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E-mail marketing is underrated by its practitioners, despite its promise. Internet Retailer reports that nearly half of online retailers rate e-mail as the most effective marketing. But that means more than half of online retailers don’t think e-mail marketing works. It does.

Real or Spam?

Jacob Nielsen, the guru of usability, said “E-mail newsletters are the best customer relationship mechanism the internet offers, and every single mailing must strengthen the relationship between the company and its customers.” But he warns that more e-mail is not necessarily better e-mail. “Having your low-quality messages deleted is certainly an unfortunate fate. But the long-term impact of such clueless internet marketing is: your future messages may not even be opened. Once users are trained to expect such uselessness, they stop paying attention to your e-mail.”

Be Believable

You must convince your customers that you are a viable provider of information and savings. Only then can you pursue growth of orders and sales.

Among many factors to
the success of e-mail marketing:

• Choosing a marketing company who has established relationships with
most (if not all) e-mail providers and hosting companies

• Design effective e-mail messages

• The method of collecting an e-mail address

• Deciding how often to use e-mails

• The offers and benefits to the customer receiving e-mail

Many e-mail marketing companies provide do-it-yourself services to quickly and easily establish a marketing program. Some tie directly into your shopping cart, making it easier to capture e-mail addresses. Establish your list then decide how to best communicate with your customers.

Be Patient

Don’t get frustrated if your first few e-mails don’t have a high open rate or click through rate. Marketing is tweaking, so try different combinations of elements.

Testing, One, Two

Top e-mail marketing company Silverpop tested the following e-mail elements:

• Content of the “From” line

• Subject line content

• Location of logo

• Ratio of text to images

• Various design layouts

• Number of links

• Type of links (text vs. image)

• Presence and location of navigation

• Inclusion of lifestyle photography

• Feature offers

• Location of call-to-action

Each of these elements had a significant impact on the e-mail open rate, which hovers around 20-30%. Test these elements in different combinations to learn what your customers want to hear and which format works best.

Inside the Numbers

Surprisingly, Silverpop’s study concluded that putting your company name clearly in the “From” line did not have the impact on open rates that has long been considered best practice. Instead, they found that using a person’s name improved open rates 3 percentage points more than a business name.

The data suggests using a person’s name in the e-mail address, but beware. If they’re expecting a personal message and instead they see a sales pitch, this could be perceived as a bait-and-switch. If you use a person’s name in the “From” line, use some type of personalization in the content.

The study also found that including the company name & product name in your subject line improves open rates by 32% to 60% over a subject line without the company or product name. It was also higher when it contained either the product or company name only. Like an ad headline or the title in the search engine results, the subject line must be clear, concise and give the customer an idea of what’s inside the e-mail.

Most e-mail marketing efforts use a “postcard” format containing an image with an offer. But Silverpop found that the “newsletter” format had a higher click rate than the “postcard” format. The newsletter format included text and images to clearly communicate the message and brand.

Click through rates increase when there were more links in the e-mail, but start to decrease once there were more than ten links. Image-only and mixed format (images and text) also increased click through rates. Images drive more attention to your offer and the call-to-action even though most e-mail providers block images initially.

Successful e-mail marketing involves finding the right format and wrapping your arms around it and making a commitment to it. Now, put these things into practice and make your company some money!

Imagine you could quickly and easily advertise on every message board, blog and news site across your industry. Imagine creating text and banner ads for thousands of potential new customers. Imagine your ads on competing sites! Stop imagining. You can do all of this and more with contextual advertising.

Once you’ve optimized your pay-per-click for search, content networks are a great way to get your name out to potential customers. The major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN) offer contextual advertising. They partner with thousands of content sites to place ad blocks throughout each site. When you turn on the content network, the search engine will scan the content of that campaign and compare it against sites in the content network. When they find a match, your ads can run on that site. Your ads may display on blogs, news sites, forums and even competing online stores.

Content networks charge on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, but network bids are set on the ad group level instead of the keyword level. This is because engines look at the sum of all the keywords and ads, rather than the individual parts. You can choose separate content bids or let the engines determine your content bid from your search bids.

