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17 reasons you may be confusing customers – eBiz eXtra Issue 21

By ebiz Insider Staff on Thu (7/1/10) in Marketing | 0 Comments

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Deal of the Day? Amazon purchases Woot.com
Woot marks sale by offering Kindle

Online retail giant Amazon.com announced earlier this week it has purchased the quirky, popular “deal of the day” website Woot.com. The daily item on the day after the announcement? An Amazon Kindle for $149. Texas-based Woot began in 2004 and is based on a model of selling one discounted item in a 24 hour period until the item is sold out. CEO Matt Rutledge said Amazon had been a minority investor in his company since 2006. According to the Woot.com blog, the company will run as an independent subsidiary, much like Zappos.com (also acquired by Amazon). Financial details of the purchase were not disclosed. Read more.

More on the Woot.com/Amazon Deal:
Watch the rapping monkey video for “We Got Acquired”

Read CEO’s letter to employees

More than 50% of 25-44 year olds have a social media profile, even more 12-24 year olds have one (78%).

-Edison Research, May 2010

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eCommerce News of the Week

Web Design and Development

How to minimize confusion in the online sales process
You could be confusing your customers. Get Elastic’s Linda Bustos provides 17 ways to optimize landing pages by examining common areas customers may experience friction. First, she says every second counts. Slow rendering websites are noted to lose sales. Second, a search box is important, but no one should ever have to search for a search box. She says avoid the “paradox of choice” by not having too many options on a homepage. Digging deeper into sites, subtle add to cart buttons are not effective and too many questions in the checkout impedes the process. See more tips.

30+ photo tips: The science behind a good product image
Smashing Magazine combines marketing, photography theory and psychology to explain how to sell more online with photos. Blogger James Chudley explains the best way to sell products is to let them sell themselves. He gives 30+ image tips. For example, show product benefits, show them in action or highlight innovation. Better yet, show customers how it works. Other tips include tell a story, educate, evoke emotion and show personality. Sometimes though, pictures can send the wrong message. He warns of misleading shoppers, either by not showing product to scale, not showing the whole item or miscommunication that accessories are included. Full story.

Internet Marketing

7 ‘evil’ ways to achieve better marketing
CopyBlogger’s Sonia Simone releases seven evil marketing tips from the mind of an evil genius – Dr. Evil. First is ‘ask for the order’ with a call to action. Give the killer combination: a call to action paired with an irresistible offer. Become a master of numbers and give customers a reason to act immediately, such as informing customers how much time is left in a deal or inventory in left stock. True evil has the highest standards for product, ethics, customer service, or everything! Read more.

5 questions to ask before publishing your content
Solid Cactus’ Mandy Boyle wrote in her recent Search Engine People, “The most valuable lesson I’ve learned as a writer who is immersed in both SEO and ‘traditional’ media is that content, no matter where it’s posted or printed, has to provide value.” Content must be useful, engaging or interesting. After doing keyword research, she says to look over the content with five questions in mind before publishing. What value is provided to the reader? Would you be willing to ’share it?’ Does the content sound natural and it will it be understood by your target audience? Learn more.

Customer Service

Why you should embrace negative reviews
When is a 96% positive rating ideal? Scott Weavers-Wright of Kiddiecare embraces his company’s 4% negative reviews because they prove the company has honest intentions. Negative reviews can also help you improve and strengthen your brand. She says sometimes it’s okay to ignore the rants; customers can recognize those that are opinion and look for the more constructive (and factual) comments. Remember to recognize and thank your positive reviewers. Read more.

How to ‘seal’ trust with customers
Did you know almost half of Americans report not trusting businesses? That’s according to the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer. Practical eCommerce’s Armando Roggio suggests building trust onsite with seals from providers like GeoTrust, TRUSTe, McAfee Secure and the Better Business Bureau. Those seals can also show up in search engine results of the estimated 80 million users of the malware tool, AVG Linkscanner, which Roggio says increases traffic. These seals can also display in comparison shopping engines. Learn more.

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Solid Cactus, Inc. has designed or redesigned more than 3,000 e-commerce sites. Solid Cactus is an Inc. 500 company and was named one of the "Best Places to Work in Pennsylvania" in 2006 and 2007.

All posts by ebiz Insider Staff | E-Mail the author

12 words to avoid in your product descriptions – eBiz eXtra Issue 19

By ebiz Insider Staff on Fri (6/18/10) in Marketing | 0 Comments

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Online shoppers to spend more than average shoppers this Father’s Day

Online shopping spend more this Father's Day Online shoppers plan to spend 62% more for Father’s Day gifts than the typical shopper, at an estimated sum of $153, according to BIGresearch’s May survey. Almost 75% of online shoppers plan to buy for their fathers or step-fathers, compared to less than half of regular shoppers. Surveyed online shoppers are twice as likely to buy for “other dads” including grandfathers, brothers and godfathers. Than other shoppers. A third of online shoppers plan to make additional purchases at department, specialty and discount stores. Gifts of choice in the survey were greeting cards, restaurant gift cards, books and CDs and gift certificates. Full story.

