If you answered yes to any of the questions here is your next one, do you know what web analytics is? Do you have an analytics program setup? If you have one setup, do you use it?

If you answered no to any of the above questions then you are in the same boat as a lot of eCommerce owners and this post is for you. Most people have an idea of what web analytics is today, but most just hear about it, so they set it up, but just let it sit there and don’t know what to do. Anyone that works on an eCommerce site needs an understanding of analytics or someone that can do it for them. Without web analytics your eCommerce site is dead! It won’t survive.

Web analytics is the brain of your eCommerce site. Just like us we need a brain to survive. Our brain holds our experiences, what we learn, how to make decisions. The list can go on forever what our brain does for us, but you get the point. The same goes for eCommerce sites. Ecommerce sites have many parts from marketing, to site work, to product fulfillment, to customer service. This list can go on forever as well. Your web analytics holds your sites experiences, how it preforms. With this data you form your decisions on how to run your eCommerce site. Analytics tell you where to put your money, what is your best preforming channel and so much more.

The more you understand analytics the more you can use it to your advantage. This will pay you back ten fold and then some. I feel this is such a core piece to eCommerce success that I am going to start a series of posts dedicated to analytics. These posts will all be geared towards analytics in the eCommerce world. With these I hope to show you how important analytics is to your endeavor and how it will improve your ROI.

eCommerce Online Training Calendar

If someone comes into your site and they notice a graphic saying, “Your-State-Here Residents Pay No Sales Tax”, it gives the customer a sense of comfort. This allows you to connect with your visitors on a more personalized level. Adding a feature like this one can really help increase your conversion rates.

I wanted to take the above blog post a step further and show you exactly how you can do this on your site today and get those conversion rates up.

There are several ways to achieve a function of personalization like this. I wanted a way that can be used across multiple languages.  What I have found will work if your site is being run off PHP, ASP.NET, Ruby on Rails, Java and so on. It is just a simple JavaScript script that can get you this functionality.

When I searched around for a way to do this I came across this post, Find web visitor’s location automatically with javascript and Google APIs. The code here got me started in the right direction and was able to come up with code to create the personalization code. A side note to this, I found that the place I got this code from is from Brian Cray’s blog. He is located in Columbus, OH and I am also in Columbus, OH. It’s a small world.

Code block

<div id="salestax"></div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi?key=YOUR-KEY-HERE"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
 
if(google.loader.ClientLocation)
{
  visitor_region = google.loader.ClientLocation.address.region;
 
  document.getElementById('salestax').innerHTML = '<p><img src="./images/' + visitor_region + '.gif" /></p>' + visitor_region;
}
else
{
  document.getElementById('salestax').innerHTML = '<p><img src="./images/notfound.gif" /></p>';
}
</script>

This uses the Google AJAX API script. For you to use this on your site you will need to sign up for a Google API key and place it in the code above where it says “YOUR-KEY-HERE”.

This code will look for an image in the image folder named after the visitors region. The region comes back as the states abbreviation. So for an example the code finds be in Ohio. It returns the visitor_region as OH. It will look for the image OH.gif in the images folder and display that image on the page. What you will need to do is create an image for each of the 50 states and place them in an images folder.

If the Google location script does not return a visitor_region the else statement is there to catch that error and display a default image, notfound.gif. These geo location scripts do not always work properly, so make sure you always have a default image to display if it does not.

TRY IT OUT

There are many other applications that this type of code could be used for besides just a no tax icon. I would love to see how people use this on their sites for personalization. Let me know in the comments if you do.

Start improving your eCommerce stores conversion rate today.

If you have suggestions, articles, etc. please send them to me via twitter or email me at dustin[at]dustinfisher[dot]com.

Improve Your eCommerce Site Now With These Articles

Your Negative ROI (Risk Of Inaction)? (via googleretial.blogspot.com) – They give some suggestions on how to think about your negative ROI.