Content networks can extend your brand far beyond your current marketing efforts. They tend to have a higher volume of impressions, so more people are seeing your name. Even if the effect isn’t felt directly through your pay-per-click campaigns, you may still see an increase in traffic. It takes time and testing to maximize your content network results. Be patient.

Content Network Best Practices:

• Test in Google first. Google has the best reporting features. Optimize your content campaign and expand to Yahoo! and MSN when you start getting results.

• Create a separate content-only campaign. You can run content in the same campaign as search, but you can judge performance better with content in its own campaign. Consider creating a separate budget for content ads while you are in the testing phase.

• Use broad match keywords. Since the engines look at the whole of your ad groups rather than individual keywords, you only need a broad match. Using more than 50 keywords in one ad group increases the difficulty for search engines to determine the ad group’s theme.

• Use negative keywords. If you sell flowers, but not roses, you should make “rose” a negative keyword to avoid showing on sites dedicated specifically to that flower.

• Avoid dynamic insertion ads. Dynamic insertion ads automatically pull the keyword that triggered your ad in a search and place it in the ad text. This works well on search because it makes the ad more relevant to each user’s search query. Since there are no searches being performed on content sites, the keyword used is random and may not make much sense.

• Exclude sites with low performance. Monitor traffic either with placement reports (in Google Adwords) or an analytics package. If a site is delivering low quality traffic, add it to an excluded site list that works similarly to negative keywords.

• Use a mix of generic & specific keywords. While you wouldn’t use generic words like “flowers” or “hats” in a regular search campaign, consider adding some in your content campaign. Mixing broad industry terms with brand and product keywords gives the search engines a more complete picture of your business and the types of sites you want displaying your ads.

• Write a strong call to action. Since browsers on content network sites aren’t actively looking to make a purchase, you need to grab their attention. Use phrases like: buy, find, learn more, save now, limited time offer, etc.

Once you get your feet wet, consider advanced features like image and video ads. Target individual sites and maximize your exposure on them. Google, Yahoo! and MSN have been investing in their content networks to create a better advertiser experience and the results have been impressive. With so many tools at your disposal, isn’t it time you gave the content network a try?

By Jean Lloyd
jeanl@ebizinsider.com

If you thought tax season was a trial, e-commerce operators haven’t seen anything yet. By the end of the year, 23 states will be charging e-commerce businesses taxes. Imagine. Different products are categorized differently and taxed differently in different states! But never fear; Solid Cactus and Avalara can make your life easier when it comes to charging and collecting taxes as well as assembling the necessary tax reports.

The problem many merchants on the Yahoo! Store platform encounter is that you need to manually set up all the zip code ranges and add a flat rate or percentage. This is time consuming and must be manually updated when county level, city or municipality taxes change. In Tennessee, the sale of an item is subject not only to the state sales tax of 7%, but the local sales tax on the first $1,600, plus an additional state sales tax of 2.75% on the second $1,600, all of which cannot exceed $3,200 - potentially subjecting a sale to a 9.75% sales tax rate. Confused yet? Here are some other exotic tax laws:

• In Minnesota, non-edible cake decorations are taxable, but edible cake decorations are exempt.

• In Texas, plain nuts are exempt “food,” but once a candy coating is added, they become taxable “candy.”

• In Rhode Island, fruit juice that is less than 100% pure is taxable. Cranberry juice cocktail – a mixture of juice and water, or concentrate — is exempt.

• In Massachusetts, a clothing item costing up to $175 is exempt from sales tax. However, any item costing $175.01 and above is subject to the 5% state sales tax.

• In New Jersey, naturally carbonated water is exempt, but artificially carbonated water is taxable.

• In Pennsylvania, state and U.S. flags are not subject to tax, but if either is sold with “accessories” (i.e. a pole), the entire purchase becomes taxable.

