We talk to our clients about the importance of getting a mobile commerce solution in place a lot.  But that’s because it’s really, REALLY important.

To underscore this point: Apple sold 8.75 million iPhones during Q2 this year.

That’s a year over year increase of 131%!

That’s another 8.75 million iPhones out there that could be used to buy your products.  Shoppers are going mobile, and your store should too.

To help even the smallest business take advantage of this shift in consumer shopping habits, we’ve changed the pricing structure on our mobile commerce platform.

If you haven’t seen our new price, or aren’t familiar with our mobile commerce platform, click through and take a look.

If you don’t take advantage of this opportunity, your competitors will.

Vortx Mobile Commerce Platform for AspDotNetStorefront

Online shoppers are savvy and showing them your site is trustworthy is important.

Customers know the threat of identity theft is real and want you to assure them they will have a safe shopping experience on your site.

Here are three ways to build a bond of trust between you, your website, and your customers.

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Want to deliver content directly to your shoppers instead of relying on them remembering to come back to your site?

That’s what this series article is all about.  I’ll give an overview of seven different ways to deliver content to your users instead of waiting for them to visit your site.

In this part I’ll explain how to use RSS feeds and product feeds to attract customers.
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Credibility is essential for eCommerce success. Testimonials establish your credibility and make customers feel secure and comfortable during their shopping experience on your site.

Considering how much of an impact solid testimonials could have on your sales, it’s important to be smart about how to get them and then use them on your site.

Here are a few quick tips:

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Conversion Rate is the percentage of visitors to a site that complete a desired action.

Conversion rate is the primary measurement for testing and optimizing an eCommerce website. If the conversion rate goes up a larger percentage of people are completing the desired action.

Generally conversion rates measure whether a customer bought something, but it can measure other goals like newsletter sign-up or creating an account too.

Conversion rate can measure specific actions on a single page or can be used more broadly to represent an action relative to the site.
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Choosing the right colors is pivotal for the success of your eCommerce site.

We all have emotional responses to color – many of these these reactions are defined by our culture from the day we were born.  Pink for a baby girl and blue for a baby boy.  Bad guys wear black and good guys wear white.

Let’s explore how the use of color relates to eCommerce using a Western view of color symbolism. Each color of the spectrum is filled with symbolism and within each color the different tints and shades have many of their own associations.

Let’s take a look at where colors are used, and why.

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Recurring orders save your customers grief and provide a steady income for your business.

As you might imagine, the Vortx crew goes through a lot of coffee. A few years ago we decided to start buying our coffee online through a local vendor’s website. Each month we go to their site and browse for the type, grind, size, and quantity we always get, then re-enter our payment and shipping information.

Wouldn’t it be great if our coffee vendor was able to process our standard shipment on the same day each month without waiting for us to get online and order? They should really be making use of recurring orders.

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We know that persuasion works. We’ve all been talked into doing something that we weren’t sure about only a moment ago. Let’s take what we’ve learned in ‘real life’ and apply the four most common persuasion techniques to web design.

Reciprocity – that nagging feeling that once you’ve been given something, you’re obligated to give something back. This tactic is used with free gifts all the time – give away a freebee and a customer becomes more likely to return the ‘favor’ with their business and/or trust. Think about swapping a freebee for something as simple as an email address – it’s free and both parties benefit! (more…)

Ever been to a site where it was so easy to find what you were looking for that it seemed to be reading your mind ?

You needed a pair of socks and a belt, to check the shipping policy, to check affiliate possibilities, or to gather some information about the rare llama yarn that was used in those socks – and it was all there, right at your fingertips, no hassle.

If so, you’ve experienced invisible navigation – the kind you don’t notice, but takes you everywhere you want to go, right away!

Chances are good that any site that fits this description employed many of the different types of navigation explained below.

Previously, I’ve offered Tips for Simple Navigation and Types of Navigation.  Here I’ll be describing the Styles of Navigation. (more…)

There are three basic types of navigation: hierarchical, site wide, and locally determined.

Each of these types of navigation can be represented in a tree structure (see figures).  The navigation trees can be traversed vertically or horizontally by following the links (lines) between the elements.

In an earlier post, I offered Tips for Simple Navigation.  Here I’ll describe the three types of navigation.

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