October 2009

We want to know what you want to know! Email education@doba.com with your suggestions of what you want to see in future issues of the Doba eNewsletter.

	Featured Article: Making the Sale: Cranking Up Conversions An insider tip of how to increase sale conversions during a crucial time.
	Marketplace Spotlight: Can You Create a New Retail Business Solely Using Drop-Shipped Supply? Jeff Knight, Doba's Vice President of Marketplace, discusses the online retail marketplace.
	Member Q&A: Is Doba's Watch List Your Friend? It Should Be Kay Russon, Doba's Support Team Lead and technical liaison, reviews the changes made to Doba's Watch List feature, and how to use it effectively. Do you have a question you want answered? Email education@doba.com.
	Supplier Information: New Suppliers and Products from the Doba Product Catalog Expand your niche with new products and suppliers added to the Doba Product Catalog.

Featured Article: Making the Sale: Cranking Up Conversions

by Stuart Lisonbee, SEO Director

Online shoppers are more like online hoppers, skipping from one website to the next in an unrelenting search for instant gratification and great deals. To transform these skip-and-dip shoppers into paying customers, you need to crank up your conversions – increase the percentage of people who visit your webstore and actually buy something.

This article reveals several strategies and tips to make your webstore a place where shoppers buy products rather than simply researching them and then heading across the street for a better deal.

Knowing your conversion rate

Many online retailers don't even know their conversion rates. Until you do, you're flying blind, because you have no idea of whether the changes you implement increase or decrease your conversions.

Web analytics can automate the process of gathering the data required to calculate your conversion rate. For more about Web analytics and where to go for Web analytics tools, check out our Research Resources article, "Optimizing Your Conversion Rate with Web Analytics."

Improve product visibility and accessibility

Shoppers may snake through the aisles at Wal-Mart looking for deals, but online shoppers are less patient. Make products easy to find:

Add a search feature to your webstore, so customers can quickly find the products they're looking for.
Organize products into easily identifiable categories and place a clickable list of categories on your site's opening page.
Prominently advertise sales and other specials on each page.
Include a page with your most popular products.

Test different product descriptions and marketing copy

Online shoppers know only what you tell them, so your product descriptions and marketing copy must be engaging, clear, and informative. Test different copy:

Short and sweet product descriptions.
Lengthier product descriptions.
Bulleted lists of benefits and features.
Clickable categories, so shoppers can skip to the information they really want, such as product description, specifications, key features, and key benefits.

Experiment with different approaches to determine the approach that works best for you. For more about writing effective product descriptions, refer to our article, "Writing Product Descriptions That Sell."

Capitalize on cross-sell and up-sell opportunities

When shoppers are in a buying mood, use the opportunity to sell them other related products. If they're buying pillows, offer pillow cases and sheets. If they're buying a tent, they may need a new camp stove. Offer accessories and links to related products on product description pages and on shopping cart pages.

Also consider offering a discount on large orders – for example, a 5 percent discount on all orders over $50. Shoppers may throw something extra into the cart just to get the discount.

For more about improving sales with cross-selling and up-selling, check out "Boosting Your Profits with Up-Sales and Cross-Sales."

Streamline the checkout process

Online shoppers often abandon their shopping cart, usually because they're confused, frustrated, or uninformed about shipping costs and delivery times. To reduce the frequency of shopping cart abandonment, streamline the checkout process and make it as informative as possible without being too intrusive:

Don't require registration.
Design with consistency in mind, so the process looks and functions like the rest of your site.
Require as few steps as possible and clearly indicate at each step where the customer is in the ordering process.
Highlight any inventory issues – for example, in-stock or out-of-stock.
Display an estimated date of delivery, so customers know when they can expect to receive their orders.
Highlight any ordering deadlines for holidays.
Offer multiple payment options.
Show shipping charges on the shopping cart page early in the process, not just on the last page.
Display a running total of the order at each step in the process.
Enable gift shoppers to ship partial contents of the shopping cart to different recipients.
Make it easy for the customer to remove individual items from the shopping cart.
Add any customer satisfaction guarantee you offer prominently on each page of the ordering process.

Improve returning customer sales

A customer may buy a product from your webstore and quickly forget you exist or simply be unable to track you down later. Don't let a customer forget about you:

Collect customer email addresses when they place an order, so you can email future specials to them and keep them informed of new products. Provide the customer with an opportunity to opt-out of receiving unsolicited emails – you don't want to be a spammer.
Offer an opt-in newsletter subscription. For more about marketing with newsletters, check out "Building Customer Loyalty with an eNewsletter."

Overall, optimizing your site to improve conversion rates may seem like a very complex task,but in reality, it's easy and makes your website more usable.

