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Check back on a regular basis for the latest best practice and thought-leadership updates.
Google Local Business Listings: A How To Guide
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 22nd July 2010 to E-commerce and Search
By now you’ll have noticed that any location-based search query brings up Google Maps listings with the top seven to eight businesses listed at the top of the results page. This is prime search ...
Online Retail Sales Rise In June
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 15th July 2010 to E-commerce
Online sales continued to rise throughout June, with the British Retail Consortium (BRC) reporting that e-commerce, mail order and telephone sales rose by a total of 17.3% compared to June 2009. The ...
Is Your Email Marketing Socially ‘Inept’?
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 23rd June 2010 to Email Marketing and E-commerce
A recent study has reportedly shown that ‘offering at least three social options leads to 55% higher click-through rates’ in your email marketing. It sounds great on the face of it: include a sim...
Vital Statistics: E-commerce Abandonment and How To Stop It
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 17th June 2010 to E-commerce
Some interesting figures on web site and checkout abandonment have surfaced recently, which we thought worth sharing with you Of all online shoppers, approximately 88% claim to have abandoned a bask...
Is Your Email Marketing Content Out Of Touch With Customers?
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 27th May 2010 to Email Marketing and E-commerce
Economic forecasters have been talking about a slow but sure recovery lately, but in reality, many customers are still feeling the pinch in their wallets. Your email marketing needs to use the kind o...
Excellent Product Photography Tips for Your E-commerce Site
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 19th May 2010 to E-commerce
Forget ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’; a picture could be worth one thousand pounds if you’re retailing online. All too often we see perfectly good e-commerce sites undermined by poor s...
Uncover Your Money-Making E-commerce Paths
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 12th May 2010 to E-commerce and Search
Sales channels; tracking; return on investment. If you’re a retailer, you’ll know just how time consuming and mind-boggling digging into these things can actually be. Customers don’t come out o...
When Customers Check-In (But Never Check-Out)
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 5th May 2010 to E-commerce
Why would a customer put an item they had no intention of buying in a basket? Or think of it this way: why would you put an item you had no intention of buying in a basket? One possibility might be: ...
Transactional Emails: A Little ‘Thank You’ Goes A Long Way
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 21st April 2010 to Email Marketing and E-commerce
Many businesses think of email primarily as a marketing channel, with transactional emails such as purchase receipts and delivery notifications coming a close second. But what about the ‘thank youâ€...
Docnet’s E-commerce Manifesto
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 16th April 2010 to E-commerce
The UK election is on everyone’s minds and lips but let’s not forget about the world of e-commerce. While the parties have all busy making policies for how they want to run the country, we’ve be...
The Eye Of The Beholder: How A Great Story Can Generate Sales
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 14th April 2010 to E-commerce and Social Media
You’ll probably never hear a customer ask you, "Tell me a story; make me a promise" but we’ve seen visitors to our e-commerce clients’ web sites display this behaviour so many times that we’re...
SEO: Page-Load Now Included As Google Ranking Factor
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 12th April 2010 to E-commerce and Search
We've written about this subject before, toward the end of last year, but now it's official: Google is using page-load time as a search ranking factor. In short, web sites that are faster to load wil...
Not So Niche – Optimising Landing Pages For Natural Search
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 18th March 2010 to E-commerce and Search
Search engine optimisation is much easier when you have niche phrases to target. With less competition, it takes less time to achieve visibility, and if the phrase accurately describes what your busin...
Trust Us – Trustmarks Alone Aren’t Enough To Increase Sales
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 2nd March 2010 to E-commerce
The hurdle that many retailers face to growing their sales online is proving to visitors that their e-commerce sites are 100% secure. Though the Internet has matured greatly in the past few years, vis...
Is Copy Really That Important On An E-commerce Site?
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 1st March 2010 to E-commerce and Search
As a full-service e-commerce and digital marketing agency, we see lots of perfectly good e-commerce sites held back by their use of copy. There’s either too much of it and it swamps the reader; or t...
Why Online Retailers Do Like Mondays
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 3rd February 2010 to E-commerce
Monday mornings might be a drag for much of the UK’s population but new research from Retail Decisions (ReD) will probably have online retailers leaping out of their beds with excitement. On averag...
Consumers More Satisfied With Retail Web Sites (But There's Still A Long Way To Go)
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 28th January 2010 to E-commerce
Retailers are upping their online efforts in a bid to improve customer satisfaction, with quantifiable successes being reported. Both customers in the UK and the US state they are more satisfied with...