With many states adopting the Streamlined Sales Tax or SST (http://www.streamlinedsalestax.org/) there will be more rules in which products will need to be taxed. Some changes will be difficult for merchants to manage as they relate to how products are sold. Currently17 states are “Full Members” of the SST:

• Arkansas

• Indiana

• Iowa

• Kansas

• Kentucky

• Michigan

• Minnesota

• Nebraska

• Nevada

• New Jersey

• North Carolina

• North Dakota

• Oklahoma

• Rhode Island

• South Dakota

• Vermont

• West Virginia

• Wyoming

In addition to the 17 “Full Members” several other states are considered “Associate Members,” meaning they’re in line with the SST requirements although the state is not yet in full compliance. They are:

• Ohio

• Utah

• Tennessee

• Washington

The SST rules will affect different merchants in different ways which could make calculating sales/use tax a “taxing” task. Finally, there is a solution.

Solid Cactus has partnered with Avalara, a leading provider of real-time tax calculations and a SST certified tax solution. Among the features of this partnership are:

Reports and Remittance:

Save time and resources by using a single solution, integrated into your financial application to submit one remittance payment. Avalara not only takes care of the forms you need for each jurisdiction where you have nexus, but also remits the liability on your behalf.

Reporting Tool:

Comprehensive and easy to use, Avalara’s reports provide detailed, summary and exception reports to satisfy statutory tax return requirements. Ensure full statutory compliance, superior internal process controls, and best practices for sales and use tax.

Reports:

AvaTax offers a crucial component to sales tax compliance: detailed, on-demand reports provide you with quick access to the information needed to prepare and submit sales tax returns. You can easily and quickly generate reports, which can be exported to the file format that works best for you.

The Shipping Manager integration with Avalara lets you offer features to enhance your business performance and will make your life much less stressful come tax season.

Normally I recommend and evaluate different hardware or software technologies that can improve your business, but this month I’d like to widen the focus and talk about where we are and where we’re going. As a society, we should be preparing young people to be the computer experts of tomorrow. Are we?

The Present
Bad news – Finding talented designers and programmers isn’t easy. Tinker in HTML or read the latest book on “Photoshop Elements” and people think that they can be a professional web developer. Too often, even college computer science majors aren’t learning the skills needed to program or design for the web’s end-users.

Technology Education
If young people are going to learn about computers, they need the best possible tools and training. Earlier this week I judged a regional web design and programming contest for high school students — for the second year in a row. Twenty teams from different high schools, 100 students, 14 teachers, 5 judges – the event was a big deal for these kids. Some things haven’t changed over the past two years:

• Resources were nowhere near equal between schools. One school used the latest Adobe suite, integrated video in their school’s television studio, and had the school buy a server to run their site. Another school’s programmer designed and programmed the entire site on a shared, public computer using Microsoft Paint and Notepad.

• About one-third of the schools had a specific “Web Design” class, another one-third had only “computer clubs” and the rest had neither.

• There were clear distinctions between those groups who worked as a team or those who had one or two people doing all the work. Teams lost points when they demonstrated
no sense of teamwork or when teams had one person answer all the questions while the others sat with puzzled looks.

• All the finalist/winning teams had self-taught programmers.

Too many schools lack the resources to teach students the skills they need to succeed in a technology-centric economy. In the above contest, even though some schools didn’t provide resources like Photoshop, some teams discovered the free image editing utility GIMP and received extra points for ingenuity.

That’s the good news. These students were eager to learn, and our judging panel was happy to share our resources with them. Some schools will receive prize money and our judges will also record online classes, taking sites apart and putting them together as part of a resource library of free tutorials.

How can you help?
Invest your time speaking at colleges once or twice a semester. As an entrepreneur and an e-business person, you have an advantage over most college professors… you’ve actually been there – done that! You’ll find students who want internships and part-time jobs with your company. Having done this many times, I can tell you it is an extremely rewarding experience. In fact, after last year’s contests, Solid Cactus hired one of the students as a part-time programmer – a Junior in High School!

As you retire old computers, totally wipe them out (for data security) and then restore them to their original out-of-the-box setup using a restore disc. Then donate them to some organization or school that – more often than not – is still running technology slower than the system you’re replacing. I often load on Open Office, AVG Antivirus, and Ad-Aware to give them resources to keep them safe.

The Future
Naturally, Solid Cactus enjoys sponsoring competitions and allowing our staff to serve on these advisory committees or guest lectures. It is great for public relations, but more important, it fulfills our corporate responsibility to prepare the next generation of creative, technology-driven young folks. Hopefully, many will apply to work at Solid Cactus.

