Should you add the Amazon Payments Button to your store?

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Should you add the Amazon Payments Button to your store?

Are you looking for a proven way to increase your online business sales? Then adding Amazon Payments Button will do just that by providing your customers with a fast payment method they know and trust. Read on to discover more about how Amazon Payments can boost your online sales, how you can add buttons to your store and what fees you’ll have to pay for this service.

What is Amazon Login and Pay?

amazon payments button

Amazon Login and Pay, also known as Amazon Payments, is a tool that allows customers to pay for products online through their Amazon account. If a customer clicks an Amazon Payments Button on your online store, they’ll pay for your product through their Amazon account. Since Amazon already has the customer’s credit card and address details saved, the checkout process is incredibly quick and easy.  

Why should you use Amazon Payments Buttons?

Here are the top reasons you should add an Amazon Payments Button to your online store:

  • Customers trust Amazon because it’s a reputable brand that millions of people use. Shoppers can be reluctant to input their credit card details into an unknown site so if they see an option to pay through a company they trust, like Amazon, they’re much more likely to buy your product. Top fashion retailer AllSaints saw 24% of their customers choose to pay via Amazon within two weeks of launching the Amazon Payment service on their website.amazon payments button
  • It’s cheap. Amazon charges just 2.9% – 3.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.
  • Amazon Payments can increase your average order value. For example, AllSaints saw a 15% higher average order value after installing Amazon Payments Buttons.
  • It’s fast and easy. Since Amazon already has the customer’s credit card and address details saved, there’s no need to input them again. This speeds up the buying process and makes it much more likely that the sale will be completed. AllSaints found that their checkout time was reduced by 70 seconds when they installed Amazon Login and Pay, which helped increase their checkout conversion rate by 34%.
  • Free fraud protection. Amazon has sophisticated fraud-detection tools which you get free access to when you add Amazon Payments to your store.
  • You keep your customer’s data. When you use Amazon buttons on your store, you retain complete control of your customer’s details and manage the shipping process yourself.
  • There are no hidden costs. You won’t be charged any fees for setting up or canceling your Amazon Login and Pay account.

How do you add the Amazon Payments Button to your store?

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Now you’ve seen the benefits of adding Amazon Payments Buttons, here’s how to install them and start increasing sales on your online store. For businesses in the United States, you will need the following:

  • A US address and phone number.
  • A US bank account.
  • A credit card connected to a US address.
  • A business ID, EIN or Personal Security Number.

Once you have proof of all this, sign-up to Amazon Payments here, by selecting the ‘For Merchants’ option. You’ll be given your own Seller ID account and access to the Seller Central site, which is where you’ll integrate your buttons with your website and manage all your sales and payments. Input your credit card details and set up a checking account on Seller Central.

Next, integrate your Amazon Buttons. This is an easy process on most e-commerce sites and stores such as FoxyCart, LemonStand, WooCommerce, 3DCart, Volusion, Shopify, or Magento. You can see the full list of Amazon’s e-commerce partners and integrations here. If you use a different e-commerce store, you can create your own custom code to integrate the buttons or buy a plug-in. As an example, Yahoo! charges $400 for their Amazon Payments integration plug-in.

When customers buy one of your products through the Amazon Payments Button, make sure you ship the item as quickly as possible and then capture payment for the order. Minus fees, you will then receive your earnings according to Amazon’s payment process, which is detailed below.  

How much does Amazon charge you to use their payment process?  

Here’s a breakdown of the fees Amazon charges for its payment buttons:

  • Either a Domestic Processing Fee of 2.9% per transaction for products shipped and sold in the USA.
  • Or a Cross-Border Processing Fee of 3.9% per transaction if the order is going to a country other than the USA.
  • Every order, regardless of where it’s shipped, is charged a $0.30 Authorization Fee.

There’s also a Disputed Chargeback Fee of $20 which is non-refundable, as is the Authorization Fee. However, if a refund takes place you will receive your Domestic or Cross-Border Processing Fee back.

