Thanks to Ronald Dod of Visiture for providing this guest post about search-engine-optimized product descriptions.

Writing search engine-friendly product titles and descriptions is both an art and a science. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to get them just right. Do it one way and get penalized by the search engines, do it another and don’t gain any traction. What’s a marketer to do?

Though e-commerce search engine optimization isn’t easy, remember that the mission of writing a product description is to provide the customer with good, useful information. Getting your product descriptions right is a time-consuming task that can require a lot of tweaking, but by following these seven best practices, you can create product pages that are more useful to customers, more acceptable to search engines, and all-around stronger for achieving sales.

Chris Gronkowski runs Everything Decorated, an online shop for personalized gifts. “Choosing inventory to offer is the hard part,” he says. “We are a small family-owned business, so we have to make the right choices with inventory and colors or it really affects our cash flow and also our storage space. We have our own manufacturers for almost all of our products, and lead times are usually 3-4 months, so we have to be on top of our ordering or we will be stuck without product for months at a time.”

This dilemma is a familiar one in the e-commerce space. So what’s a store owner to do?

Read these tips from successful business owners on choosing inventory that sells.

Thanks to Nicole Terborg of Awesome Dynamic for contributing this guest post on finding an e-commerce consultant.

E-commerce consultants are experts in the world of online marketing, often specializing in specific tools or platforms. They have the skillset and knowledge to help you thrive in an ever-changing digital world.

Hiring a reliable, professional e-commerce consultant is one of the best things you can do for your online business. Anyone who has ever sold online, through Amazon, eBay, their own website or another e-commerce platform knows that the internet is a competitive, fast-paced environment; one that is tricky for most businesses to navigate on their own. 

That being said, there are some important considerations as you think about how to work with a trusted e-commerce consultant.

Thanks to Andrew Maffettone of Seller’s Choice for contributing this guest post on improving your product imagery.

When people shop online, your product is only as good as its pictures. Photos are one of the most powerful tools you have to create a compelling narrative which will convert your brand into sales. Product imagery is a key component of a complete brand strategy that can dominate e-commerce sites.

There is no such thing as a good product image. There are only images that contribute to compelling brand stories, and images that don’t. A non-blurry image with a white background may sell screwdrivers, but an out-of-focus shot in a forest might sell mountain bikes. The good image is the image that works. Consumers make decisions by locating products in values, goals, and strategies. Let’s go through four ideas to help you move toward compelling, story-driven images that sell products:

• Have a diverse portfolio of images to use for different situations.
• Use the right tools, either through in-house setups or outsourcing.
• Tell a story with bold images
• Work from images to brand, not brand to images

Editor’s Note: Thanks to Henson Wu from FeedbackWhiz for the following guest post.

Product reviews are an important part of the Amazon marketplace. Almost everyone checks product reviews before making a purchase, and around 84% of people will trust a product review as much as a recommendation from a friend or family member.

Unfortunately, most customers do not leave product reviews. Product reviews are critical to your success, but they can be hard to come by. So what is a seller to do? How do you prompt customers to leave product reviews on Amazon without violating Amazon’s strict terms of service?

Editor’s Note: Thanks to Charles Palleschi of Spark Shipping for the following guest post.

The saying, “What gets measured gets managed” (often erroneously attributed to Peter Drucker), shows that tracking key metrics is important. But it still leaves the question, what e-commerce metrics should we be measuring? These seven KPIs should top your list. Let me explain why.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to PingPong for the following guest post.

If you’ve ever had to exchange money while traveling abroad, you know exchange rates are not all created equally. Exchange $100 at one bank, and you may get back what’s equal to $98. Exchange someplace else, and you may get more like $92.

A few dollars here and there may not be a huge deal while you’re traveling. But for Amazon sellers, when the amounts become larger, those tiny fees become giant holes in your company’s bottom line.

Let’s take a closer at the numbers.