That’s the point. You’re not only donating your time and expertise in the young; you’re investing in the future.

When you look at analytics data for your website, do you notice customers dropping out from the shopping cart page before completing checkout? Have you invested time and money but the conversion rate is still lacking? This is a problem throughout e-commerce. However, there are steps you can take to keep those shoppers with you to the purchase. This article will emphasize how to increase user conversions by modifying the shopping cart page.

First, if you don’t have analytics, I highly recommend you install Google Analytics to follow consumer behavior on your website. Google Analytics is free software and some sort of analytics software is a must for every merchant. You can learn more about Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analytics/.

Identifying the Problems

The largest percentage of abandonment occurs at the shopping cart. According to Marketing Sherpa report, the average shopping cart abandonment rate in 2006 was 59.8% and 52.1% in 2007. This means that more than half of all customers adding items to the cart leave the cart page.

The top three reasons why consumers abandoned the cart according to Forrester research study titled “Rethinking the Significance of Cart Abandonment”:

1. I didn’t want to pay the shipping charges [57%]

2. The total cost of purchase was more than I thought it would be [48%]

3. I used the shopping cart for research [41%]

Shipping Charges

If you offer flat rate shipping or free shipping, display it prominently on your website for consumers to see. Do not hide shipping information on policy pages, display it in a visible area like header or next to the Buy button. Don’t expect your customer to search for shipping information; make it easy for them to find. If you are unable to determine actual shipping costs then providing estimates is a good idea. If you charge tax, or if you are offering free shipping based on condition, display that information. Don’t deceive your customers. If you offer free shipping over X amount, display it properly on the page. Let them know that free shipping only kicks in at a certain point. This also encourages customers to add more products to save on shipping, which in turn results in increased order size.

If you cannot display shipping information on product level, it is crucial that shipping and tax be calculated on the shopping cart page. If you only need a zip code to display this information then do not ask buyers for their address. Buyers usually resist providing information until they decide to purchase.

Other shipping-related tips to increase conversions:

1. Display estimated delivery dates for the shipping methods on your web pages and/or cart page.

2. Do not tell customers late in the process that shipping and handling charges would be added. No one likes surprises when it comes to spending money.

3. Avoid charging handling fees for products because buyers do not like hidden fees and charges. Instead, add handling costs to the price or the shipping charges.

Cost of Purchase

Online customers expect their final cost for products to be less than brick-and-mortar stores. The Forrester Research survey which I mentioned above showed that 19% of customers abandon the cart because they didn’t want to wait for the product and 18% purchased the products offline. This suggests that if consumers can buy easily and cheaply offline, they will. To stay competitive do your homework and offer competitive pricing or some other value that consumers can’t resist. If you don’t, you will lose out to the brick-and-mortar stores.

Shopping Cart for Research

41% of surveyors used shopping carts to research about the product and it’s pricing. We can’t stop consumers from researching the product, but we can take steps to encourage people to buy. Present shipping and tax information on the product pages. If the product is shipped free then highlight that information clearly on the product page. If it has special shipping requirements, display them on the product page. Disclose as much information as you can on the product page so consumers don’t have to add a product to the cart just to check total cost.

A customer using your site for research is still likely to return later to purchase some of the products they previously added to the shopping cart. Save the cart information so customers can go directly to the cart page and complete their purchase. Offer features like “wishlists” or “saved shopping cart,” which save lists of products in which customers have shown an interest. The wishlist can be used for comparison rather than using the cart. You also benefit when users register to use this feature.

Page Loads

Error-free fast-loading shopping carts have shown to increase conversion. Keep your shopping cart and checkout pages simple, error free, distraction free and fast-loading. To carry your company branding, a smart designer can carry over the logo and color scheme and make it look like your web site but light weight. Emphasize the steps the customer needs in order to complete checkout or to add more products.

If you use a secure cart, make sure there are no security error messages which might cause users to panic and abandon the cart. Secure http calls are slower than a regular http call because of the data encryption technology used. If your shopping cart is not holding user-sensitive data then the cart doesn’t have to be secure. Also, avoid distracting pop-ups which open dynamically on the cart page and don’t add scripts that disable right click. Most consumers use the context menu to navigate and disabling it will frustrate more than help.

