You can read more about this partnership here:  2Checkout.com Partners with Anchor Hocking for Direct-to-Consumer Sales

• Easier to read refund emails: The messages sent to you and the customer now have the sale id in the subject line so you can quickly and easily find the sale and customer requesting a refund.
• Improved coupons: You can reinstate old coupons if they are deleted or expired. Suppliers may now also pass in 2Checkout coupons with the order using the “coupon” parameter.
• The new CSV upload: Now you can upload product lists using either commas or the pipe symbol. This should make listing large numbers of products much faster.

I want to thank our developers for getting these updates out. I also want to thank all of you who have given your feedback to let us know what we can do to help make selling online easier and more convenient.

One strategy to grow your ecommerce revenue is to spin-off a subset of your product line onto its own website. With this “sub-niche” website, you can focus your branding, ads, and presentation to the customer who is looking for what you have to offer.

The article talks about using an existing successful site and focusing on smaller or more narrowly focused sub-niche. I think this information can be equally useful for a first-time seller who wants to market to the specific needs of an under-served community or who has a more narrowly focused expertise

A successful sub-niche website depends on identifying a particular product line from your main site that (a) has high enough search volume to drive significant traffic, and (b) is substantive enough that you can build an entire website around it. Products from a certain manufacturers, or products for a particular purpose, are excellent candidates. For example, if you have a costume website, 1970s-vintage costumes could be a sub-niche worth focusing on. Or if you sell pond supplies, you might want to make your name as the go-to site for a particular manufacturer of pond pumps and related accessories. Taking your main product line and targeting it at specific geographical areas is another strategy that could make sense in certain cases.

The Case for launching Sub-Niche Websites

I emailed the company to ask if they could tell me what the problem was. They couldn’t. “The volume was up to max when we did the final compilation,” was what I was told. “It can’t get any louder.”

That’s a real problem. Why? Because – while the images were super – the words were what mattered. Just watching a talking head at the top of the sales page wouldn’t do anybody any good unless they knew what was being said. The information – the persuasion – was in the words.

Graphics Heavy, but Copy Light

I find this happening a lot online. Site owners and marketing directors put all the weight of conversion on an image. Product pages are graphics heavy but copy light. Don’t get me wrong: images are wonderful. In fact, they add quite a lot to the page.

However, just looking at a photo of a laptop computer doesn’t come close to informing the customer of the full range of features and benefits this machine offers.

Does copy need to be long to be effective? No. A well-written, 60-word product description on an ecommerce site can effectively communicate what the reader needs to know to make a buying decision. (Optimal phrase: well-written.)

When setting up your online store, don’t skimp on the copy. You’ll end up like I did – with a page that’s nice to look at, but doesn’t accomplish a thing!

Want to learn how to write great SEO copy for your site? Check out Karon’s Step-by-Step Copywriting Course. Visit Karon’s copywriting blog to get her free ebook, Copywriting Makeovers.

Afarin Bellisario in Entrepreneur asks the most important question – Why Serve a Niche Market?

Niche players share a common set of traits. These include a deep understanding of their customers and their customers’ needs and the ability to stay engaged with those customers. Ideal niche market companies should consistently produce quality, innovative products and possess a genuine regard for the well-being of their employees. Serving a niche allows companies to focus on meeting the needs of a smaller group of customers without compromising their chance to increase the appeal to a broader market.

The article continues by listing four reason why serving a niche can be profitable as well as a smart strategy for newer businesses. Along with these reasons, examples are given showing companies who have either made their success by serving a niche, or have expanded beyond their initial market and now serve wider markets.

Why then do so many landing pages fail miserably? Most often, it’s due to one of five errors. And, thankfully, all five are easily fixed.

• 1 Not understanding what a landing page is best used for. Yes, as I said above, a landing page *can* be any page of your site. But keep in mind I also said that was only true *if* the visitor was being sent to the page from some prearranged campaign. Joe Public who clicks to your Services page because he found a link in his buddy’s blog post does not equal someone visiting a “landing page.” However, if you place PPC ads about your service offerings and use a special URL for a specifically created page to greet and persuade your visitors, then you have created a landing page.

• 2 Failing to coordinate your campaign copy and your landing page copy. Site visitors click to your landing page because they saw something in your email, postcard or PPC ad that interested them. Sending them to a generic page that doesn’t coordinate with the promotion they saw is a deadly error.

