brand

They know that the product they purchased in the Amazon store is the same product that will be shipped to them, trust there will be no delays and that their payment information is secure.

Customers that trust you are more likely to buy from you if it’s convenient.

Have you ever added an item to a cart, then had to find the cart page on the top of the page, navigate to the cart, enter your zip code, register, see shipping costs, and choose a password?

You get the idea :)

Customers want convenience.

They want multiple checkout and payment options, comparison shopping and quick access to items they are interested in.

Customers that find they need to navigate between multiple screens, just to type in a credit card number are more likely to abandon your site never to return.

We call this abandonment rate.

So how did we increase conversion rate in the ShopSnap platform? How did we achieve both gaining the trust of the customer and a convenient way to check out on a mobile device?

Verified Reviews

All reviews on the ShopSnap platform are verified and published by actual customers that have purchased the item in the store.

A verified logo will appear next to each review.

Potential customers trust real reviewers.

Sorted Reviews

Customers tend to look for both the best and mediocre reviews on your store.

They are looking for real feedback on your product, shipping process or customer service.

Allowing customers to quickly find good reviews as well as mediocre ones will gain the trust of the customer in assuring a store does not hide real customer reviews.

In fact, when a customer only finds five star reviews on a store, they might become suspicious of those and assume they have been placed there by the store itself.

Multiple payment options

Customers expect to be able to pay with a PayPal account, Apple Pay, Google Wallet and through the store’s checkout page.

In order for a customer to continue with a checkout process they need to feel comfortable with the store’s security level.

Offering your customers familiar checkout options will increase their comfort and trust levels.

ShopSnap allows customers to choose the checkout method they prefer increasing the overall checkout rate.

Show full item details

Customers expect to be able to purchase any product actively displayed on the store, or pre order products that might be out of stock.

Good pictures, a concise description, customization options and clear call to action button located as close as possible to the center of the screen will increase the odds customers that will add this item to their cart.

If a product is out of stock, a customer needs to be well informed they will receive the item at a later date.

Show history

40% of customers return to at least one product they viewed while browsing your store.

Therefore the ability to present viewing history is extremely important.

In many cases customers arrived at your store while searching for a particular item and it was the first item they viewed.

Helping them to go back to the item that they might be interested in at any given moment along with the opportunity to add it to their cart will help them with the purchase process and increase the convenience of purchasing it, helping conversion rates.

Show related products

Many customers tend to buy multiple items in the same transaction.

Promoting accessories or a related item next to the product being viewed will increase the odds they will add them to the cart.

In addition they can comparison shop without leaving your store.

Promo codes

Discounts and promos always incentivize customers to check out. Offering a coupon as a part of the product or checkout process will increase the likelihood of a check out.

ShopSnap offers a wide verity of coupons and discounts, such as “Buy one get one free” “Free Shipping” and more, as a part of the platform.

Conclusion

If you are a merchant that is struggling with conversion rates or just looking for ways to optimize your online sales process, check out the ShopSnap platform offered by our select partners.

#ecommerce #mcommerce #shopsnap

Theme Spotlight: Sports

This is our Sports theme. Available with every ShopSnap store.

see it on your laptop

See it on your phone

Continue to a live store

#ecommerce #shopsnap

Attract more shoppers with built in rich snippets and product reviews in search results

Did you know? Your ShopSnap store includes Google rich snippets. When searching for products, shoppers will see search results from your store as review stars, an aggregate rating value, and vote count.

This will consistently help you get more visitors, by ranking higher than your competition and being more visible on search result pages.

* Actual ShopSnap store Google search result shown.

#ecommerce #shopsnap

Rank higher in Google search results with a mobile friendly store

Google has officially announced that starting April 21st, its ranking algorithm will include mobile-friendly usability factors and app indexing.

Making sure your store is mobile friendly is now more important than ever. It can boost your search engine ranking on mobile devices which now account for 50.3% of All ecommerce Traffic.

According to the official Google statement “users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”

ShopSnap stores are designed from the ground up for mobile, are touch friendly and consistently rank higher then other ecommerce providers in mobile searches.

Adding a ShopSnap store to your online business can help you stay ahead of the curve by taking advantage of mobile traffic to its fullest potential.

Get more mobile customers by ranking higher than your competition and provide a better user experience for your customers.

The official Google Webmaster blog statement here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html

* Actual ShopSnap store mobile test shown.

#ecommerce #shopsnap

A look into the ShopSnap admin panel.

#ecommerce #shopsnap

Connecting brick-and-mortar merchants to ecommerce, ShopSnap allows shoppers to pick up in store products purchased online

Here at ShopSnap, we are all about increasing conversion rates. That is why we added a new “Pickup in Store” feature.

Online shoppers can now pick up products in your brick and mortar store, saving time and shipping costs.

Using your ShopSnap store, you can enable any product sold online to be picked up from your local store by the customer.

Just select a product and enable the “Pickup in Store” feature. Add a location address and sync online and offline inventory using your ShopSnap control panel.

Give your customers a choice: compare online, pickup in person.

#ecommerce #shopsnap

Startups in Austin are making waves – from eliminating boring data entry tasks to better engaging with customers, below we highlight five of the most innovative startups in Austin. Paybook Pay

Is your buy button taking center stage?

Is your online store converting as well as it should be? Here is a quick tip to help you convert more visitors into customers:

Placing the buy button as close to the center of the page and near the product image and description will help your customers quickly decide and add it to their cart. ShopSnap stores product pages are designed to help you sell more.

#ecommerce

The new website is coming along well

Synchronizing Your ShopSnap Orders to QuickBooks Online

Use QuickBooks as your accounting software? Your ShopSnap online store is capable of synchronizing customers and orders with QuickBooks online.