Payment Methods

Display all payment methods that you accept including alternate payment methods like PayPal and Bill Me Later. These latter methods have been shown to satisfy the first time buyer who is not feeling fully secure providing credit card information. From a user’s perspective PayPal is a good way to make secure payments to multiple vendors using single account information and without disclosing credit card information to all merchants. For merchants, PayPal service charges are much lower than credit card charges.

Other Tips to Decrease Abandonment

Call to Action Buttons – Call to Action buttons must be worded properly to describe what they do. They should be placed in visible areas for users to finish conversion. Make the button look and feel as if it is clickable. Also, make buttons leading to checkout larger and bolder than buttons simply directing customers back to the site.

Product Availability – Display product availability on product pages, not on the cart page. The longer you wait, the more frustrated your customers become. If requested quantities are not available then add the available quantity and alert consumers with a user-friendly error message displaying what happened.

Display Product Information – Including pictures and other options like size, color etc. Have a link for users to go back to product pages by clicking name and image.

Make Editing Products Easier – It’s much easier to provide a removable link rather than to have the customer figure out that they have to add quantity as zero and then hit update.

Contact Information – Display contact information clearly on the shopping cart page. Encourage customers to call if they have any queries regarding checkout.

Policies – Provide links to policy
pages like shipping, privacy,
returns, etc. on the cart page. Do not
try to hide these links as most consumers want to know this information before they finish the purchase.

Secure Icons – Display security and privacy
information
to increase
consumer confidence in your website. Keep these icons visible but subtle because too much emphasis on secure
icons can backfire, too.

Registration – Should always be optional and simple. Still, ask users if they wish to register somewhere after their shipping and billing information is complete.

Links Back to Store – Make it easy for customers to add more products to
the cart.

Related Cross-sells – Cross-sell products related to the products already in the cart. Don’t confuse consumers with irrelevant cross sells.

Discounts – If you purchase X product, product Y gets 10% off. This helps conversions. Also, offer coupons
by providing them incentives to
finish checkout.

Summing Up

The bad news is that more than half of all shoppers will abandon the shopping cart and not make the purchase. The good news is that there are many steps you can take to increase your sales and decrease your frustration. Try them!

For the past decade I have seen more and more e-merchants reach the sad conclusion that their business—runs them. They have become slaves to the technology which should advance their company. They have learned that being a grandmaster at spreadsheets has nothing to do with their skill at choosing, marketing and selling the products which inspired their business. Well, we have put e-commerce operators back in the data driver’s seat.

Solid Cactus is delighted to introduce Cactus On Demand™ Order Management. This application was built with Yahoo! Stores in mind and integrates with them better than any other application on the market.

We have simplified the process of importing your Yahoo! Store(s) into the click of a button. You can add hundreds of products to your store and keep your focus on building sales. You can have your store products updated automatically on a nightly basis. As soon as you import for the first time, you’ll be ready to receive orders from Yahoo! and even take phone orders. This makes maintaining your Yahoo! Store independent of your fulfillment system.

A store owner’s goal is to sell merchandise and whatever distracts from that is essentially a hindrance. So our goal was to minimize integration times and maintenance issues. We started from one basic idea: Why not separate the data you need to sell an item from what you need to fulfill it?

Why should you have to populate information about every product you have when the top 20% of your products make up 80% of your sales? The answer is you shouldn’t. Why should you have to add every product to your store and order management system before you have even sold one? Again, you shouldn’t.

Cactus On Demand Order Management will need information about how to fill the order, which you can provide in two ways which are both on a “need to know” basis. The easiest way is to supply the fulfillment info once an order has been placed. The order will be held and you will be notified that information is needed for processing.

You can also choose to populate the fulfillment information in bulk at any time. Our data maintenance queue breaks out what items have missing information for you at all times. You will be able to see what information is needed to update the system.

In addition, we have made integration and maintenance the same process, with all the tools built into the interface. If you have 50,000 products and are doing 10 orders a day, you may want to populate the system as items are ordered. If you do a high volume, you may want to populate all your items first. You decide.

