The wonderful folks at MDG Advertising have put together this little Pinterest infographic on the how and why.

How to use Pinterest for business. Source: http://www.mdgadvertising.com

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it’s not always a bad thing

If your e-commerce software tracks abandoned carts, you might be shocked by the figures. Research conducted in the last 15 years indicates shopping cart abandonment sits at anywhere from 45% to 90% – that’s massive. But it can also be a fantastic indicator of future sales. Taking the time to add items to their cart could be the customer’s way of tallying a total so they can gather their funds and come back later.

why it happens

There’s a plethora of research on shopping cart abandonment, and some of the most important is on the reasons behind it. Some of the top reasons revealed in various studies include:

• Unhappy with payment method options
• Lack of funds
• Preferred to shop in person
• High shipping charges
• Unsure of the online store’s credibility or security
• The item(s) unavailable at checkout
• Confused or overwhelmed by the checkout process

fix: be transparent

When shopping online, customers often forget about shipping when considering the total dollar value of their cart. Be up front and very clear about your shipping costs. If you have a flat rate, advertise it on your home page. If it’s calculated based on the cart contents, try having a minicart visible on all pages of your store, and include shipping costs in this section. Shocking customers with your shipping rates when they’re almost finished checkout is enough to a) turn them off and b) piss them off. Not a good combination.

fix: revamp your site

If potential customers are questioning the security and credibility of your site, you need to consider what it looks like, what your e-commerce software brings to the party and what information you provide. You could:

• Review what information you make available about your business. Does your site consist of an online store and nothing else? How do your customers know who they’re doing business with? If they have no idea, how can they trust you?
• Revisit the site’s design. If your site doesn’t quite scream “We are trustworthy!” you can’t either, can you? First impressions are important. Your DIY or templated website design may have served you well for the first year, but it might be time to think about the next step.
• Make sure checking out is easy. Don’t make the checkout hard to navigate or too long. You don’t need their date of birth, fax number, all 4 numbers they can be contacted on, or anything else that isn’t absolutely necessary for the sale. 2-3 page checkout maximum is good. 1 page checkout is even better.

fix: inline validation

Use a shopping cart that uses inline validation. In English: make sure your shopping cart tells your customer if they enter a mistake when they enter it, not after they’ve filled out a whole page and submitted it.

fix: make it safe

It’s important that your site makes your customers feel as secure as possible handing over their credit card details. Make sure you have an SSL certificate installed behind your site, and also make it obvious. Most SSL providers will have images you can place around your site to tell your customer they’re about to checkout securely. They may not be pretty to look at, but including one promotes trust.

fix: have a guest checkout option

Not every customer that visits your online store wants to register. It’s like walking into your local K-Mart and being told you need to hand over your full name, address, phone number and email address before being allowed to make a purchase. Choosing online store software that has a guest checkout option as default or comes with the option to upgrade means less risk in the shopping cart abandonment stakes.

There are plenty more ways you can help reduce shopping cart abandonment, although you’ll never get it down to zero. Our advice is to constantly review your site, make notes of what’s working and what’s not, take customer feedback seriously, and never stop looking for ways to improve.

shameless plug: We’re big believers in e-commerce software that just works and we get as frustrated as you do at software that doesn’t. That’s why we spent hundreds of hours developing blueCart eCommerce, our online store software. It’s smart. It’s beautiful. It’s easy to use. If you’re ready to dropkick your dodgy online store and upgrade to a shiny new blueCart store that’ll make you and your customers happy, let us know.

Like this infographic? Get more copywriting tips from Copyblogger.

1. The copyright notice in the footer of your site says ©2004. It’s 2012.
2. Your website plays music when it’s opened. This will make people a) vomit or b) angry.
3. When people visit your website, they have to click on “click here to enter”. Would you make people do a dance before entering your store or office for the sake of your entryway looking super duper awesome?
4. You’re having to knock back daily requests for computer repairs that have come through your website because two years ago you decided to become a business coach.
5. Clipart and gif animations. Enough said.
6. Your site uses the <marquee> tag for those really important bits of text you want people to read. See #2 and #5.
7. When you meet a potential client for the first time and they ask for your web address so they can read a bit more about you before they make a decision, you hand them a flyer that was printed on your office’s laser with a business card stapled to it. Because your website is way too embarrassing.
8. When people first get to your site, they see this (before closing the site and going elsewhere).
9. When you click on ‘contact us’, a PDF of your business card opens in a new window.
10. This is your website.

If any of those things sound familiar, give us a call. We promise we won’t tell anyone what your site looked like before we helped you redesign it.

You’re shocked. You’re annoyed. You don’t have time for this and you don’t understand why they need it when you spoke about all of this stuff in your meetings. Why can’t they just get on with it?

For good reason, actually. Briefs are boring. They’re annoying. They’re time consuming. We get that and so does your designer. But they’re necessary. No matter what you’re paying your designer to do, the design will only ever be as good as the brief you provide them with.

what’s in a brief?

The brief is really the most important part of your project. Not the most exciting part, no, but it’s the heart and soul of it. A few things your designer might want to know about during the briefing process are:

• What’s the nitty gritty of your business? What do you do and how do you do it?
• Who are you trying to sell to? What do they want from you and why would they choose you over someone else?
• Who’s the competition? How do you differ from them?
• What do you want to get out of the project/design?

why complete a brief?