Amazon’s reserve policy

Amazon keeps a certain amount of your earnings for a short period to cover things like refunds, guarantees and customer complaints. This balance is called a ‘reserve’ and the exact amount of it will depend on how long you’ve been an Amazon merchant for and what kind of service you provide your customers with. Here are the specific reserve prices:

  • When you first start selling with Amazon Payments you go through a 14-day observation period whereby all of your transactions are kept in reserve before they’re released.amazon payments button
  • After that, you move into Tier 1. In this stage, Amazon holds either the entire transaction amount or the amount of all your unresolved payment disputes, whichever is higher, for seven days.
  • After six months, once you’ve made 100 transactions through Amazon Payments, you can apply to upgrade to Tier 2. This means just 3% of your daily processed payments (based on the last 28-days average) is kept in reserve.
  • If your Order Defect Rate, which measures how many customer complaints and chargebacks you receive, stays below 1%, you’re eligible to have the 3% reserve fee removed.

So, should you add Amazon Payments Buttons to your store? The answer is a resounding yes. Leveraging Amazon’s trustworthy brand power is a proven way to increase online sales. In addition, you won’t be charged extortionate transaction fees for using Amazon Payments Buttons. Get started to boost your business today.

Introducing The AdWords Marketing Goals Website

As marketers, you’re always looking for more effective ways to achieve business goals – from getting customers to discover your brand to encourage them to buy something from your site, and everything in between. Today, we are introducing a new AdWords website that puts your goals front and center and shows you which ads work best to accomplish those goals. You can also use this site to find info on our latest ad innovations, success stories from other marketers, and best practices guides.
For example, if you’re a multi-channel retailer driving foot traffic into your store, learn about Google solutions like ads with store directions that can help people find your nearest business location.

Or if you just launched a new app and want to make sure the right people discover it, you can find best practices to get more high-value users to engage with your app. You can also draw inspiration from businesses like GrubHub that ran ads to connect with customers the moment they’re searching for new apps in the Google Play store. 

Check back in on the site regularly as we’ll continue to add content. Also, help us ensure that the site is as useful as possible by sharing your feedback. We look forward to hearing your ideas and suggestions.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

17 Scarily Good Website Marketing Ideas for Halloween

17 Scarily Good Website Marketing Ideas for Halloween
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Did you know that Americans spend an average of $8.4 billion on Halloween each year?  That’s right, Halloween has become the second most popular US holiday after Christmas. So get into the holiday spirit to boost your business and show customers that you love All Hallows’ Eve as much as they do. Check out these 17 scarily good website marketing ideas for Halloween.

  • Spook up your online store – place some Halloween-inspired icons such as monsters, bats and skulls around your store. Switch to a spookier text font and alter the names of your products to give them a Halloween theme, think: Creepy Cake Decorations for a baking store or Zombie Survival Gear for an outdoor clothing range.
  • Run a Halloween contest – set up a contest on your social media channels asking people to send in photos of their Halloween costumes, decorations, parties and food. Give a prize for the winning entries and share photos of your own employees taking part.
  • Dress up your logo – make some temporary design changes to your logo. You could add some Halloween motifs like a witch’s hat or a pair of glowing eyes. Easier still, you could change the colour of your logo to black and orange for the holiday period.
  • Create a Halloween hash tag – think up a clever hash tag campaign that combines Halloween and your brand to circulate on social media. One extremely successful example of this is the #oreohorrorstories campaign.
  • Hold a pumpkin hunt – place pumpkin icons around your website, particularly on key landing pages, and challenge your customers to hunt for them. Offer a discount or special gift for anyone who finds all of the pumpkins and hand out clues on your social media channels. You can take this a step further by getting other businesses to join in and spread the hunt to their websites.
  • Have a Halloween flash sale – promote a time-limited flash sale of your products and services for the holiday period. Create an eye-catching poster to publicize the sale and share it with your social media followers and email subscribers.
  • Make a scary YouTube video – make a short video that ties your business in with Halloween. It could be a zombie invasion in your office or a scary prank involving your employees. Ford’s spooky Halloween car wash prank for instance has been viewed over 1.8 million times on YouTube!
  • Send a Halloween newsletter – schedule a newsletter to wish your customers a Happy Halloween. Share some Halloween tips with them or list details about festive events in your local area. You can also offer readers a gift as a Halloween treat.
  • Create some creepy GIFS – design some Halloween-themed GIFS to use on your website, social media channels and newsletters.
  • Produce a Halloween infographic – this doesn’t have to be directly related to your business as long as it includes your brand logo and a link to your website. Try something like: Scariest Halloween movies, Most popular Halloween candy or Classic costumes for Halloween. Make sure the infographic looks spooky and is highly shareable.
  • Organize a virtual trick-or-treat – link up with other businesses to offer treats for people to collect. Create a graphic to advertise what each business is offering and send it out to your mailing list and social media followers. Ask each business taking part to do the same.
  • Sponsor or host a Halloween event – do some festive advertising. Choose a local Halloween event like a costume parade or haunted house to sponsor or create some goody bags with your logo on to be given out at local events. You can even host your own spooky event and invite customers.
  • Change your favicon – alter the icon that appears next to your URL in the address bar of your browser. Give it a Halloween twist such as a flash of orange or add a Halloween motif.
  • Write a Halloween-themed blog post – create a fun Halloween post for your blog. Get creative and share holiday tips related to your business. If you run a home décor website, this could mean a top 10 list of Halloween decorations or if you have a food-related business you could write a post about spooky cake design ideas.
  • Run a social media poll – engage people by running a poll or vote on your social media channels. You could get your office staff to dress up in Halloween costumes or bring in spooky treats, take photos of them and ask your audience to decide who wins.
  • Give away Halloween treats – offer your customers an extra treat when they buy something from your site or sign up to your service over Halloween. This could be anything from a free product to a discount or gift card.
  • Produce some Halloween-themed products – make some special, limited-edition products for Halloween. Create an orange and black version of a popular product, for example, or add some Halloween emblems.