With the data maintenance queue you will never lose track of what items need to be set up for e-commerce fulfillment in Cactus On Demand Order Management. You can freely add products to Yahoo!, import them into Cactus on Demand and update as you go.

Cactus On Demand Order Management will also automate your order processing to get orders to the right fulfillment agency. The system will automatically charge credit cards and create output for each fulfillment agent, splitting an order into the appropriate parts for each agent. You can also maintain your inventory and purchase and handle customer notifications.

The system puts you back in control. You can change your pick tickets in simple HTML. If you want one employee to be the return address for backorder notices, you can. Review rules that can stop orders before processing are easy to set store by store.

You can choose to process orders immediately and receive the pick ticket as soon as the order is processed, or have them queue up until a scheduled time. You can also choose to batch your orders at any time. You have total control of when to fulfill your orders.

Cactus On Demand Order Management was built with e-merchants in mind. Our goal was to put you back in the driver’s seat and make order management easier. Isn’t it time your business stopped running you?

It is easy for e-commerce merchants to monitor pay-per-click advertising to see if people are clicking on your ads. It is easy to see if your website is listed in the first ten results of a search engine. What’s not easy is figuring out how to make the most of your pay-per-click advertising or your organic listing. Below are some methods small businesses can use to drive traffic.

The landing page is crucial to the equation. It’s where you drive people, answer their questions and hopefully help them fulfill their shopping mission.

MarketingExperiments has done extensive testing with landing page optimization by focusing on how to improve conversions. Their tests conclude the number one threat to conversion is site flow disruption. Simply put, when the message you use to drive people to your website doesn’t match the message on the landing page people get disrupted and conversions drop.

Give the landing page the attention it requires. Typically, a landing page requires design and programming work just like a section page or item page, but the results can be well worth the extra effort.

Let’s say I’m a lawn and garden supply company and one of my pay-per-click ads says “Get ready for Spring” sending them to the following landing page:

What’s the first category that people see? “Winter and Seasonal.” Because my general home page has not been updated to match my ad, I have caused a disruption in my intended message. After people saw the Spring ad, they thought they were going to get supplies for spring time gardening. But I didn’t deliver. Some people will click the ad and hunt for spring-time supplies, but many won’t. MarketingExperiments saw an increase in conversion by over 100% with one controlled experiment!

Do this with your OWN site.

THE AD

Your ad should create the value and give people a reason to click on it and visit your website. Headlines should be compelling but not misleading. Misleading copy can generate lots of clicks and cost lots of money, but the goal is to drive qualified traffic to your website.

THE LANDING PAGE

Spend the time to make your landing page more effective. First, remove as much “clutter” as possible from the page. This includes things like left hand navigation or newsletter sign-up. You want people to focus on one goal and not be so distracted that they lose interest in your page.

Second, examine the heading at the top of the page. This headline should be compelling and support the value. It should use language that is similar to your ad copy.

Third, consider how much information you should put on the page. Should you simply put an “Add to Cart” button or an email form? MarketingExperiments found that there are four factors when determining how much information to put on a landing page:

- Cost

- Perceived risk—anxiety

- Level of commitment (high/low; long/short)

- Motivation Type (rational/emotional; analytical/impulse; want/need)

They found that short copy performs better when the cost to the visitor is low (or none at all), the risk is low (or none at all), the commitment level is low (or short) and the visitor is motivated by emotions, impulse or by a feeling of “want.”

Long copy performs better when the cost is high, risk is high, commitment level is high (or long) and they are motivated by rational, analytical or the feeling of “need.”

Then, consider the placement of elements like images and the call-to-action area (add to cart or sign up).

THE ACTION

The call-to-action is important, but so is the process when shoppers complete the action–the checkout process. It should be similar to the landing page with as little information as possible. Any information should be supporting, not distracting and should limit any site flow disruption.

Finally, do a test to determine which elements works best with the offer and the different elements on a page. For more information and test results, visit http://www.marketingexperiments.com.

This month, we’re going to look at six ways to increase your productivity by beefing up your technology. We’re all busy – so let’s dive right in.