Here is how you can set up integration between ShopSnap and QuickBooks:

In QuickBooks online, create a new application. We called ours ShopSnap Connector, but, you can name yours according to your preference.

In the Application settings, set the domain of your store.

Under the keys tab, copy the keys from your application.

Place them into your ShopSnap settings screen.

Remember to make sure your QuickBooks application is placed into production by selecting the production tab.

To synchronize orders, please select "Sync Orders to QuickBooks Online" from your ShopSnap's shortcuts menu.

From the next screen click "Connect toQuickBooks"

A popup window will appear, prompting you to log into your QuickBooks account.

After you have logged in, you will have to authorize your connector application.

The next screen will ask you for the orders you wish to synchronize. you can select specific orders, or all of your new orders.

Click the "Sync" button.

In your QuickBooks application a new customer has been created.

The customer is showing their ShopSnap store order under the transactions tab.

Clicking a transaction will show you its details.

Conclusion

If you use QuickBooks online as your accounting software, You can easily use the ShopSnap-QuickBooks integration to automate your accounting process.

#ecommerce #shopsnap

Is your eCommerce platform truly scalable?

Many of our customers have asked us: “How do I know my store can scale?” we decided to answer by breaking down the components a system must have in order to be considered truly scalable.

Elastic load balancing Elastic load balancing is the ability to add and remove load balancers depending on incoming traffic. Load balancers regulate the flow of requests between web servers and as traffic increases to your store, more load balancers are needed to insure traffic is directed efficiently between servers. ShopSnap encrypts your sensitive information using SSL certificates installed on the load balancers and secure application pages are served quicker when multiple load balancers are handling secure requests.

Multiple web servers When your store is idle or under a light load, it should be able to run on a single web server. As traffic spikes, more web servers need to be activated so the store can run on hundreds or even thousands of web servers. The limits of servers should be up to the cloud your store is installed on. The ShopSnap cloud can scale up to thousands of servers.

CDN for images CDNs or Content Delivery Networks are a way for your static files to be served from a server that is geographically close to your customers. ShopSnap's CDN consist of thousands of servers in multiple data centers around the world. As you upload graphics files or product images to your store, they are distributed between all CDN servers in order to speed up page loads for graphic heavy pages and customers that are further away from the main cloud will also enjoy fast loading speeds.

Propagated protected user files User protected files are files containing data that require some sort of security. They cannot be distributed via a CDN and users must log on in order to see and change them. As users add or change the data in the files, ShopSnap propagates the files to all web servers your store is using so that they can be swiftly accessed by users being redirected from load balancers to other web servers.

Distributed cache A cache system is a method of storing the most accessed objects for quicker access, for example, the products on the front page of your store are cached. A distributed cache is a cache system shared between all the web servers of your store. When a cache is local, you might have duplicate entries in each web server, increasing the amount of memory each of your servers consumes. ShopSnap uses a distributed cache system so all web servers enjoy the benefits of rapidly accessing the same cached data, stored in dedicated cache servers.

Distributed queues for regulated transactions We had a customer that had their store featured on the Oprah Winfrey show. Sales spiked to hundreds per second. Each new sale requires a chain flow of events wrapped in a transaction. Sending emails to the customer and store owner, charging credit cards, inserting records into the database, deducting inventory and so on. Each transaction can take up to five seconds to complete. With only five web servers running (and doing a great job at keeping the store fast) we needed a background system that can regulate transactions. You can read more about background services in the next section. ShopSnap regulates the rate of transaction processing is an array of distributed queues installed on our cloud. The queues store transaction requests and allow our system to process transactions at a fixed speed.

Background services for long running transactions We use the Elastify framework in order to process long running transactions such as sending emails, importing data and so on. This allows us to perform heavy load tasks without affecting your web servers. We scale the number of processing servers up or down according to the workload sent from your store.

Failover databases When databases go offline, your store must be able to keep running flawlessly from a backup database. ShopSnap uses a system that utilizes a mirror stand by database that is always synchronized and ready to take over when the main database fails. When the system is restored to normal, the main database is synchronized with any data that was uploaded or updated during the outage.

The ability to perform seamlessly through light and heavy traffic It’s important your store is able to handle the transition between light and heavy load in a seamless manner. Users should not be affected. Sessions should be kept alive and new users should have a fast and enjoyable experience. Our platform provides you with an elastic transition that goes unnoticed by your customers.

Conclusion Ask yourself: Is my store truly scale? Can it handle ten or ten thousands of customers per day at the same speed and efficiency? Here at ShopSnap we are technology people. We are UX designers, software, cloud and database engineers. We spend our days and nights thinking about new ways to make our product cutting edge so it will be the best solution for you.

You can be sure that with a ShopSnap store, your business will have a truly scalable solution.

New: Call for pricing allows you to sell products offline

I sell fine art, I cannot sell a $100,000 painting online with a credit card.

I sell Industrial Grade CNC Machines. Some cost over a million dollars. My customers need a payment plan and transaction fees on a million dollars just cost too much!

I still need to be noticed online, showcase my products and services and be SEO and mobile friendly. I need my customers to be able to see and feel my products. I need them to contact me and then I need to be able to start a personal sale process.

You spoke and we listened.

Now there is call for pricing. A new feature on your ShopSnap store. With call for pricing the regular pricing is not displayed on the store. Replacing the “Buy” button is a “Contact Me For Pricing” button. Customers can fill in a quick contact form and you get a lead.

It’s quick, easy to set up and allows you to mix online and offline products in the same store.

Never miss a sale again just because it can’t take place online!