I’ve heard a number of store owners say their sales have dropped and they are wondering what they can do to recover some of that.

Here are a few tips that can help you get through the tough times. In most cases you simply need to be willing to adapt and change a bit as well as broaden your methods of marketing and exposure for your store.

What you do not want to do is stop marketing. Many facts about past recession periods have been kept that prove marketing during down time will win out in the end.

6 Survival Tips for Selling in a Tough Economy

1. Tap into your current customer list. You should be doing this anyhow, but in down times this can become a good resource to generate sales. The 80 / 20 rule says that 20% of your current customers provide 80% of your margin.
2. Find your main products that drive sales and push them. It has been said that approximately 85% of all profits come from just 4 main products. This may be different for various companies, but the point here is that you need to find those products in your store that always seem to be the best sellers and bring them to the front.
3. Give your customers additional options. During tough economic times your customers are even more price aware. They may take more time to make buying decisions and might be looking for additional payment options or perks to get them to buy. Let them know you understand their pain and offer them a solution to overcome it. For example, in tough economic times you might want to consider offering a “buy now pay later” option such as Bill Me Later.
4. Tap into your networks … this includes Social Media. Although some of your potential customers may not be completely ready to buy right now, doing some extra leg work and getting yourself in front of them will ensure that when they are ready, they think of you first. Social Media provides you with a low expense overhead to a target group of closely related individuals with a common interest in what you offer.
5. Keep an eye on your competition. Again, something you should be doing anyhow, but during tough times you might be able to take advantage of this even more. Watch the offers your competitors are presenting and if you can, one up them by making your just a bit sweeter. If they offer Free Shipping on orders over $50 then you could offer free shipping on ALL orders - no matter the dollar amount.
6. Tighten up your PPC campaigns with lower CPC bids. Providing you have done your homework in setting up your paid search campaigns, you can instantly save money without losing position by paying attention to your quality scores (named differently for various engines). Higher quality scores reduce your paid search cost without sacrificing position. Finally, turn off any campaigns or keywords that have only cost you money and have not converted to sales over the past 6 months or so - at least temporarily.

Most importantly, plan a strategy during this time and be patient. You’re not the only one seeing lower sales volume. But you can be one of those that survive with the right mix.

Keep plugging away.

• Custom Reporting BETA
• Advanced Segmentation BETA

Each option enables the end user to have more flexibility in developing and then saving reports vital to the success of their business. You can develop reports by simply dragging and dropping metrics and dimensions into what I’ll call a “palette”.

Both items are in BETA stage at this point but I immediately jumped in and developed a few reports to see what exactly can be done with these, and was happy to find that you can generate some nice reports that typically you would have to dig for under normal conditions.

A few screenshots of the interface are below for reference.

The first image below shows the location of the new custom reporting link.

The next image shows the link result of a custom report that was generated and saved for easy access later.

The new advanced segmentation feature (link location shown below) enables you to segment your data by various visitor types, traffic types, and more. This flexibility can further help you narrow down those visitors or traffic channels which contribute most to the success of your business.

A complete breakdown of the current segmentation options available are shown in the screenshot below.

There is no doubt that the addition of this form of custom reporting to Google Analytics will further enable users to get at the data they need to make informed decisions about their business.

Best Offers: 20 Ways to Increase Sales Using Zen Cart Free ebook revealing proven ecommerce strategies that always increase sales.

I’m pleased to announce Version 1.0.0 of Yahoo Search Marketing Conversion Tracking (for Zen Cart) has just been released.

This long awaited contribution now gives Zen Cart users the ability to easily track conversion of their Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM) ppc campaigns.

Combine it with my Simple Google Analytics contribution for even more powerful tracking that will provide you with the needed data to run more effective paid search campaigns.

How to Download Version 1.0.0
You can download this new version by clicking here. You will be taken to my downloads page where you can select the new release.

Complete instructions are enclosed in the download to assist you with installation and setup.

Enjoy!

Catchable fatal error: Object of class queryFactoryResult could not be converted to string in … html_output.php

The problem you are experiencing stems from leftover legacy code that is incompatible with PHP5.

Here are two links that will help you understand and correct the issue.

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=90739

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showpost.php?p=487734&postcount=11

An interim workaround has been provided by the Zen Cart team. The link to the files which solve this issue are provided here.

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showpost.php?p=487360&postcount=10

I won’t go into all those details here (that’s for another post) but did want to give a hint on one strategy that may help increase conversion of your paid search campaigns. This strategy serves a dual purpose and can subsequently flow over to converting visitors on your site that use your site search form as well.

Relevancy is Key

It has been long proven that when a user searches on a specific term and sees a listing with that exact search term in the title, they are more likely to click through on the listing. The term used to associate the two is called relevancy.