Do you have any more scarily good website marketing ideas for Halloween?  Share them in the comment section below!

17 Scarily Good Website Marketing Ideas for Halloween

Click-To-Message Ads Bring A New And Easy Way To Talk To Customers

If you’re inviting a friend to dinner or asking them about the best hotels in New York City, you’re probably doing it through mobile messaging. Nearly two-thirds of smartphone owners use messaging more than five times a day to communicate with others.1 And people aren’t limiting their use of messaging to social communications – 65% of consumers say they’d consider using messaging to connect with a business to get information about a product or service, or to schedule an in-person appointment.2

In the coming weeks, we’re introducing click-to-message ads to bring the efficiency and effectiveness of messaging to search ads. By setting up a message extension, you’ll give users an easy way to text you to start a conversation and continue it whenever is most convenient for them.

Tapping on the texting option launches a user’s SMS app with a pre-written message tailored to the product or service they’re interested in. For example, if you’re a travel advertiser and someone messages you after searching for New York City hotels, they can send or edit your pre-written message text, “I’m interested in a reservation. Please text me back with more information.”

Many advertisers are already using click-to-message ads to take advantage of a new and faster way to connect with consumers on mobile to increase conversion rates:

“Click-to-message ads have proven to be a great way to help prequalified customers start the hotel reservation process in a way that is convenient and easy for them. They can text an agent to get questions answered, continue the conversation on their own timetable, and trade booking information before completing the final checkout over the phone or on our website. It’s a seamless and streamlined process that helps increase brand trust. The conversion rate on message extensions is 41% higher compared to other ad extensions. Paired with customer support software, they’ve also allowed our agents to respond to requests in a more efficient and cost-effective way. ”
– Gabe Thayn, Director of Search Marketing, TravelPASS Group

“Click-to-message is a useful tool that allows consumers to engage with our business in a way that’s comfortable and efficient for them. They could be on their commute or in a rush, so they can text us quickly through click-to-message. It’s also a good medium to get questions answered that aren’t addressed on our website, or to reach us during hours when our office is closed. Our main performance objective is to help customers as much as possible – when we take care of their questions and needs in a helpful, relevant way, that leads to better business results.”

– Gavin Chan, Digital Marketing Manager, AnyVan

“The results from click-to-message have been phenomenal and we’ve seen a 80% higher conversion rate when compared to other similar channels. We can now tap into an important consumer base that prefers to use SMS to learn more about our insurance products. Besides giving users a new way to get in touch with us, we feel this is by far the fastest and most cost-effective way to connect with them.”

