Check out our latest blog posts on StartupNation.com, a site devoted to helping entrepreneurs, startups and small business owners build business and achieve success.

Our two most recent posts cover website usability and website planning for the upcoming holiday shopping season:

Improve Your Website’s Usability in 30 Minutes or Less
(The same amount of time it takes to clean your sock drawer!)

Are You Ready for the Holidays?
(If you are an online retailer, you NEED to read this now.)

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To maximize your eCommerce sales, you should optimize the shopping cart process. In doing so, you minimize abandonment rates and maximize conversion rates.

To that end, here are 5 quick tips to get you on your way to better shopping cart results:

1. Keep It Simple – use clean, simple layout

2. Remove Unnecessary Fields – the more fields, the more likely the shopper is to abandon the cart

3. Do Not Require Registration – why add a level of commitment that simply isn’t there for many prospective shoppers?

4. Label Buttons Clearly – make it stupidly simple for someone to understand what each button option is for

5. Include Images – studies have shown that adding product images to the shopping cart increases conversion rates

6. Clarify the Process Steps – how many steps are there in the process, and where is the shopper at in the process?

7. Minimize Steps – provide single page checkout if possible, or at the very least simplify the checkout process with as few steps as possible

8. Provide Contextual Answers – unanswered questions lead to doubt, which leads to abandonment

9. Demonstrate Trust – include a link to your privacy policy, show trustmarks such as VeriSign, McAfee, BBB, etc.

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Online shoppers’ expectations of retail websites are changing, as these shoppers trend towards expecting and demanding more and more from their website experiences.

In eMarketer’s article Shaking Up Online Shopping, it is clear that retail websites are going to need to add features and enhance the website experience in order to satisfy online shoppers and maximize revenue from their sites this holiday season.

According to an Allurent survey after last year’s holiday season, a full two-thirds of respondents confirmed that they expected online retailers to keep up-to-date with the changing online landscape, including technology improvements and innovations similar to those introduced continuously by Google and Facebook.

The leading site feature that online shoppers are seeking is clear, easy-to-access product information. Apparently, too many retailers are simply not providing users with the full slate of information that they seek in order to make a final purchase decision. This should be relatively easy for an online retailer to correct.

Another area where online retailers can better meet user expectations is by providing a mechanism for user reviews, user ratings and user forums. Additional useful retail website features include relevant product recommendations, buying guides, blogs, interactive personalization tools/surveys, video, demonstrations of the product "in action" (rather than in static images alone), etc.

In addition to all of the above, Website Marketing NOW has noticed another large opportunity for online retailers. One area that is commonly ignored by retail websites is the implementation of effective audience segmentation strategies to better meet the expectations of specific audience types. This can have a dramatic impact on a retailer’s conversion rates.

For example, instead of treating all visitors to the website in the same exact way, cater to their individual preferences. Instead of being exclusively product focused, provide a unique website experience for each audience segment, and allow the products to appropriately fit within these customized environments aligned to the customer’s lifestyle. A music site should treat visitors who love punk rock differently than those into folk, jazz or classical music. By customizing the website experience for the retailer’s main audience segments, visitor satisfaction should increase as well as site conversions (e.g., sales, live chat, request a catalog, locate a store look-ups, etc.).

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In a keynote address at the Shop.org Annual Summit last week, Forrester Research senior retail industry analyst Sucharita Mulpuru urged online retailers to take specific steps to improve online retail performance.

Internet Retailer summarized Mulpuru’s presentation in the article "E-retailers Face New Rules to Reach Growth Potential, Analyst Says," identifying the following six areas where consumer demand and technology development are changing the rules of online retailing:

–Multi-channel retailers should find ways to leverage the strength of the online channel throughout their physical stores. Web-only retailers, meanwhile, need to take more steps toward improving customer service.

–Online retailers should leverage customer reviews and feedback in improving their products and services.

–"YouTube is the new Google." With nearly 90% of U.S. households expected to use broadband Internet access by next year, online retailers should identify ways to leverage online video in their marketing mix.

–"Green is the new black." Online retailers should look holistically at their business for ways to be as environmentally-friendly as possible.

–Alternative payment methods increase online sales, and so should be offered as a checkout option.

–Online retailers should prepare for more 3G mobile applications by consumers.

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For any online retailer, improving the website’s appeal, usability, and ability to convert visitors into buyers is always of critical importance. After all, each of these is a critical element in how a retail website becomes successful.

Approaching the upcoming holiday season (a large percentage of many online retailer’s annual sales), it’s important for a small online retailer to start thinking about improvements to its website in order to maximize holiday season sales. Rather than working in a vacuum, though, small retailers can learn a lot by analyzing other online retailers with rapidly growing sales.

But where to start?

Well, a fantastic place to start that learning is Amazon.com, with more than double the 2007 web sales of its nearest competitor. In the first half of 2008, it’s web sales grew by 33% while online retail overall grew by only 12%. Where better to learn than from the number one online retailer??

To learn about Amazon’s retail strengths, a good place to start is a new article by Internet Retailer titled "Advantage: Amazon," in the September 2008 issue of the magazine.

According to the article, one of Amazon’s strengths is its diversity of product offerings with more than 10 million SKUs. In order to sell more and more categories and products, Amazon actively invites other retailers to sell their products through the Amazon.com platform. An interesting twist on this is that only Amazon maintains the right to send such customers follow-up marketing emails. The merchant gains access to Amazon’s massive audience. Amazon builds its own revenue through commissions (typically 12% – 15%) and builds its own customer database and email marketing reach. It’s a win-win.

Other areas of strength include Amazon’s low prices, free shipping policies, international reach, 12 distribution centers, merchant fulfillment programs, and technology innovations (the Kindle digital book reader could generate $400 million to $750 million in sales by 2010, according to the article).

What the article does not cover, yet what Website Marketing NOW believes to be an additional core strength that drives customer loyalty and repeat purchases is Amazon’s depth of customer engagement.

Look at all the ways that customers interact with the Amazon.com website. There are of course user-generated product reviews, product ratings, reviewer ratings and product lists. There are also product video reviews. A site visitor can create or join groups, create a media center, tag products or join online discussions.

On top of all of this engagement, personalized recommendations and insights provided by Amazon about similar products or other products that site visitors have bought creates relevant and effective conversion funnels that lead to larger sales.

There is certainly a lot to learn about online retailing from Amazon. It would behoove any small online retailer to spend a few hours studying the site to glean ideas for its own website in order to fuel sales this upcoming holiday season.

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