However, once you get the click, you now need to convert them on the landing page into the action you desire (sale, optin, etc…).

Following the initial search rules above for getting the click, you can increase your chances of getting the “action” by increasing relevancy on the landing page. You achieve this using the same “keyword in the headline” concept revealed here.

Ideally, if you’re running an e-commerce business and the search term is “blue widget”, you would be directing that traffic to the specific product page for your blue widget. That product page should already have the keyword listed in its headline (i.e. the name of the product itself.)

Likewise, if you offer multiple blue widgets, the best option would be to send traffic to each individual page based on the ad presented. This can be time consuming but in the end it’s worth it.

However what if you offer multiple blue widgets in various styles, are short on time, and want to capture broad traffic looking for “blue widgets” in general? Or what if a visitor arrives at your site and uses your search form to look for “blue widgets”?

I’ve seen in a number of cases where the headline of the search results page simply says “Advanced Search” or “Search Results”. This does nothing for the initial relevancy factor.

How can we change that? Simply replace the “Advanced Search” or “Search Results” title with the actual keyword(s) entered into the search form.

Search Results Before

Search Results After

Increasing the relevancy factor of on site search provides a dual opportunity to increase conversion.

For those who don’t have the time to setup individual paid search campaigns targeting individual product specific landing pages, it gives you an opportunity to still increase conversion on a broad scale.

Killing Two Birds With One Stone

Increasing the relevancy factor of on site search provides increased conversion opportunity for users searching your site. We can use these new “more relevant by association” search results to target broad paid search campaigns.

How? Going back to the blue widget example presented earlier we can do the following:

Perform a search on your own site for “blue widgets”. Now, copy the url from the address bar and use that url as the destination url for your paid search campaign which targets blue widgets (on a general level).

What you’ve just done is created a landing page of targeted search results for the blue widget products you offer and increased the relevancy factor by including the keyword searched on in the title.

Again, the best method would be to spend the time to create individual ad groups targeting each product, but the approach outlined here will give you a better chance at increasing conversion from paid search than just sending traffic to any old page on your site.

Best Offers: 20 Ways to Increase Sales Using Zen Cart Free ebook revealing proven ecommerce strategies that always increase sales.

It’s been almost a year since the last release and a number of items have been added to this release which have been requested by many.

Features added in version 1.2.3:

• Added option to export the following new fields: Order Tax Amt, Order Subtotal, Order Discounts, Payment Method, Order Status.
• Added option to split first and last name into 2 separate columns during export.
• Added ability to re-export data that had previously been exported.
• Added date range select ability so reports could be run based on a selected date range.
• Added ability to export based on order status. You can export orders with any status or select an order status.

Misc. changes and Bug fixes in version 1.2.3:

• Bug fix. Corrected comments bug that caused the comment field to split across multiple columns when apostrophe was present.
• Changed File layout option to radio field from check boxes.

How to download version 1.2.3:

You can download version 1.2.3 by clicking here.

Upgrading from version 1.1.1 or higher:
If upgrading from another version 1.1.1 or higher then all you need to do is copy all the included files over to your site as is and overwrite the current files. There are no database upgrades for this version if upgrading.

If you have made any customizations to your current version then you will want to merge those changes with this one and backup your files.

Enjoy!

I recently spoke with a woman who described an experience she had while attempting to shop at an online store. This is the brief account of that day.

She was looking for a particular tropical fish cake pan to use for her son’s upcoming birthday. After searching high and low for the exact one she saw in a picture, she found it at an online store of who’s name I’ll withhold out of respect for them — they’ve got enough bad reviews and terrible internet exposure that adding one more to their mountain of “bad PR” is just a waste of time.

The site did not indicate whether the item was in stock (”no no #1″), and to be certain, she called them to inquire about its availability.

I’ll sum up the shocking conversation that following in a several bullet points rather than going into great detail.

