Shopping cart abandonment is an all too familiar term for owners of ecommerce websites.  Someone clicks on your website, likes what they see, puts an item into their online shopping cart but, somewhere during the checkout process, clicks off the website without buying the item.  We have been developing ecommerce websites on different shopping cart platforms in San Diego for more than 10 years and, in our experience, the best ways to avoid shopping cart abandonment are: The main goal for having an ecommerce site is to sell the products offered on your site, so be sure that your website's design encourages this goal.  Are the shopping cart and checkout directions clear to your customers?  Buttons should be easily visible and labelled with appropriate names.  Payment and shipping forms should be simple, clear, and concise.  The more streamlined the checkout process is, the less likely you are to lose a sale. Be upfront with your customers about any other costs, like shipping, that they will have to pay for.  A lot of websites do not display the shipping charge until all of the payment forms have been filled out.  At that point, your customer expects to pay $40 for a purchase and then finds that, with shipping and tax, it is going to cost them $60.  This hidden cost does not encourage consumer confidence, so let them know about any additional charges before they start checking out. It's always a good idea to display payment options and credit cards accepted on the shopping cart so customers will already have the right credit card in hand when they begin the checkout process. Make yourself available to answer questions that may come up during the checkout process.  A lot of last-minute questions may come up that could derail the sale, such as return policies and shipping dates.  If you have an email address and phone listed on your website's shopping cart, customers can call with questions and give you the opportunity to encourage that final sale. Do your online industry research.  Make sure the pricing for the products offered on your website is competitive.  One of the consumer benefits of Web 2.0 is that customers have the opportunity to shop the Internet for the best deals.  You won't see too many sales unless you've got a comparable price. Test regularly and refine your site.  Track your customer's progress through the website and shopping cart forms to figure out where customers are getting stuck or abandoning their shopping cart.  Based on these results, modify your ecommerce's site design to encourage more customers to complete their purchases.

If you're someone like Ashton Kutcher, then you don't have a problem getting a lot of followers on Twitter. If you're someone like Ashton Kutcher, you can publicly challenge CNN to a Twitter popularity contest to see who would get 1 million followers first and then beat one of the largest broadcast news organizations in the world. For all the rest of us who aren’t someone like Ashton Kutcher, we would recommend the following to expand your company’s online marketing campaign into the 140-character realm of Twitter. How to Twitter for your company: 1. Before writing your first Tweet, make sure your company’s user profile is completely filled out, especially the bio, website link, user profile picture, and background theme. These elements all lay the foundation for branding your company to fellow Tweeters. 2. Make your company a constant presence. If you’re serious about building a strong online marketing presence in Twitter, you need to consistently be available to post valuable information and respond to any questions. The concept behind Twitter is that Tweeters are constantly looking for new information and are looking to obtain it in the fastest way possible, and so to be effective on this site, you need to provide what your followers are asking for. One tweet may seem like a drop in a bucket, but hundreds and thousands of tweets will start to add up and help build your company’s online marketing campaign. 3. Search for followers. Twitter allows you to search for other Tweeters by their name or user id (if you already know them) or through keywords. Keywords in twitter are identified with the # sign, like #iranrevolution. Search for keywords or trending topics in your company’s field of products or services and select to follow other Tweeters who are interested in or involved in this field. Tweeters you click to follow also have the option of following you back. You can check to see if they do at friendorfollow.com and decide to stop following them if they don’t reciprocate. You should also include keywords in your own tweets to let other people more easily find you. 4. Be yourself. Don’t use Twitter as a soapbox to directly market your company’s products or services. Offer information to set yourself up as an expert in your company’s field or answer questions about your field to help build a potential client base. 5. These are always good reminders: use good text slang grammar and spelling. Make sure your Tweets are clear and focused. There’s poetry in writing a good 140-character Tweet. Always include shortened urls instead of the entire url for a hyperlink in a Tweet. 6. Retweet interesting information you come across, share your friend’s tweets with others, and always acknowledge your Twitter friends and new followers to build a stronger and more supportive base. Bottom line, it takes a large investment of time and energy to learn how to twitter effectively to build a strong online marketing campaign for your company. -- Stephanie

You’re excited to release your app, and confident users are going to flip for it. The time has now come to get that business on the app store and start realizing viral download success. Yet there’s one teeny tiny detail left to go. Writing the app store description. It may seem simple enough on the face of it. You have your elevator pitch down and know how to explain the purpose of your app. Simple! Just take what you say, write it down, and voila, you’ve got your description. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that, and there’s a bit of a technique to the whole app store description game. First of all, understanding the importance of ASO - App Store Optimization - is one of the first things you want to keep in mind. We go into more detail on how to manage your ASO here, from monitoring tools to keywords you need to keep in mind for maximizing indexing and optimization. From there, we’re here to lay it the rest of your app store description strategy for you. Showcase Core Features This seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be amazed at how many descriptions get into the weeds of all the features an app has available. Get back to basics and remember the problem your app was designed to solve. Why does it exist? Start there and stay there, don’t get too into all the glorious other features you created. Hook your audience with the main idea you fell in love with. If you have room towards the end of the description you could include a bulleted list of other features, just try not to get carried away and distract from the “why” your app was created. They’ll discover and delight in the details upon download. Brevity is Best Start out by writing everything to your heart’s content, then edit the crap out of it later. What you’ll be left with is a concise description of your app, which is all the users want. Understand that they don’t usually click to “read more,” so if you can, write your description in 255 characters or less, which is the maximum Apple allows before users have to click “read more.” Focus on the most important things you have to say first, and make sure they are as intriguing as possible. Nail That First Sentence While we’re at it, that first sentence may be the only thing your potential users will read. Being on the writing staff for Barefoot it is painful to say -- people just don’t read anymore. The average American’s attention span is 8 seconds, which is less than a frigging goldfish, so you absolutely must deliver with that first sentence to get them interested enough to read more, scroll down, and download. Focus on the User’s Point of View You know your app inside and out, so you naturally look at it differently than someone who is completely new to the concept. So, write about your app in a way that makes speaks to someone who has no clue what it’s about, because, they don’t. A good way to get insight on this is to ask your beta testers about it. Have them describe to you what they think the app is about and take notes. Those descriptions are gold, and exactly how you need to communicate to potential users on the app store. Showcase Reviews Speaking of beta testers, once you officially launch the app get them to review it! Few things are more important on the internet than social proof, and user generated reviews are badges of honor that prove your app is download-worthy. It doesn’t matter if it’s your Mom, just get people to talk about the app and make sure those quotes are mentioned in the app store description. Include a Call to Action It seems a little strange to tell a user who is shopping on the app store to download the app...because they are clearly there to download an app. For this reason developers and business owners often forget to end their description with a simple, “Okay, now download this app already!” Don’t make that mistake and consider closing your description with something like, “Download X now to start enjoying Y.” You put significant time into developing your app, and owe it to yourself to get the description right. Take some time and consult with others to make sure you are sincerely putting the best description possible out there. Still have questions or need some help getting started? Reply in the comments below or fill out this form for more information.