THE Five Tests To Help Increase Online Revenue In 2010
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 6th January 2010 to E-commerce and Social Media
Welcome back to the Docnet blog: we hope you’ve had an enjoyable Christmas break and New Year, and are ready to kick-start the new decade with some online marketing best practice and innovation tips...
The New Tradition: Online Spending on Christmas Day
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 21st December 2009 to E-commerce and Search
With reports indicating another year of growth for online retail in the US and UK (comScore have calculated a 3% year-on-year growth in US online retail over the 41 prime retail days from November –...
Three Christmas Stocking-Filler Ideas For Your E-commerce Site
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 17th December 2009 to E-commerce
If the high-street retailers have any advantage over online stores, it’s the atmosphere. But what's to stop online stores from recreating a bit of the Christmas spirit? Atmosphere can easily sway...
Special Offers Are Key To Brand Popularity Online
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 9th November 2009 to E-commerce and Social Media
Brand awareness is a valuable asset – but what is your brand being associated with online? Are your social media efforts simply about having a presence in the community, so that you don’t appear b...
eBay Predicts Increase In Online Shopping Over Christmas
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 27th October 2009 to E-commerce
The Internet auction site eBay is predicting a strong Christmas for online retailers, based on a recent survey. The advertising arm of eBay has found that 85% of shoppers intend to maintain or inc...
Use Transactional Emails To Drive Sales On Your Web Site
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 9th October 2009 to Email Marketing and E-commerce
Email marketing and e-commerce, birds of a feather. It doesn’t quite rhyme, but stand these two channels next to each other and you realise how well they work together. Historically, transactiona...
Could Car-Parking Tax Drive More Shoppers Online?
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 28th September 2009 to E-commerce
Sometime next year, shoppers on their way home from their local shopping-centre or retail park might notice a general increase in their shopping bill; maybe even an extra charge on their receipt mar...
What's Your 'Story'? - Generating Leads Through Social Media
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 24th September 2009 to E-commerce and Social Media
The words 'marketing' and 'social media' don't always sit well together in the same sentence - but social media has huge lead-generating potential when you market your business online. Strike the righ...
Niche Retailers Succeed Online Through ‘Common Lack of Fear’
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 14th September 2009 to E-commerce
This week, a feature on Retail Week web site caught our attention, called ‘The sky’s the limit: Tomorrow’s retail stars’. In it, ten of the most promising small businesses in the UK share thei...
Pay Fair: OFT to Investigate Internet Pricing Tactics
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 27th August 2009 to E-commerce
In a bid to make retail a less frustrating activity for shoppers, The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is to conduct a market study of potentially misleading pricing and advertising tactics used by retai...
Get Bigger Windows for Your Online Window-Shoppers
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 19th August 2009 to E-commerce
The best e-commerce sites make it easy for visitors to find what they want. They can search by brand, model, format, or by keyword and it brings up the items they’re interested in. But what about th...
Free Postage & Packaging Increases Online Sales
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 13th August 2009 to E-commerce
According to recent research, e-commerce site owners are more likely to increase sales at their online retail store by offering free postage & packaging than by any other means. As an incentive, f...
EC Law Creates E-commerce Confusion for Luxury Brands
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 29th July 2009 to E-commerce
A new draft of e-commerce laws in Europe could spark a wave of litigation warns a prominent lobbyist, with particular consequences reserved for auction sites such as eBay and luxury brands. The new E...
E-commerce: The High Street's Saviour or Executioner?
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 15th July 2009 to E-commerce
In the early days of the Internet, it’s fair to say e-commerce was viewed as a kind of novelty; a niche for the well-heeled and tech-savy. And while the dot-com boom may have been exciting while i...
Live Chat With Your Customers For Improved Customer Service
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 24th June 2009 to E-commerce
Sometimes transactions go wrong or visitors have trouble finding what they're looking for. It's in these instances that you need a reliable customer service channel in place, or else risk losing poten...
Are Abandoned Basket Emails Helpful or Harassment?
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 12th June 2009 to Email Marketing and E-commerce
Whether to re-market to visitors who have abandoned shopping baskets on your web site is a sensitive issue. As this recent article in the New York Times pointed out, a shop assistant wouldn't follow y...
Persuading Site Visitors to Buy Through Personas
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 11th June 2009 to E-commerce
As a general rule, visitors to your web site are unpredictable: they might abandon a shopping cart right before they get to the checkout; change the nature of their search queries, or arrive and lea...
Grow Your Email Marketing List: Ingenious Ideas for Data Capture
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 29th May 2009 to Email Marketing and E-commerce
A strong email marketing campaign thrives on high-quality data, which is why we always recommend including data capture elements on your web site. Even if it doesn’t have transactional capabilities,...