About the Author:

As SEO Director, Stuart Lisonbee handles search engine optimization strategy and education at Doba. Stuart's past experience includes Content Manager for one of the nation's leading online advertising agencies and manager of a department store's eBay PowerSeller account. Stuart has authored hundreds of articles on online business success along with several eBooks.

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Marketplace Spotlight: Can You Create a New Retail Business Solely Using Drop-Shipped Supply?

By Jeff Knight, Vice President of Marketplace - Doba

The question seems straightforward and depending on who you ask, you get assertively stated answers – all giving very different opinions. The problem is that this is the wrong question for a new, small retail entrepreneur to ask. The question of whether drop-ship as a sourcing strategy should be part (or all) of your new business strategy should follow several other questions. This month, I want to walk through a few of the preliminary questions and strategies that follow from the answers.

What is my end-goal (financial, time, etc) for creating an online business? Further, what are my milestones and the time frame for reaching my goals?

Having a goal of earning some extra money to pay for an annual family Disneyland vacation versus creating the next sustainable, growing e-commerce superstore is a very different goal. Further, the time frame for reaching your goal(s) must be defined and be set realistically. Of course, there are a lot of goals in between the two points but the idea is that your immediate and end goals effect your product sourcing strategy. If your goal is to make some extra money, then realistically categories and brands may not be as important of considerations to product sourcing as identifying products that can be sold on eBay. On the other side, a long term strategy of creating a national, e-commerce superstore requires planning for and identifying key products/brands and categories that may or may not have as much monetary upside. Before addressing the timeframe portion of setting a goal, let's look at the next question.

What are my available resources including access to financial support, knowledge of categories and (often overlooked) free time?

When you decide on your goals, it is important to evaluate how realistic your milestones are in regards to your available money, time and knowledge. Starting a business requires some minimal investment of all three. Depending on your goals, the minimum requirements vary. That said, having a lot of knowledge and time can compensate for money in many ways – as is true of the inverse. Realistically, large, fast growing enterprises rarely come from entrepreneurs without an excess of some resource(s). However, people succeed all the time by being diligent, setting realistic goals and banging out milestones. While an anomaly, the Walmart Empire didn't just appear over a single Christmas but through decades of sharp decisions, hard work and well-calculated risks. If your strategy is to financially assist in paying for next summer's vacation, then your need for operating money (buying inventory versus drop-shipping) and getting a return on your business (need to repay your investment, grow by x%, etc) is going to be fairly low in comparison.

Where do I plan to sell my goods?

There are several underlying questions and assumptions behind asking where you plan to sell. If you plan to sell on a marketplace such as eBay or Amazon versus launching your own destination retail site can change your sourcing strategy. For example, if you are selling on eBay, a good strategy is to try and sell a product with good search potential but is fairly unique or a niche to a degree that you won't have to compete solely on price. There may not be thousands of people looking for the item – but there are enough to make them good saleable products. On the other side, if you are building a new brand and launching a website, your primary concern may be more centered on selection rather then margin. Not to say, margin isn't always at the top of the list of concerns but if your goal is show depth of product selection versus pay for the next listing – you may choose different products. Finally, as a matter of resources, looking for a few products to resell is very different then sourcing an entire category.

Coming back to the first question, Can you create a new retail business solely using drop-shipped supply?

My answer is definitely yes/no/all of the above. More importantly, I would emphatically say that all online retail endeavors should include some drop-ship as a strategy. That said, depending on your situation, resources, tolerance for risk and knowledge – I think that how you should use drop-shipping as a strategy can range dramatically. Don't confuse the questions when deciding on your strategy for sourcing products – there will always be situations where drop-shipping makes more sense then the inverse. Whether you are new and learning the ropes of eBay to a veteran ecommerce site branching into new vertical categories – drop shipping makes a lot of sense. The risk of carrying inventory can pay off big –realistically bigger then drop ship – but you need to be cognizant of the cost. My advice is to use both drop-shipping and carrying inventory as strategies where and when it make sense and be continually re-asking yourself basic questions about your goals.

About the Author:

As the Vice President of Marketplace, Jeff Knight is responsible for all aspects of the merchandising strategy, supplier acquisition, and vertical category management and fulfillment operations of Doba's marketplace. Prior to Doba, Jeff was Director of Merchandising for Overstock.com where he developed the growth and management of the Computer and Home Office category. Jeff's background includes merchandising and technology leadership roles at DealDeal.com and BCI International. He earned Bachelor and Masters of Arts degrees in Communication from the University of Wyoming.

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Member Q&A: Is Doba's Watch List Your Friend? It Should Be

By Kay Russon, Technical Liaison and Support Team Lead - Doba

With the recent updates on our website, the Watch List has some new features that changes it's functionality as well as how members can use it. In this article, I would like to review those changes and explain how to become best friends with Doba's new Watch List resource.

What are Watch Lists?