– Gavin Parker, Paid Search Manager, Auto & General 

“We started testing click-to-message as soon as we heard about it. Text messaging is a popular medium of communication among young professionals and the opportunity to engage them through SMS is very exciting. We sell industrial equipment and supplies, which can be very technical. Sometimes customers don’t have time to talk over a web chat or phone conversation, but still need more information. Messaging helps simplify these exchanges and the customer response has been very positive since they can post a question and follow up in their own time.”
– Ashar Mairaj, VP of Marketing, Global Industrial

Mobile users have more flexibility than ever to choose how they want to connect with businesses. Through messaging, you can initiate valuable conversations with them by tapping into one of their most preferred modes of communication. Learn more about click-to-message ads by visiting the Help Center. Also read our new best practices to learn how to use click-to-message ads to build a faster consumer experience on mobile and deliver useful information that gets customers closer to purchasing.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Shopping Partners With E-commerce Platforms To Make Selling Online Easier Than Ever This Holiday Season

When it comes to attracting customers over the busy holiday season, showcasing your products online can help you get in front of more people, and many retailers already use e-commerce platforms to upload and promote their products online. Today, we’re excited to announce partnerships with three major e-commerce platforms — BigCommerce, PrestaShop, and Magento — to make it easier than ever before to get started on Google Shopping for the holidays, and beyond. If you’re using any one of these platforms (or if you’re thinking of using one of these platforms), our new partnerships let you easily submit your product information to Google Shopping and quickly reach millions of new customers searching for what you sell.

Get up and running on Google in just a few clicks

With this direct integration, you can save time and extra work by using your existing BigCommerce, Prestashop, or Magento account to easily submit your product data to fuel a new Google Shopping campaign.

With just a few clicks, your product information is populated in your Merchant Center account, helping you reach new shoppers on Google.com and other Google properties. This integration lets you:

  • Find new customers, right where they’re searching. Connect your products to the customers who matter most — the ones searching for what you sell.
  • Easily display your rich product imagery and details. Put your product images, price, and other differentiators front and center, so that searching shoppers can easily find you.
  • Get up and running quickly, minimizing your holiday workload. Use the product information you’ve already entered in your ecommerce platform without needing to submit this information separately to Google.
  • Showcase your newest inventory. Roll out new products to Google Shopping, simply by adding products to your ecommerce store.

Early successes

We’ve been testing this technical integration with our ecommerce platform partners, and have already seen impressive results from small businesses, brand new to Google Shopping.

Peter Baseio, founder and CEO of baby product company Organic Munchkin, connected his BigCommerce account to Google Shopping to reach new customers with rich, visual ads. “Google Shopping allows our products to be listed in a visual format, increasing brand awareness for our niche market, as well as revenue,” said Baseio. “It has tripled our revenue stream, bringing in customers we never knew we had access to.”

Sam Gong, co-founder of Man Crates, used the integration to help tens of thousands of new customers find their unique assortment of gifts. “Google Shopping is an incredibly cost-effective way for us to reach new customers on long-tail search terms and recapture visitors that have found Man Crates through one of our primary marketing campaigns,” said Gong. “It’s well integrated with BigCommerce, incredibly easy to setup, and easy to measure and manage on an ongoing basis. It’s an absolute no-brainer for just about any ecommerce business.”

Ready to get started?

If you’re not using an ecommerce platform today, find out how to sign up for one by checking out the BigCommercePrestaShop, or Magento website. If you’re already using one of these platforms, visit our Help Center or the BigCommercePrestaShop, and Magento help pages to learn more.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Fine-Tuning The Layout Of Search Ads On Google Play

Google Play reaches more than a billion people on Android devices in over 190 countries — providing a platform for consumers to find the coolest new apps and enjoy the latest music, movies, and books.

We introduced search ads on Google Play last year to improve app discovery and help developers reach users right when they’re looking for new apps to install. It’s one of several platforms, alongside YouTube, Google.com and the Google Display Network, where developers can introduce your apps to high quality users. Developers all around the world, like GrubHub, have seen tremendous success in terms of reach and install rates with Google’s app promo products. See full story. We’re building on this momentum by fine-tuning the ads experience on Google Play to deliver even more growth for the developer community.