If you send an email with a special offer just for World Wildlife Fund (WWF) members, then your landing page needs to make clear that WWF members have found the place they are looking for. If your PPC ad promotes free processing for one month for all new merchant account customers, your landing page needs to clearly and quickly communicate that. Visitors won’t tolerate being offered a free month and then be forced to dig for information about the promotion once they click to your site. Instead, they’ll simply leave.

• 3 Clearly defining your goal and call to action. So often, site owners and managers want to pack a landing page full of goals. “Well, while they’re here we might as well…” What one primary goal do you want to accomplish with this page? Once that’s defined, what specific call to action do you need to give to make your goal happen? Make sure everything in your copy measures up to those two standards. Giving too many options on a landing page is confusing to visitors and fractures their attention while on the page.

• 4 Be clear. Marketing Experiments once published an article entitled something to the effect of “Clarity Trumps Cleverness.” Skip the cutesy headlines and copy; instead, opt for clear information that is well written.

• 5 Write to your target customer and no one else. So many times, copywriters and website owners tend to write about the company and not to the customer. You should be speaking with your target audience singularly. Write in second person (“you” and “your”) instead of we-ing all over yourself with copy stuffed with “we” and “our” and “us.” It’s not about you.Change the focus of your copy to your customers. Instead of:Our products come with a lifetime guaranteewrite:You will receive a lifetime guarantee on all purchases.

True landing pages should never be generic. To work their best, they need to address the visitor, relate to the campaign, give informative copy, focus on a specific goal, offer a clear call to action and speak to your target customer. When you incorporate these elements into your writing process, you’ll find your landing pages convert with much greater success.

Subscribe to Karon’s Marketing Words Copywriting Blog today and receive your free target customer discovery questionnaire and Copywriting Makeovers ebook.

Below are a few fun gift ideas for Dad from 2Checkout Suppliers:

• Venus Worldwide
• R. Lee Ermey
• Muay Thai Stuff
• Komodo Kamado
• Magisterrex.com

Thank you to everyone who has been providing us with valuable feedback and suggestions.

• Make sure your price is clear – Customers don’t want to guess how much they are going to pay.
• Put the “Buy Now” close to the product price – Entice your customers with your copy and price, don’t make them search how to pay you.
• Make the “Buy Now” button easy to find – This should go without saying, but I have skipped sites because I couldn’t find out how to buy something.
• Photos of your products – A clear photo will draw people’s attention to what you are selling.
• Make a bulleted list of the features – Just like this one!

The above are just a few very simple adjustments that can help your site generate more customers, more sales, and more return customers. Another related site design element to keep in mind is how your site looks in different browsers. While Internet Explorer has the majority share in web browser usage, there is a sizable minority of people who are using Firefox, Chrome, etc. It is important to test your site design in as many browsers as you can to make sure that the look and functionality of your site translates across browser platforms.

While nothing can guarantee increased sales on an e-commerce site, having a well developed professional looking site increases your chances of letting your products shine. With good copy and good photography your products and services are clearly presented. With simple site navigation and easy to find purchase links your potential customers can quickly move from “willing to buy” to “waiting for delivery”.

Some Further Reading:

• 55 Google Website Optimizer Tips and Tricks
• SEOmoz Blog
• Marketing Experiments Blog

Because of this popularity, many online merchants are more than happy to accept debit card transactions. Until recently, online debit cards were treated as Signature Debit transactions. The customer’s electronic signature is substituted for their physical signature. Thus allowing debit cards that have a Visa or Master Card logo to process much like credit cards.

The other form of debit card transaction is a Personal Identification Number (PIN) Debit. Here, a customer pays with their debit card and authorizes the purchase by entering their unique ID. Because the purchase must be authorized by the customer, requiring an interface to enter the PIN, this method of payment is less common on the Internet.

One of the benefits of PIN debit, is a reduction in fraud and disputed charges. Customers authorize their purchases with PINs, the risk to merchants of chargebacks is virtually nonexistent. 2Checkout, along with Acculynk, allows your customers to buy products using the safety of their PIN debit cards. Your customers get one more way to make purchases, while merchants get the ability to accept even more sales. Sales that are much less likely to be fraudulent.