Answering all of these questions tells your designer not only exactly what’s needed, but why your business needs it. It give your designer a good foundation for the project and decreases the chances of you getting something you hate.

Depending on what you’re having designed, the project could span over weeks or even months. Having answers to all of this information on paper allows your designer to come back to it when they need a refresher.

it’ll save you money

Still sound boring? Let’s put it a little differently: it’ll save you money. A proper brief = you getting what you want = less time trying to get to the final design. If you designer is completely in the dark and has to spend six months trying to figure out what you want when they’d usually spend 2 weeks on the design, chances are you’re going to pay for that extra time.

what can you do to help?

Set aside a block of time where you won’t be interrupted by the phone, clients, kids or pets. Give it your full attention and don’t answer if halfheartedly. Make your answers well thought out but to the point and not too long winded.

Call or email your designer if you’re stuck on a question. Ask if they’d be happy to discuss it with you. Trust us, they’d rather spend the time on the phone with you nutting out the question than getting a brief returned to them with big, blank areas. Call or email them after you submit it, too. Ask if you provided enough information. A good designer will come back to you if you didn’t, but help them out and be open to further questioning.

Were there things you wanted to tell them that didn’t fit in the brief? Send a separate email. Send links to samples of work you like. Provide additional information that you feel will help define the final design.

the brief is for you, too

Don’t just think of the brief as something your designer needs, but something that will benefit you as well. Think of the brief as an opportunity to re-evaluate your business and where it’s at. Think of it as a way for you to revisit your values and goals and get back to its roots. Suddenly it seems a little more worthwhile, don’t you think?

“There’s no such thing as an accident these days. Most successful viral marketing campaigns owe more to marketing than they do to virality.”

Interesting! Check out the post here.

Pinterest is a fairly new, super addictive social site that allows you to create a virtual pinboard of images you love. Similar to the way you can retweet on Twitter, you can also repin pins that others have posted.

The site launched in 2010 and has had massive success – 10million visitors per month? Yes, please. They’re insane numbers, so it’s no wonder businesses are starting to catch on and realise there’s a massive audience to be wooed on Pinterest. But there’s a few things you should know before signing up to the site, personal or otherwise.

Pinterest has recently come under fire for it’s slightly shady terms and conditions relating to copyright infringement. You know, the terms you agree to when you sign up, but likely don’t read. Here’s an excerpt:

“You agree not to do any of the following:

• Post, upload, publish, submit, provide access to or transmit any Content that: (i) infringes, misappropriates or violates a third party’s patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, moral rights or other intellectual property rights, or rights of publicity or privacy; (ii) violates, or encourages any conduct that would violate, any applicable law or regulation or would give rise to civil liability; (iii) is fraudulent, false, misleading or deceptive; (iv) is defamatory, obscene, pornographic, vulgar or offensive; (v) promotes discrimination, bigotry, racism, hatred, harassment or harm against any individual or group; (vi) is violent or threatening or promotes violence or actions that are threatening to any other person; or (vii) promotes illegal or harmful activities or substances.”

So, you’re agreeing not to post, upload, publish photos that don’t belong to you, right? And that idea of using it for business?

“Use the Site, Application or Site Content for any commercial purpose or the benefit of any third party or in any manner not permitted by these Terms;”

It gets better:

“Indemnity

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold Cold Brew Labs, its officers, directors, employees and agents, harmless from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses, including, without limitation, reasonable legal and accounting fees, arising out of or in any way connected with (i) your access to or use of the Site, Application, Services or Site Content, (ii) your Member Content, or (iii) your violation of these Terms.”

There’s more, which you can read here.

That paragraph above, though? It’s saying that if, say, a professional photographer whose beautiful product photography has ended up on Pinterest as a result of you thinking it’s spiffy and pinning it, decides to take legal action against you and/or Pinterest because their copyright has been breached, YOU are responsible. And not just for your legal fees. You also have to pay to defend Pinterest.

Seems a little scary, no?

The upside to all of this is that Pinterest does make provisions for those who don’t want their work on the site to request for it to be removed, and last month introducted a “nopin” HTML tag for site owners to place in their site’s code to prevent their photos being pinned.

Let’s face it. It’s highly unlikely you’re going to get sued (might want to chat to your photographer!). But it’s something to seriously consider before you start using Pinterest, profressionally or personally.

Image courtesy of youarethemapmaker.com

“You are the mapmaker.”

Do those words speak to you? Do they remind you that you’re in this business of business not to slog your guts out or to make a living or to become famous, but to give yourself the freedom to choose your own path? That’s what they do for me. Which is why I was so excited to find youarethemapmaker.com and read You are the Mapmaker the book, available as a free download.

Business is hard. It can be draining. It can be tiring. But if it does feel that way, we have to remember that it’s like that because we made it that way. You’re the mapmaker. Change the route. Hell, change the destination if it no longer suits.

And to help inspire you to do that, visit youarethemapmaker.com and get the book. Not just for creative folk.

In the first issue, we mentioned some changes. Like the fact that we won’t be taking on new graphic design work anymore. We love our graphic design clients, but the web is where it’s at, so that’s what we’re going to focus on.

We also mentioned we won’t be open on Fridays anymore. Tomorrow will be our last Friday in the office, and instead we are going to spend our days doing things like… Oh, I don’t know, having picnics, going swimming, baking cupcakes, having long lunches with friends, and probably some kicking back at the cinema.

Work-life balance. That’s what running a business is all about for us.  It’s a beautiful thing.