Product image 360 in Email (via stylecampaign.com) – If you have ever wanted to product 360 degree images of your products and even put them in an email newsletter this is a great post.

Cross-Selling’s Time Has Come (via ecommercetimes.com) – Every retialer wants to cross-sell. It increases revenue. This gives you some tips on how to make the cross-sell work.

The Shopping Cart: How to Answer the 5 Unanswered Customer Questions (via grokdotcom.com) – Here are 5 areas your site should answer that customers look for before buying.

Christmas Shopping Begins in the Next 4 Weeks… (via grokdotcom.com) – With the economy down, people are going to start shopping and planning earlier than ever. Are you ready?

Interesting eCommerce Articles of the Week

Small Business SEO: Costs, Expectations & Realities (via smallbusinesssem.com) – Does your eCommerce shop need some seo help? This talks to you about what to expect to pay for an seo.

5 Ways Negative Reviews are Good for Business (via smallbusinesssem.com) – No one wants a negative review of their business, but it is going to happen. This is a good article on why the negative review is actually good.

Ecommerce Interview: Adding Community for Maximum Return an Interview with Adam Michelson (via optaros.com) – About a 6 minute video on using social media to build a community to help your eCommerce site.

The Importance of Requirements Diligence (via getelastic.com) – Some points to look at when choosing an eCommerce platform. They will also be holding a webinar on this next week. I would check out.

Is the Customer Always Right? (via invesp.com) – Good article about the saying, “Is the customer always right?” No the customer is not always right, as some people use this saying to try and get free items and discounts.

This past weeks ecommerce weekly roundup is a couple days late. I had my sisters wedding this past weekend and did not have time to put it together. If you have suggestions, articles, etc. please send them to me via twitter or email me at dustin[at]dustinfisher[dot]com.

Improve Your eCommerce Site Now With These Articles

A/B split and multivariate testing: don’t forget your most important page (via econsultancy.com) – Many people run the usual split tests on their homepage and product pages. The order page gets left out a lot and it is a very important page to test.

5 Tips for Encouraging the Impulse Purchase (via blueacorn.com) – A couple good tips to get your visitors to make that extra purchase that they never planned on. This is a great way to increase your roi.

The Skinny on Recession Psychology (via googleretail.blogspot.com) – How to target customers senses and emotions in a recession to make the sale.

What Motivates A Purchase? (via entrepreneurs-journey.com) – What makes a customer buy a product from your site over another one. This has some good tips to implement into your site to make the sale.

PPC / SEM Analytics: 5 Actionable Tips To Improve ROI (via kaushik.net) – Long post, but some amazing actionable tips to improve your ROI.

3 Remedies for a Web Analytics Overdose (via palmerwebmarketing.com) – A couple tips to sort through the hundreds of web analytics reports and make them usefull to your business.

Joining the SEO and PPC dots (via econsultancy.com) – Tips on using PPC and SEO in conjuction with each other.

Measuring and Improving Cross-Sell and Upsell (via getelastic.com) – Tips on getting your average order value up by cross-selling and upselling.

Interesting eCommerce Articles of the Week

Will Google Judge You Guilty of SEO? (via grokdotcom.com) – Interesting read on how Google profiles SEO’s. Just confirms what we have always known develop your eCommerce site for the customer, not the engines.

Social media drives sales — if you know how to use it (via bazaarblog.com) – People are debating the usefulness of social media and if it drives sales.

The Next Wave of E-Tail: Considered Commerce (via ecommercetimes.com) – eCommerce sites have been dominated by the easy to ship products. Now it is going into the next phase the harder to ship items like furniture.

Word-of-mouth matters (via bazaarblog.com) – Study finds that recommendations from firends are the most trusted source of information.

IRCE 2009 at a glance (via invesp.com) – The Internet Retailer Confrence was this week. This is a little summary of some of the things that took place there.

If you have suggestions, articles, etc. please send them to me via twitter or email me at dustin[at]dustinfisher[dot]com.