The Doba Watch List is a tool that allows you to monitor a specific product's inventory status and quantity. It is accessed by clicking on 'Catalog' and then 'Watch List' in the gray tabbed area. As we receive the daily data feeds from the suppliers, the catalog it updated with changes in inventory, quantity, and status (status being in stock, out of stock, or discontinued). This data feed also updates all of the Watch Lists, reflecting the same information. All products you have in your Watch Lists are updated.

Adding a Single Product to your Watch List

When viewing any product in the catalog, you can add it to a Watch List by clicking the 'Watch' tab in the green bar. This will bring up a pop-up window stating that you are adding 1 product. It also lists your current Watch Lists, if any, that you have previously created. Here you can add this product to an existing Watch List by highlighting the desired list and clicking 'Add to Watchlist'. This will add that item and give you a confirmation window.

If no watch lists are shown or you wish to start a new Watch List, click Create New Watch List. This will ask you to enter a new name. Enter the desired name and click OK. The name must be unique from all other Watch Lists. The system will create the new watch list and then highlight it in blue. Then click 'Add to Watch List'.

Adding Multiple Items to a Watch List

With the new site technology, you can add up to 1-200 products to a Watch List at time. Do this by clicking the box in the lower right corner of each of the products you wish to add (while browsing the catalog). Then, click the green "Watch" tab at the top of the catalog. All of the selected products will then be added to a Watch List at the same time. If you have narrowed your search to the specific products you wish, you may add the entire page of products by clicking 'Select All Results' in the upper left corner of the catalog. This will select all products on that page.
Note: By changing the Per Page option to 50, 100 or 200, you can add up to 200 products to a watch list at a time from the catalog.

If you are viewing all the products from a specific supplier, you can add that supplier's entire product list to one Watch List by clicking Select All Results. A number is given of how many products are there.
Note: If there are more then 10,000 products, only the first 10,000 will be entered as that is the limit of a given Watch List.

You may also create a Watch List from a Saved Search, which will add all the products within that saved search to a Watch List.

Becoming Best Friends with Watch Lists

So how can the Watch List help my business?

1. By adding products from the catalog you may wish to sell, you can monitor a specific product's quantity available status. Watching the quantity available is an indication of how quickly it is selling. The date on the right side shows the last time this product was updated, meaning the date that any information about that product has been changed.

2. When you push an item to eBay or to your web site, the Watch List provides a very quick way to find a particular item you have listed and sold. You don't have to go through the catalog searching for it all over again.. Also, the product title is hyperlinked to the specific product page in the catalog. Click on the title and you will be taken right to the product.

3. Because you can create up to 1,000 Watch Lists, you can categorize these lists. If you are listing men's perfumes, create a Watch List for only men's perfumes. Add those that you wish to monitor to that Watch List. This way you can go directly to that Watch List for those products.

4. And remember that from the Watch List you can export this list directly to the Data Export tool, push it to eBay using the Push to Market Tool or place an order for an item right from the Watch List.

By using your Doba's Watch List resource, you can find (and organize) the products you are selling much quicker, and have an easy way to manage your web site or eBay listings.

Want to Hear from You! Want to see your question featured in the eNewsletter Member Q&A? Well we want to hear from you! Please email education@doba.com if you have any non-account related questions or topics you would like us to write about. If you have questions concerning your Doba account, such as billing, product or order questions, please search our knowledgebase site content or contact our Customer Support.

About the Author:

Kay “Papa” Russon is an eBay Certified Consultant, Customer Service Team Lead, and technical liaison for Doba. His knowledge, experience, and expertise assist retailers daily in running a successful online business. Before Doba, Kay was a team leader, supervisor, trainer and manager for World Support, Digital Equipment Corp., Digital Remote, SBC, AT&T, Macromedia, Sun Microsystems, and Motorola and served in the Army National Guard.

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Supplier Information: New Suppliers and Products from the Doba Product Catalog

Starting an online business is relatively easy. Making it a success takes hard work and the right mix of products. To help you achieve your business-related goals, we recently added new wholesale suppliers and manufacturer to the Doba Catalog:

Supplier Charlie - One of Doba's original suppliers and still one of the best! Charlie carries a wide assortment of goods ranging from Apparel to Home Decor.

Giovanni Navarre Genuine Leather Vest (2X)

$5.96
(Wholesale Price)

MSRP: $30.95
Product ID: 17316

More Supplier Charlie

Chefmaster Smokeless Indoor Stovetop Barbeque Grill

$4.16
(Wholesale Price)

MSRP: $24.95
Product ID: 17409

More Supplier Charlie

HealthSmart Glass Electronic Body Fat/Weight Scale

$16.48
(Wholesale Price)

MSRP: $70.95
Product ID: 3134350

More Supplier Charlie

Supplier RoomMates - Offering a large assortment of licensed peel and stock appliques from NCAA sports teams, Kid's Movie Heroes/Villains to themes.