First, for app-specific searches on Google Play, ads in their current form will not be shown at the top of the page. Instead, the organic result for the app will show at the top of the page, followed by additional organic results and possibly ads for other relevant apps. So when a user searches for “Google Express,” she will see the organic result for “Google Express” without an identical “Google Express” ad above it. This change is part of our ongoing commitment to improve user experience and advertiser performance. We encourage developers to monitor your campaigns as there may be some natural changes in performance metrics as we roll out these updates.

Second, a relevant, additional ad will start to show on Google Play for some queries like “music streaming app” and “exercise app.” This new ad spot gives developers an additional opportunity to promote the apps you’ve worked so hard to build.

Innovations like search ads on Google Play have proven to be a useful way to surface new apps for consumers and provide additional value for developers. We look forward to building on this momentum with new tools and best practices to bring even more success to the developer community.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Track Your Goals With Campaign Groups And Performance Targets

AdWords provides powerful tools to help advertisers grow their business. For example, if you’re about to launch a new holiday campaign, you can use TrueView ads on YouTube along with banner ads on the Google Display Network to drive brand awareness and more holiday sales. To make it easier for you to track and forecast the performance of these campaigns against your advertising goals, we’re introducing campaign groups and performance targets.

Create a campaign group

You can now package AdWords campaigns (including Video, Display, Search, and Shopping campaigns) into a single campaign group. For our holiday example, set up your YouTube and Display campaigns, select “campaign groups” from the left menu, and group those two campaigns together to create a campaign group called “Holiday Launch”.

Set a performance target

Performance targets make it easier to monitor and reach your performance goals for each campaign group. Tell us how many clicks or conversions you want to receive, how much you want to spend, and what average CPC or CPA you wish to maintain. We’ll then automatically show you a single view of how your campaign group is performing against those goals, and what we think you’ll likely achieve by the end of the campaign period.

 Here’s an early success story for campaign groups and performance targets:

Previously I needed to export all my campaigns into a spreadsheet, group them together, and create a pivot table simply to see how they are performing. With campaign groups & performance targets, we can much more easily see how our groups are performing relative to our goals, all from within the AdWords interface.

– Oleg Monakhov, Senior Lead Generation Manager at Wrike

Note that creating performance targets does not change how we serve your ads or optimize your campaigns. Instead, use it to evaluate whether or not your campaigns are working together toward your broader goals.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Introducing The New Google Merchant Center

Retailers have long been using Merchant Center to connect their product data to Google — letting millions of shoppers find their products on Google.com, YouTube, and partner websites. Today, we’re excited to introduce an updated version of Merchant Center, which offers the same functionality you’re used to, with more streamlined navigation and easier access to additional Shopping programs.

Navigate the new Merchant Center 

With updates to Merchant Center, you’ll see a fast, responsive new interface, aligned with the modern look and feel of the rest of Google’s products. We’ve changed Merchant Center navigation by bundling common tasks and actions. For example, you can use the new Home page to view recent announcements and dashboard data for your account, and you can find consolidated product feed and product data quality information under the Products page. For more information on navigating the new UI, visit the Help Center.

Explore and enable Shopping programs in Merchant Center 

Merchant Center now lets you discover new ways to apply your data to promote and sell your products. Use Merchant Center to explore additional Google programs for your products, including Local Inventory AdsMerchant PromotionsProduct Ratings, and more, while continuing to manage and configure your product data for Shopping ads.

You can access the Merchant Center Programs page under the 3-dot icon. Continue exploring the various programs by selecting the Learn More option in each card, and express your interest in participating in a program by selecting Get Started.