Is E-commerce Growth About to Reach a Plateau?
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 27th May 2009 to E-commerce
It seemed unlikely at the beginning of the century but online retail has proved itself to be the more resilient sales channel compared to the high-street, continuing to grow even through the recession...
E-commerce Merchants Cutting Back on Search Marketing Spending
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 19th May 2009 to E-commerce
A recent study from Shop.org has shown that almost a third (30%) of online retailers intend on cutting back marketing spend. Over half (55%) have singled out search engine marketing as the channel due...
Who’s Afraid Of Your E-commerce Site?
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 14th May 2009 to E-commerce
From the evidence on offer, you'd think the answer would be no-one. This April, E-commerce and online retail boasted a 12.5% increase in non-food sales over the same period last year, with DIY, outdoo...
Is There Room for 'Expensive' in the Recession?
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 15th April 2009 to E-commerce
Is There Room for 'Expensive' in the Recession? Now that there’s lttle sign of the recession ending before the end of the year according to Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, do you fi...
Second Life for High Street Brands On-line
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 1st April 2009 to E-commerce
Second Life for High Street Brands Online - 1st April 2009 The news that old high street stalwarts Woolworths are looking to re-launch their brand as an Internet presence comes at a time when e-comme...
E-commerce Makes the High Street 'Green' With Envy
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 18th March 2009 to E-commerce
If you sell items popularly bought as gifts, e-commerce might just be the way to boost your sales figures and ‘green’ credentials at the same time. E-commerce continues to expand in spite of the ...
5 Tips to Get Your Ecommerce Site to the Top
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 4th March 2009 to E-commerce
With on-line retail predicted to expand by 6% and reach an estimated value of £56bn by 2014, ecommerce site owners will be considering how to maximise the amount of traffic their websites receive. Re...
SprintEcommerce Attends TFM&A 2009
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 18th February 2009 to E-commerce
Doctor Net will be exhibiting SprintEcommerce at this years' Technology For Marketing & Advertising show at Earls Court, London alongside its additional on-line marketing services, which are now a...
More Ecommerce Sites Getting Web 2.0 Make-Overs: Is Yours?
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 4th February 2009 to E-commerce
When was the last time you updated your ecommerce site? There's a one in two chance that it was in the last year, as recent statistics from the Internet Retailers' monthly survey show that 49.9% of me...
Strong Christmas 2009 Sales Predicted for Ecommerce Sites
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 21st January 2009 to E-commerce
Recent figures released by the IMRG in the third annual Logan Tod Online Shopping Index will come as cheering news for on-line retailers. The increase in UK ecommerce spending between 2007 and 2008 - ...
Customer Reviews Important for Ecommerce Sites
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 12th January 2009 to E-commerce
The internet has opened a lot of doors for consumers, giving them access to a range of retailers they would not have been able to reach physically in the past. It has also given them the opportunity t...
SprintEcommerce Widens it's Bandwidth in Time for Christmas
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 3rd December 2008 to E-commerce
Lately there have been conflicting reports on the state of ecommerce – some claim it's in good health while others say it's on the wane. Speaking for ourselves, we've seen a massive increase in the ...
Reduce Basket Abandonment On Your Ecommerce Site
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 27th November 2008 to E-commerce
Your efforts to provide an enjoyable, problem-free transactional experience for your on-line customers could all be going to waste, a recent study has shown, if you aren't backing it up with an adequa...
Consumers Not Getting What They Want from Ecommerce
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 19th November 2008 to E-commerce
The customer's experience and perception of a business is affected by everything, from the aesthetic (presentation, brand image) to the substance (effectiveness of customer support, quality of goods a...
New Ecommerce Growth Indicator Launched
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 6th November 2008 to E-commerce
The increasing importance of on-line retail's contribution to the economy is becoming harder to ignore. Last month, fashion retailers As Seen On Screen (or ASOS as they're more commonly known) reporte...
Proctor & Gamble Sell The Essentials On-line
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 22nd October 2008 to E-commerce
This week, in what could become a trend-setting move, Proctor & Gamble have launched www.theEssentials.com, an American-based ecommerce site where consumers can purchase Gillette, Braun, Duracell ...
A 'Hop, Skip And A Jump' Away From Great Ecommerce
Posted by Gareth Cutter on 6th October 2008 to E-commerce
A recent survey by IBM into shopper purchasing habits has shown consumers are making greater use of the range of shopping channels available to them, leading to a phenomenon known as 'channel-hopping'...
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