Improve Your eCommerce Site Now With These Articles

Free shipping search test results – Free Shipping Episode II (via searchmarketing.com) – An A/B test on ads with the words free shipping and no free shipping words.

eCommerce: 45 Tips to Turbocharge Your Sales (via startupnation.com) – Good tips to look at for your eCommerce site.

Incentives: Giving your customers the biggest bang for their buck (via invesp.com) – Some tips on how to construct incentives to get more buyers.

The best day to send email? (via email-marketing-reports.com) – Do you have an email campaign? Read this article to find out the best day for you to send out those emails.

Webinar: 7 Key Strategies For Improving Online Merchandising (via practicalecommerce.com) – This is the first in a new webinar series from practical ecommerce. This has some good info on merchandising products for the online world.

PeC Traffic Report: Four Good Web Tools to Identify Traffic-Building Trends (via practicalecommerce.com) – A couple good places to checkout when you are looking for current trends and topics in your area.

Brain Types & Personas with Bryan Eisenberg (via webmasterradio.fm) – This is audio on wow peoples brain types and persona’s affect their buying decisions and how to optimize your pages to use this to your advantage.

Ecommerce Know-How: Use Twitter to Build a Community of Loyal Customers (via practicalecommerce.com) – Some tips on how to use twitter for your eCommerce business.

Interesting eCommerce Articles of the Week

Hot Ecommerce Trend: Embedded Video in Email (via getelastic.com) – Video in eCommerce is becoming a must have. In this article it talks about using video in your email campaigns. I have yet to see one personally, but I can see it’s benefit.

Eye Tracking Bing vs. Google: A First Look (via usercentric.com) – Interesting first eye tracking study of the new search engine Bing vs. Google. This is good info to have when running your ppc campaigns for your store.

Should you hire a social media consultant for your e-commerce site? (via zencartoptimization.com) – Some tips on when to do social media in house or outsource the work elsewhere.

Online Marketing Effectiveness (via emarketer.com) – This is a Forbes study on the best way to generate sales online. Some interesting data comes out of it, so check it out.

[May 30th-June 5th, 2009] volume 1 – issue 6

If you have suggestions, articles, etc. please send them to me via twitter or email me at dustin[at]dustinfisher[dot]com.

Improve Your eCommerce Site Now With These Articles

Mobile Commerce Usability: Forms and Checkout (via getelastic.com) This was a 4 part series. This is part 4, the last 3 parts were covered last week.

Have You Given Your Website a Mid-Year Check-up? (via grokdotcom.com) – Can’t believe we are 6 months into the year already. Definitely time to do a checkup on your website and get ready for the holidays again.

Are Your Compelling Offers Actually …. Compelling? (via hubspot.com) – Good read on how to structure compelling offers that stand out above the rest and make them well… compelling.

Duplicate Content Solutions & The Canonical Tag (via outspokenmedia.com) – The ladies at Outspoken Media attended SMX Advanced and they blogged several sessions. This is a great one for eCommerce shops. This session used case studies from 1800flowers.com, eyeglasses.com and info from Zappos and ticketmaster. Great info in this and is a must read. Here are a couple other good ones as well to take a look at: Amazing PPC Tactics and Beyond the Usual Link Building

Web Design Tips: The Laws of Ecommerce Navigation Design (via practicalecommerce.com) – Navigation for eCommerce sites are very important. Without great navigation your visitors will likely get frustrated and leave. Check out this article for some tips on making sure your navigation is up to par.

Increase Conversion Rates by Identifying Funnels and Goals (via practicalecommerce.com) – If you have never setup funnels and goal in Google Analytics for your eCommerce shop this is a good article to read to help you get started.

Interesting eCommerce Articles of the Week

What Obama means for e-commerce (via internetretailer.com) – Obama could and probably will have a big impact on eCommerce while he is in office. Must read article as some of the changes that could take place could change the eCommerce landscape.

Google Product Search Announcement About Attribute Changes (via csestrategies.com) – Google product data feeds will soon be required to have the condition attribute set. Update those feeds before they stop working.