Updates to existing features: Feed Rules, Diagnostics, and Currency Conversions 

In addition to the user interface changes, we’ve updated some of our most-used Merchant Center features to improve speed and functionality, helping you get your products online more quickly:

  • Feed Rules. In response to feedback we’ve heard from you, we’re updating Feed Rules to more closely align with how we see retailers commonly using the tool today. 
    • Change or update specific values. For example, you can update specific values of the color attribute while keeping other existing color values intact. 
    • Create new values by combining static values and/or values from different attributes in your feed. For example, you can add size type values to your product title values. 
    • Extract values from other attribute values. For example, you can populate a color value by searching in the description attribute for pre-selected values (blue, green, red, yellow) that will be suitable for the color attribute. 
  • Diagnostics page. We’ve increased the freshness of data in the diagnostics page. Now, the latest results from your feed uploads and product updates will be displayed in near-real time instead of twice a day — meaning that you’ll have fresher data to update and optimize your product feeds. 
  • Currency Conversions. Last month, we announced that we were testing currency conversions, which allows you to convert the currency in your product data locally. With the launch of the new Merchant Center, we’re expanding this feature more broadly to let you easily advertise to users in other countries, while allowing you to continue using your existing website and landing pages without change. Learn how Berlin-based myToys is already using currency conversions to increase their sales abroad. 

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Learn From Experts In The AdWords Community

The AdWords Community exists to help advertisers like you improve performance and share best practices. If you haven’t visited the AdWords Community in a while, you might be surprised by what you find. Over the last six months, we’ve made a number of exciting changes. From a new design to expanded content areas, the Google Advertiser Community continues to evolve and help you connect with our experts and improve your performance.

Ask an Expert 

One of the most valuable resources you’ll find on the Community is the experts who frequent the forum on a daily (or even hourly) basis. These experts, part of Google’s Top Contributor program, have years of professional experience with AdWords and a passion for helping fellow Community members succeed.

Most of our Top Contributors have an area of expertise. If you ask a question on the AdWords Community about account automation, you will probably meet Jon Gritton. Jon hails from the UK and runs his own AdWords agency. He is also one of our most tenured AdWords Top Contributors (he’s been answering questions on the forum since 2006!) and our resident AdWords Scripts expert. He has solved well over 800 questions in his time on the AdWords Community.

An Improved Look and Feel 

We also wanted to improve the look and feel of the Community.

  • Using Material Design, the Community now offers the same modern and intuitive experience that’s at the core of our favorite Google apps like Maps, Search, and Gmail. 
  • Managing your advertising isn’t something you only do at your desk, which is why we’re re-designing AdWords for marketing in a mobile-first world. The redesigned Community is also responsive and mobile-friendly—perfect for browsing and resolving questions on the go. 


Go Beyond AdWords 

Finally, we know that AdWords isn’t the only way to promote your business with Google. You can get information about other important Google products on the Community: Google AnalyticsGoogle My BusinessGoogle Partners and Google Small Business.

Get Involved 

Anyone can join the Advertiser Community, post questions and find answers. Visit today to connect with other advertisers.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

AdWords Editor 11.5 Supports Expanded Text Ads, Mobile App Engagement Ads, And More

We’re introducing several updates to AdWords Editor, available today to all advertisers globally. This version includes support for expanded text ads and mobile app engagement ads, import/export and simultaneous posting for multiple accounts, and much more.

Expanded text ads

AdWords Editor 11.5 provides full support for expanded text ads. Expanded text ads offer nearly 50% more ad text for you to highlight your products and services before people even click into your ad. It’s important to take advantage of expanded text ads as soon as possible because, after October 26th, 2016, you’ll no longer be able to create or edit standard text ads. AdWords Editor lets you create and edit expanded text ads at scale so you can easily migrate all of your standard text ads before this date. To help you get started, check out our best practices guide.

Mobile app engagement ads

Mobile app engagement ads are a great choice if you want to help existing app users take action in your app. You can now create and edit mobile app engagement ads in AdWords Editor, making it easier to reach more of the right app users with the right message.

Import, export, and posting for multiple accounts

We’re always looking for new ways to make managing accounts easier and more efficient. With this latest version of AdWords Editor, you can post changes to multiple accounts at the same time, import a CSV file into multiple accounts, and export more than one account into a single CSV file.

Structured snippet extensions

Structured snippets let you highlight features of a specific product or describe the range of products or services your business offers. AdWords Editor now allows you to create and edit structured snippets at scale.

and much more…

AdWords Editor 11.5 also provides support for filtering by type when downloading campaigns, aggressive targeting optimization for mobile app installs campaigns, multi-column sorting, and enhancements to advanced search. You can learn more about these updates in the AdWords Editor Help Center or download AdWords Editor 11.5 here.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

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