The Conversation

1. She picks up the phone and calls the store using the phone number provided on the site. You would think this is a good thing — giving customers a way to reach you. After all, answering a question can help close a sale. Think again. A store rep answers the phone and the lady proceeds to ask if they have the fish cake pan in stock that was seen on the website.
2. The rep replied telling the lady she could drive out to the store and search through the 2 isles of cake pans to see if they had the pan she needed, but was not willing to go look for her.
3. The store happen to be about 1 hour from where the lady lived, and she told the rep on the phone this.
4. She asked again (several times) if the rep had a method to search for the pan to see if it was in stock so she could purchase it. The rep began to get agitated.
5. The rep told the lady that she was not willing to go look through the items in stock and that if the lady wanted the item she should come search for it herself. (Yes, this is what was actually said if you can believe it.)
6. After back and forth conversation on why she could not look for the item, the rep on the phone said “let me put you on hold”. The potential customer, happen to have a timer on the phone she was using, and after waiting for about 14 minutes on hold finally hung up.
7. She called the store back 30 minutes later and the same rep answered. The lady asked about the pan again, and said she was waiting on hold for close to 14 minutes so she hung up to which the once again “gruf rep” replied “Oh, I must have forgot about you.”
8. The lady asked if the rep had found whether the pan was in stock or not. The rep answered “I don’t know, you’ll have to drive out and look for yourself. I fill 200 orders a day from the Internet, and I don’t have time to look for the pan.” (Shocking eh? I thought so.)
9. She told the rep that if she was not willing to check if the item was in stock or not then she would “take her business elsewhere” to which the now very agitated rep replied “I think that is a good idea. You should take your business elsewhere.” The conversation ended there.

Closing Thoughts

What this store obviously forgot is that there is no substitute for good customer service and satisfying customer needs is what grows a business.

The store’s lack of customer service did not cause them to lose just one customer and one sale — the lack of customer service caused the them to lose any other customers that would have been referred to them if the lady had a better experience when trying to purchase the pan.

Likewise, their actions will have a lasting ripple effect which will prohibit the company from growing, obtaining new customers, and of which will eventually be the downfall of it.

Apparently the store rep thought 200 sales a day was a lot and was not willing to get an extra one (which could lead to many more via word of mouth). Growing a business is not important to them and eventually they will fail.

If that store rep worked for me, I’d fire her. Turns out that “rep” was actually the owner of the store. How’s that for customer service?

Lesson learned.

I’ve run into this myself on a few servers and it made no sense to me as to why I would get it when in other cases the rewriting of URLs worked just fine.

The error more specifically states “403 Access Forbidden” and goes on to provide very little detail. There are a number of reasons this can happen some stemming from incorrect configuration of the .htaccess file itself (used to setup the rules and conditions for rewriting.)

If you are sure the .htaccess file is correct and are still getting the error, then go back and first enter ONLY the following in the .htaccess file itself:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.(.*)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Replace “yourdomain” with the domain of your site (and don’t forget the “.com” extension. Use the extension your site has.)

Now open up the following url in your browser:
http://yourdomain.com (again replacing “yourdomain” with your own personal domain.)

If the server is setup correctly (php configured with mod_rewrite and that is loaded) then you should see the home page of your website BUT in the address bar of the browser you should see the “www” form of it.

You entered “yourdomain.com” and you should see “www.yourdomain.com”.

If this works, then your server is setup correctly and the problem likely resides in either the configuration of your .htaccess file OR as I found, the root directory permissions of your website.

How to Correct the Error

Make sure your root directory is set to something that allows “write” access (like 755 or something). Keeping your sever as secure as possible yet allowing it to “write”. You can change these permissions by using your FTP program to login to your server and then performing a CHMOD command on the root directory (of the site that is.)

Change the root to 755 and then reload your page going through the same steps as above.

If all is working, then your SEO URLs module should also be working now.

Hope this helps anyone banging their head around looking for an answer to why they can’t get SEO Friendly URLs to work on their server.

Live chat address many buyer needs from customer assurance elements (they understand that there is actually a real person behind the site) to instant help ability which can answer questions and save a sale that would have otherwise been lost.

Forrester Consulting just released a new study on the benefits of adopting an interactive chat strategy.

The report specifically discussed the use of Live Person as the system of choice, but there is a great open source free option as well called Crafty Syntax which works equally well if you have the skills to get it in place.

If you want to read the whole study, the full report can be downloaded for free from here.

Some key findings presented in the study include:

• 305% ROI from proactive sales chat with a payback period of 6 months (when using paid chat services)
• 120% ROI from customer service chat with a payback period of 6 months (when using paid chat services)
• Chat assisted application completion rates 138% higher than self service
• 59% call deflection rate

So if you haven’t already implemented a live chat solution on your website it might be time to consider that as an option. Just make sure if you do decide to put a chat strategy in place you actually use it. Keep someone behind the “desk” and keep the chat “online”. It does you no good to implement a live chat solution that is always offline.

If you’ve tried live chat on your site and can measure its effectiveness let me know what effect it had. It’s always nice to hear one way or the other real world examples from store owner experiences.

If you are not utilizing some sort of social media (blogging, social network sites, etc..) in your marketing plan, it’s time to start thinking about it.

In previous posts I’ve mentioned this concept. Links to some off those previous posts are below:
Social Networking Sites Offer Free Marketing Channel

For those of you who do not know where to begin finding a channel that fits your market among the many social networks, I’ve provided a link for you below that may help get you started in your research.

Wikipedia’s List of Social Networking Sites