Alternative Payment Methods Part 1: What Are They, How Do They Work (via practicalecommerce.com) – Overview of other payment methods than the traditional credit card. If your just starting out in eCommerce it is a good read.

Is Free Shipping More Attractive Than A Dollar Discount? (via getelastic.com) – Good discussion on why free shipping is more attractive than a dollar discount even if that dollar discount is more than the shipping cost. Good food for your thought.

Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate: April 2009 (via grokdotcom.com) – ProFlowers leads the way at 42.8%. Are you there yet?

Google Squared went live this week. It does some very interesting things when it comes to product shopping. Check it out and see if your eCommerce site is ready for the way it searches.

Ecommerce Know-How: Cloud Computing in the Ecommerce Forecast (via practicalecommerce.com) – There is a lot of talk on the web today about cloud computing. This article and video show you what it is and what it means for the world of eCommerce.

[May 23rd-May 29th, 2009] volume 1 – issue 5

This is a light week on the articles and news with Memorial Day this past Monday. There is still some good information to check out below though. If you have suggestions, articles, etc. please send them to me via twitter or email me at dustin[at]dustinfisher[dot]com.

Improve Your eCommerce Site Now With These Articles

Use Conversions To Generate More Conversions (via smashingmagazine.com) – This is the third and final aritlce in the website conversion series that Smashing Magazine did. This is a shorter article, but still has some good tips to consider.

Mobile Commerce Usability (via getelastic.com) [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] – This is a 4 part series. Good info to consider when taking on the project of optimizing your eCommerce shop for mobile phones. With all the smart phones out companies can’t afford not to optimize for the mobile web. It looks like the last part in this series will be posted next week.

Four Steps To Optimization Success (via grokdotcom.com) – Using a exercise/weight loss analogy they give a plan to optimize your site.

12 Tips For Designing an Excellent Checkout Process (via smashingmagazine.com) – A lot of shopping cart software out there won’t let you change much in the checkout process, but if your software allows you this is a great article to read and implement.

Whiteboard Friday – Path to Conversion (via seomoz.org) – Great video to watch on conversions. What your analytics tell you is the top revenue generating keyword is not always the case.

Interesting eCommerce Articles of the Week

How To Protect Your Brand Under Google’s New Trademark Policies (via searchengineland.com)- Most people know now that Google is removing it’s trademark policies pertaineing to Adwords. This is a great article explaining what they are removing and how to protect your brand.

Social media doesn’t drive purchasing decisions: report (via marketingpilgrim.com) – Knowledge Networks did a survey on social media and they found that less than 5% of social media participants turn to social sites for guidance on purchasing decsions. Not sure how much I agree with these results, but an interesting read.

Shopping Study: Product Videos Should Last 90 Seconds (via optaros.com) – Study done that shows where the audience drop’s off when watching product videos online.

Email Marketing: Split Testing Improves Results “Up to 191 Percent” (via practicalecommerce.com) – Article detailing why you should split test your email campaigns.

Welcome to this weeks edition of the eCommerce Weekly Roundup. This edition wraps up my first month. More people everyday are starting to discover this blog and this series. I hope everyone is finding it useful and helping you along in your eCommerce journey. I know I have learned a lot from doing this. If you have suggestions, articles, etc. please send them to me via twitter or email me at dustin[at]dustinfisher[dot]com.

Everyone involved in eCommerce needs to read this article below about PA-DSS. We all know about being PCI complaint, but in about a year or so it could get ugly in the land of eCommerce. This article from The Merchant Account Blog explains it a little better and explains what could happen. [Article]

Improve Your eCommerce Site Now With These Articles

Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive (via moskalyuk.com) – Great article that can give you some very good tips on getting people to buy your products using persuasive techniques. After this article I am going to have to go out and buy the book. It has some great research you can implement in to a website.

Is Social Media Marketing Right for You? (via palmerwebmarketing.com) – Good article on questions you need to answer about your business before taking on social media.

