Assembly Insight

Collecting data can answer questions like:

1. Where are my customers coming from?  This is great for adding more budget into channels that are working and ditch the ones that aren’t converting

What is the current state of e-commerce sales tax?

Currently, online retailers are required to collect sales tax from customers in their own state. In addition, Nexus, which is defined as having a significant physical presence in a state, determines whether an online retailer is also required to collect sales tax from out-of-state customers. For example, online retailers must collect sales tax from out-of-state customers if the retailer has a physical presence within that customer’s state, which includes a temporary or permanent presence of property or people working in that state.

When it comes to payment gateway options, there are plenty to choose from.  One of the original companies whom I worked with offered both a merchant account and a payment gateway – wasAuthorize.net.  The newer options include Stripe where they offer a flexible integration solution, loaded with features like monthly billing, coupon options, trials and unlimited subscription options.

A payment gateway is an e-commerce application service provider service that authorizes payments for e-businesses, online retailers, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar. It is the equivalent of a physical point of sale terminal located in most retail outlets. Payment gateways protect credit card details by encrypting sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, to ensure that information is passed securely between the customer and the merchant and also between merchant and the payment processor. – Wikipedia

A merchant account is a bank account that enables your business to accept card payments. You must have a merchant account in order to be able to accept credit cards. Most companies bundle the two services (payment gateway and merchant account) together but they can also be bought separately.

#1 Product URL, each product should have its own unique URL and customers should be able to tell what they are buying from looking at it.  Without configuring your store, you’ll most likely see something like mysite.com/p/001 as your URL.  You can configure this to use the same name as your product name.  This is good for search engines because you will have the key words in the your URL.

It's also good for real people because they can visually tell what the product is by looking at the link.  If someone were to share your link on a blog, social media or email, they should be able to tell right away what they are clicking into by the keywords because it can be viewed within the URL or bottom left of your page when they hover over the link.

#2 Product Name or Title, this is usually linked up to the H1 tag - for SEO purposes- should sound compelling and specific.  Instead of “Diamond Earrings”, say something like “1 Carat Heart Shaped Diamond Earrings”.  This way, if someone is looking through your list of earrings from their search results on your website or google search, can clearly identify the different earrings.

#3 Description of the product, some platforms allows both a short and long description displayed at different areas of the page, either way, you should have a description of the product.  How much information should I put for a product description?  A good rule of thumb to follow, the more complicated and niche down your product is, the more detail it should have.  Just compare a detail page of a car vs. shampoo.  A high priced item will have videos, downloads and interactive elements to the page.

#4 Images and videos.  If people can’t see and feel your product in person, the next best thing is to have beautiful product images.  Show it in different angles, sizes, and colors.  Provide lifestyle shots, meaning with someone using the product.  Videos is a great way to demo the product, for example if you are selling tents, how to install it and break it down. 

#5 Quantity box to allow users to add the same product to their cart instead of clicking on the add to cart multiple times.  I’m not a big fan of using a drop down on quantity, but if your product calls for it, then use it.

#6 Prices, there are generally 3 different components to displaying prices, the retail price, which is the normal price to which a product would normally sell at, Sales price, the price to which it currently discounted to and then the savings, where you show the percentage and  or total savings, the difference between the retail and the sales price.  This is optional based on your business model and stores like Amazon does this really well.

BONUS: If you combine this with scarcity, this can play a big part in increasing your conversion.  For example, buying concert tickets on ticketmaster.com, they give you 2 minutes to complete your purchase at that price with the seats you selected before they release it back to the public.  Another example of this is are airline tickets.  They tell you have many seats you have left at a specific price.

#7 Call to Action Button - don’t get too fancy with your text for your add to cart button.  It should be a Buy Now or Add to Cart.  Also, make sure that the color of this button stands out from your product page.

#8 Product variants like colors or sizes - users should be able to easily select the product options and know whats available.

#9 Shipping calculator - this allows the user to plug in their zip code and get an estimated shipping cost from the product page.  Only a few ecommerce platforms has this feature out of the box and if you don’t - users would normally add it to their cart and go to the cart page to see what the total is.  You might see this behavior translating to higher cart abandonments when you look at your analytics.

#10 Product reviews - they are great, but most likely, you won’t have any social proof when first starting.  If you have a small number of products, I would definitely invest some time to follow up with your customer to get reviews.

The goal of the category page is to funnel as many users who see this page to go to a specific product page that matches what they’re looking for. To do this, make sure you have these critical elements on your left navigation (category/subcategory) and these features on the search results on your ecommerce page.