Canada Merchant Blog

A simple formula for E-commerce success

canadamerchant — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:42:20 +0000

Kevin @ Blue Acorn breaks down E-commerce revenue success into a simple and effective formula. Namely:

Revenue = Visitors x Conversion Rate x Avg Order Size

The concept is simple, yet very easily overlooked or turned into a complicated beast. When you really break it down though you can “reasonably identify opportunity, estimate outcome and set measureable goals.” Obviously for this to work you need to have an Analytics program set up and have accurate traffic numbers, conversion rates and order sales info.

The simplicy comes when you start playing with the numbers in the formula… what happens if I increase my Conversion Rate by 10%? Is it worth more to increase my Conversion Rate by 10% or to try and spend more on PPC to increase Traffic by 10%? The answer may not always be “get more traffic, get more sales.”

For greater detail on this Formula for E-commerce Success, read the full article here.

Vancouver entrepreneur Danny Robinson interviewed in the National Post

canadamerchant — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:30:00 +0000

Vancouver entrepreneur and VC Danny Robinson was interviewd by the National Post this week about the current state of VC financing in Canada… it doesn’t look good, but that may not be so bad. His company, Bootup Labs, thrives on helping smaller entrepreneurs get off the ground. He argues that most entrepreneurs don’t need $2M in seed funding… sometimes all you really need is $10-50k + some professional support like office space, furniture, phone service etc to get off the ground.

“The Web world doesn’t need that much capital anymore.” Danny Robinson

Obviously not all companies can get off the ground with $25k in seed money – the article cites capital-intensive clean tech energy projects as an example that would need a much greater investment to start.

One such business that can potentially be started without a huge cash investment upfront is a web store. These can be set up in any number of ways ranging from starting a simple eBay store with just a sign-up and almost no capital infrastructure needs, to designing and building a full blown E-commerce website that could cost you anywhere from $2,000 – $50,000 and up to build and maintain.

If you’ve got any questions or comments about start up funding, VC funding or starting your own web store please post in the comments section below.

Read the full article featuring Danny Robinson here.

Find out more about Danny Robinson and Bootup Labs on their website here

2009 Holiday Shopping Numbers Are Up

canadamerchant — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:32:13 +0000

The Wall Street Journal has just released some numbers they got from ComScore about Christmas retail sales in 2009. According to the article, online shoppers spent $29.1 billion USD online in November and december 2009 (this number is up 4% from the previous year.) ComScore had originally predicted a 3% increase in online retail sales – so it seems that reality beat the analysts estimates.

The biggest single day for online spending was Dec 15, 09 at $913 million USD (up 21% from the previous years.) The 2nd biggest day for online sales was the Monday following the American Thanksgiving holiday “Cyber Monday” which hit $887 million USD (up 5% from the previous year.)

Here’s a quick breakdown of the top producing product categories:

Jewelry and watches – up 20% from the previous year
Consumer electronics – up 15% from the previous year
Event tickets – up 8% from the previous year
Computer hardware – up 7% from the previous year

Some great news here for all our friends in the E-commerce world to see such large increases in holiday shopping online.

See the full article here

Significantly improve your homepage conversion rate

canadamerchant — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:52:17 +0000

E-commerce CEO blogger Aaron Rubin has found a way to significantly increase his natural search Homepage conversion rates using a technique normally reserved for paid search strategies.

They have set up customized versions of the http://karatedepot.com homepage depending on the keywords that certain buyer segments use to find the site. The tests described were for keywords “MMA gear” and “Karate Uniforms”. Obviously these keywords and strategies could be tailored to suit your site.

More details about the strategy, testing and results are available in the original article here.

Welcome to Canada Merchant

canadamerchant — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:22:11 +0000

This blog will discuss various topics surrounding making money online. This will include all aspects of designing your website, building it, setting up your payment processing systems and your shipping and customer service systems.

I’ll also be posting and reposting relevant articles related to E-commerce issues. I hope you like it.