6 Powerful Principles of Persuasion for Influential Internet Marketing (via winningtheweb.com) – Good tips on getting people to follow your brand and to sell more of your products.

Poor conversions: the usual suspects (via econsultancy.com) – They list 6 reasons why you are not converting your visitors into customers. I like the last one on pricing gaps. That is a big conversion killer.

Ecommerce Know-How: Improve Cash Flow by Delaying Suppliers (via practicalecommerce.com) – This article explains the idea of cash flow and how to make it work for your eCommerce operation. This is geared towards the newer crowd to the business arena. Good info nonetheless.

Tracking Transactions back to the Initial Referrer with Google Analytics (via roirevolution.com) – Article shows you how to get Google Analytics to show you the initial referrer for the transaction than the default last referrer.

Attract Qualified Traffic with Content Syndication (via practicalecommerce.com) – Great article on focusing on one specific set of customers that come to your website. The technique in the article will help you develop some good content for you website and then show you how to syndicate across multiple places for the most exposure.

Multichannel 2.0: Are You Ready for the Next Generation of Commerce Channels? (via getelastic.com) – Good overview of the new commerce channels that are emerging and how to prepare for them.

7 Tips for Effective Calls to Action (via hubspot.com) – Some good tips you can use on your product pages to get your visitors to make that purchase.

Optimizing Website & Landing Page Copy – A 10 Step Process (via grokdotcom.com) – This has a video presentation on it and it is only viewable until June 3rd. The article also lists the 10 step process. It is a good process to step through when optimizing your eCommerce site landing pages or product pages.

Interesting eCommerce Articles of the Week

Shopping 2.0: Current E-commerce Trends (Redux) (via readwriteweb.com) – This was a podcast from last December. They are re-posting it, so in theory it is now part of this weeks eCommerce now. It has some good info on current eCommerce trends.

Just Browsing? A Web Store May Follow You Out the Door (via nytimes.com) – This is a New York Times article on the new service Abandonment Tracker Pro, by SeeWhy. This service tracks abandoned carts on your site in real time. This allows you to act on it quickly.

Can Bad Assumptions Lead to “Gorilla Marketing”? (via grokdotcom.com) – Goes over some assumptions on online retailers tactics with abandoned cart marketing.

Social Publishing Site Scribd Adds E-Commerce; 80% Revenue To Publishers (via forbes.com) – It will be interesting to see how this does and how far it can reach into the mainstream.

Disney Launched a new eCommerce site. (Disney)

Studies show the genders really are different online. (via money.cnn.com) – Good article showing data on how men and women use the internet.

Q1 web sales decline for Barnes & Noble (via internetretailer.com) – They went down 6.6%, 99.6 million to 93 million.

[May 9th-May 15th, 2009] volume 1 – issue 3 

Welcome to this weeks edition of the eCommerce Weekly Roundup. The last two Roundup’s have been posted on the weekend. Starting with this one I hope to start making the post live every Friday afternoon. If you have suggestions, articles, etc. please send them to me via twitter or email me at dustin[at]dustinfisher[dot]com.

Improve Your eCommerce Site Now With These Articles

5 Advanced Segments for Ecommerce Analysis (via roirevolution.com) – I love taking all the data we can get now with analytics programs and seeing what can be done with it. Here are 5 advanced segments you can create with Google Analytics that can help your eCommerce site analysis out.

Checkout Inspiration From Top Converting Sites (via getelastic.com) – They look at the top converting ecommerce sites according to Nielsen Online/Marketing charts and see what they are doing right in the checkout process.

Conversion Makeover: LandsEnd.com – Part 1 – Part 2 (via grokdotcom.com) – Couple post series on how Lands’ End website could be made over to increase conversion. This is a longer post, but by reading it you can get some great tips that you can apply to your online store now.

5 Conversion Rate Improvements You Can Do In Under 5 Minutes (via distilled.co.uk) – 5 good tips on improving your conversion rate quickly.