1. Add a monitor or two. Every employee at Solid Cactus has at least two monitors. I can’t tell you how much this increases productivity. It allows you to stop switching between applications constantly. Operating with two windows open at the same time gives you increased fluidity and means you’ll be able to more efficiently multitask and your productivity will increase as a result.

2. Organize your passwords with RoboForm. As e-commerce leaders, you’re going to have multiple passwords you’ll need to remember – your customer database, your e-mail, your online store, your order management system – the list can become daunting. Using a utility such as Roboform Pro (http://roboform.ebizinsider.com) keeps track of your passwords on either your computer or a USB key that goes with you. Your passwords are stored in a secure database and are protected by a “master” password.

3. Get a Smart Phone. All the major wireless phone companies offer fancy phones with PDA capabilities that sync with your e-mail and calendar – from the Blackberry to the iPhone. You’re able to send and receive e-mail and browse the web. Got five or more family members or employees? Look into a group business/shared minutes plan. You don’t all have to be on the data/pda plan to get special family or corporate rates.

4. Add tethering. Before you run out and buy the iPhone, know that it does not allow tethering. Tethering is the ability to connect your wireless phone via a USB cable or Bluetooth to use the “mobile web” network as a modem. This usually costs between $15 and $20 a month extra. Several months back there was a car crash on one of the highways near my house. It was clear I was going to be stuck motionless in a long line of cars for more than an hour. I was able to break out the laptop, tether my phone and get an hour’s work done.

5. Reduce Distractions. One of the easiest ways to increase your productivity is to eliminate the annoying things that keep you from getting your work done. Invest in a quality spam filter like postini.com or move your e-mail hosting to Google Apps (or at least Gmail) to reduce spam. Consider using a third-party call center to manage order entry, order status, inquiries, etc. that may be distracting you from running your business. (More info on this at http://callcenter.solidcactus.com)

6. Draw on the experience of others. Being in business comes with risk. Avoid making mistakes that others have made. Post ideas on forums (such as the Yahoo Store Forums at http://ystoreforums.com or LinkedIn.com answers at http://link.solidcactus.com/linkedin.) eBiz

The ClothingWarehouse.com was one of the first couple of hundred “Y Stores” built with the Yahoo! platform. These days the site has grown to thousands of products and a staggering 95,000 items. They sell clothing to men, women and children.

The men’s clothing runs from tees and tank tops to polo shirts to dress shirts, shorts and sweats. Women’s clothing includes tees, tank tops, polo shirts, dress shirts and more. There are also lots of accessories including bags, totes, duffels, headwear, caps, visors, towels, aprons, robes, bathrobes and blankets. The ClothingWarehouse.com does special orders for corporations with specific designs; it’s a diverse product offering. Currently, the ClothingWarehouse.com employs 12 people on a full-time basis.

Owner Dan Clark knew there was something to this Internet sales idea, but he was having trouble putting the pieces together. “I worked with several of the other store designers,” says Dan, “but the other developers couldn’t deliver what we needed.” What the ClothingWarehouse.com needed was more automation and a more professional look. “We were good at getting indexed on the major search engines, but basically we were selling from an empty, bad-looking store.”

That changed with the Solid Cactus redesign. The new store came online in June of ’06 and the impact was immediate. “Solid Cactus gave us a new logo,” says Dan. “Then they redesigned our store and gave us a new look.” Sales increased by 300% that first year and have kept expanding at that rate ever since. “They gave us the automation we needed and it showed up right away. People stopped abandoning their shopping carts and that added a huge spike to our sales.”

Since then the ClothingWarehouse.com has utilized more and more Solid Cactus features in its e-commerce design. “They handle a wider and wider range of our business,” says Dan. Currently Solid Cactus manages Search Engine Marketing for the ClothingWarehouse.com. In addition, the company hired Solid Cactus to manage its Affiliate Program; they’ve implemented the Solid Cactus Wholesale Log-in and have used the Call Center services as well. “It’s all in pursuit of one thing: keeping our store current.”