(via jbillingsley) – Ecommerce tip: separate the AOV metric for new and repeat customers. Indicates how well you build trust and loyalty.

New Ecommerce Research – Website Tactics that Boost Conversion (via marketingsherpa.com) – Chart showing tactics that you can employ on your site to increase conversion.

How To Monitor Your Rankings Using Google Analytics Advanced Filter Segmentation (via blogstorm.co.uk ) – This could be a great tool to have to keep up on rankings in Google. I am still testing this out now, so I can’t say how well it works yet.

Introducing Rich Snippets (via google.com) – Rich snippets could prove very useful for consumers and online shops. It will be interesting to see them start showing up and how well they work. I would look at the examples they provide in the link and setup your stores to use them.

Social Media: Create a Strategy for Your Online Store (via practicalecommerce.com) – Basic list of how to tackle all the social media out there for your online store.

Ecommerce Know-How: Writing Product Descriptions that Sell (via practicalecommerce.com) – This article gives you three tips to writing product descriptions that catch peoples attention.

Make Your Web Analytics Actionable in 5 DIY Steps (via grokdotcom.com) – High level look at some key areas to look at in your web analytics and how to act on them.

Retail Email: Sell or Inform? How About Both (via getelastic.com) – Quick post about retail email. Should it sell in the email? Give information? or both? They show an example of a Sephora ad that does both. It is a really good example of a nicely done email. Check it out for some ideas, because I would say they are doing it right.

Optimizing Conversion Rates: It’s All About Usability (via smashingmagazine.com) – This is the second article in a 3-part-series on optimizing conversion rates. This one is geared towards what to consider when you prepare your landing page. Very good info in this.

Interesting eCommerce Articles of the Week

Shopping.com Introduces Tiered CPC Pricing and Variable Logo Rates (via csestrategies.com) – Shopping.com is changing their pricing structure as of this Friday, May 15th. If you use shopping.com it’s time to get familiar with the new structure.

Study: Shopping On The Internet? Bo-ring! (via mediapost.com) – New study showing customer satisfaction with eCommerce is down 3% from last year. A few years back it did not take much to satisfy the customer. Online shopping was much more convenient to them. Now customers are starting to demand much more from online shops. The bar has been raised.

Dell launched a new part of their website looking to target the female population for their laptops. Check it out here: Della. 

Lands’ End launched a new part of their site targeting the female bathing suit shopper. Combination of flash, social networking and ecommerce. (link) 

Gartner: Custom Development A Waste For Most Sites (via informationweek.com) – Study says online businesses can save up to 35% on maintenance and license fees this year by using off-the-shelf products.

Linens ‘N Things is Back and Better Than Ever! (source) – After only a couple months ago closing it’s last retail store Linens ‘N Things (http://www.lnt.com/) is back as a eCommerce shop. I predict Circuit City is not far behind in doing the same thing. (note: Had put this article in earlier this week and just the other day it was announced that Circuit City was bought by Systemax Inc.  Circuit City is really close behind now on coming back online.)

ATG launched it’s new on demand eCommerce system, LiveStore. Brian Walker at Forrester did a write up on it. Check it out here, it is a good write up on it.

Google’s Rival Keyword Sales Go Wide (via businessweek.com) – Google is opening up trademarked keywords to Adwords advertisers on June 4th. This is going to turn into a nice bidding war for many keywords. More revenue for Google.

Web Retailers Sweeten the Deal to Nudge Sales Higher (via openforum.com) – Has some good data on survey results by consumers and how eCommerce stores are using social media to boost sales.

Macy’s is now focusing on eCommerce sales. On their first quarter conference call Macy’s said their sales were down 9.5% and online sales rose 16.2%. (source) 

Amazon earnings jump 24% for the first quarter. (source)

Smart Promotions Key to Attracting Discount Shoppers (source) – Some data on what discount-oriented shoppers want when it comes to promotional messages.