It’s a constant question for e-commerce owners who undertake design changes and other improvements to their sites: is it an expense or an investment? It’s not a question to Dan Clark or the ClothingWarehouse.com. He says the changes have been money well-spent on the future of his company. “The key in any business is to continually change, update and improve the shopping experience for your customers,” says Dan. “This is the best return you could get. I know this sounds like I’m a Solid Cactus insider, but I really can’t spend enough money with you folks. Every change you have made to the ClothingWarehouse.com has made an immediate and measurable change to our bottom line. Frankly, I’m just waiting to see what other new applications Solid Cactus develops to help my business. So far, every single thing has worked.”

Going forward, Dan Clark is continuing to manage the astonishing growth of the ClothingWarehouse.com. The company has increased its sales by an average of 300-400% per year since 2005. This may look like another “Internet success story,” but don’t be fooled. The ClothingWarehouse.com struggled for 5 years to stay alive. It makes Dan Clark laugh looking back on those uncertain days. “If we had a motto,” says Dan, “it should read never give up. I’m serious! We probably should have given up a dozen times along the way. But we didn’t. What we did was stay alive long enough to find Solid Cactus. That was the difference for us.”

As employees spend more and more of their workday on the computer, it is crucial to develop and enforce an effective and proper Internet and Computer Usage Policy. There are legitimate reasons for having such a policy and a variety of issues the policy should address.

Personal Internet use costs employers millions of dollars each year in wasted time by employees. To reduce this lost productivity it is important to limit Internet use during working hours to business use only.

Yes, You Need a Policy
Legal liability can arise from inappropriate web browsing, improper posting in forums and on blogs, downloading pirated software, or illegally downloading media files, such as movies and music. Companies can face significant exposure to lawsuits and fines for their employees’ inappropriate actions and an effective policy can help prevent such legal exposure.

Employee Internet use can damage a company’s computer systems and clog their network. A virus entering into a corporate network can have disastrous consequences such as business shutdowns or loss of files. Also, personal use of the Web may use enough bandwidth to seriously slow the network and negatively affect productivity.

Moreover, a company must protect its reputation. Messages published on a message board, chat room or blog using a staff member’s company e-mail can have an effect on the company’s reputation, especially if it contains offensive or inappropriate material.

Developing a Policy
Before implementing a comprehensive Internet and Computer Usage Policy, the company should identify which activities to monitor and manage. Such activity might include web browsing, forum and blog posting, instant messenger use, and down-loading media, software and other associated content while at work or otherwise on the job.

The policy should accurately reflect the company’s procedures in monitoring and managing its employees’ internet and computer use. The policy should stipulate that internet access and other online privileges provided by the company are to be used only for business purposes. The company should state that employees’ use of the Internet and computer system will be monitored for illegal or improper activity. The policy should clearly define what activities are considered improper, and may result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination. The company should state that it may report illegal activities to the appropriate authorities.

Examples of activities to be addressed and/or prohibited in the policy:

• Violating the laws and regulations of the United States or any other nation, or the laws and regulations of any state, city, province or other local jurisdiction;
• Using the company’s system or network to knowingly disable or overload any computer system or network, or to circumvent any system intended to protect the privacy or security of another user;
• Using the company Internet access to commit infractions such as misuse of company assets or resources, sexual harassment, and misappropriation or theft of intellectual property;
• Presenting an employee’s personal opinions as those of the company;
• Browsing websites which contain hateful or obscene content;
• Downloading or distributing pirated software or data;
• Downloading or distributing media files, in violation of copyright or other intellectual property laws; and
• Downloading or installing any software or electronic files without proper authority.

A company may want to include in the policy that the specific websites visited are logged, the frequency and length of time individuals spend viewing websites will be logged, and that if instant messenger use is allowed for business purposes IM’s sent and/or received can be logged and viewed. The policy should also stipulate which employees are to be covered by the policy.

Making it Work
The policy should become part of the company’s employee manual and should be distributed to all employees. If possible, the company should ask all employees sign off on receipt of the policy (or the manual) prior to getting access to company computers or email accounts. By signing, employees are confirming that they are aware of company policies, restrictions and limitations.

Internet and computer misuse and abuse have become too prevalent for companies to overlook. As employees’ daily routines evolve, businesses must be willing to adapt. Developing and enforcing a comprehensive Internet and Computer Usage Policy is a crucial component for business evolution.