58% of people check email before going anywhere else on the web.

-ExactTarget

Quick Tip

Say no to flash based websites & landing pages: older flash players and iPads can’t see your page!

-Econsultancy.com

eCommerce News of the Week

Internet Marketing

12 words that will weaken your marketing message
Conversion Marketing’s Ian Lurie is banning 12 words that can weaken the legitimacy of your marketing message. Something may be fairly judged or pretty as a picture, but he says to never use fairly as in ‘fairly decent’ or pretty as in ‘pretty much.’ Shy away from wishy-washy words “slightly, sometimes, or somewhat” and never risk “relatively.” Other outlawed words are: generally, kind of, may, often, perhaps and quite. Also, he adds ‘like’ should never be used, like in any copy. Read the whole article.

Email click through rates on the rise
Open rates increased 1.1% from last year’s to this year’s first quarter according to an Epsilon and Email Experience Council study. Tracking 6 billion emails sent from about 160 client companies, the study found that the 60.9% of which were marketing related had a 17.86% open rate and 3.7% click through rate. Service messages had a 41.1% open rate and 6.8% click through. DirectMad.com suggests taking advantage of service emails by including a marketing message. Consumer packaged goods companies had the highest click through rates at 14.0%, general retailers a 5.9% click rate. Full story.

Social Media

Promoted trending topics released on Twitter
Toy Story 3 is the first promoted trending topic to be seen on Twitter. Seen as Toy Story 3 at the bottom of the trending topics sidebar, the topic when clicked, brings up the results page. At the top is the Disney Pixar promoted tweet, next top tweets and then the regular real-time results. It’s speculated that the trending ad is valued at tens of thousands of dollars. Full story.

5 teen trends to bring to business social media
Inspired by teenage mastery of social media, Mashable suggests five ways to gain more from social media, starting with the gossip mill. Get involved and ask for customer feedback, or “lurk” (listen) to what’s being said about your industry. Document and share are two keys to online content. HubSpot’s Rick Burnes says the easiest method is blogging, in written or visual form, and sharing on Facebook. Create customer connections by tagging them in photos. Take advantage of real-time updates by posting snippets or just pictures of works in progress. Continue reading.

General eCommerce Business

Stay professional with 25 tips to improve email etiquette
25 etiquette experts weigh in with tips to cultivate a positive reputation through emails, as both an individual and business in this Inc.com article. Begin emails with a brief introduction and remember not all vendors and customers will recognize you by email address. Remember, emails can be forwarded so try to use company email only for public matters and handle private information with care. When responding, do so within 24 – 48 hours and try to avoid one-line messages such as “ok” or “thanks.” Set a company standard for email policy and train staff on how they’re to use email. Read more.

4 sources for product video production
Practical eCommerce weighs the pros and cons of four different video production methods. Calling on customers for submissions is one idea. It’s free, but level of quality may not always be there. Those with large product catalogs may lean towards automated video services such as Stupeflix, Treepodia and SundaySky, which can be advantageous, though run the risk of having lesser quality. Self-produced videos are an option with decreased costs of cameras and software. Full story.

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Solid Cactus, Inc. has designed or redesigned more than 3,000 e-commerce sites. Solid Cactus is an Inc. 500 company and was named one of the "Best Places to Work in Pennsylvania" in 2006 and 2007.

All posts by ebiz Insider Staff | E-Mail the author

10 video content myths, busted! – eBiz eXtra Issue 18

By ebiz Insider Staff on Thu (6/10/10) in Marketing | 0 Comments

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Google gets a Caffeine kick and 50 times faster
How Google intends to deliver freshly roasted results

Google kicks up their search engine indexing with the release of Caffeine earlier this Monday. Caffeine is expected to deliver more relevant results and meeting the growing desire for fresher results. The old layered system updated the index at different times; the main layer was updated every few weeks. The new system, Caffeine continually picks through the web in pieces. Caffeine processes at an enormous rate, says Google Software Engineer Carrie Grimes, “if this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second.” Google has made other big changes within the past months, updating their results pages and including social networking updates.

What does this mean for search engine optimization? Newly published content should show up in results sooner. ITIC’s Laura DiDio warns that any inaccuracies will show up sooner as well.

Selling Online

5 areas to focus fraud efforts
CyberSource’s 2010 Fraud Report states fraud loss fell 1.4% in three years to $3.3 billion? MarketingSherpa says you can prevent fraud loss by keeping tabs and maintaining 5 areas. When making changes to your site or marketing campaigns, be prepared for new fraud methods. Efforts to accommodate customers in the checkout process can make it easier for fraudulent attempts. Look into publicizing your policies, Marketing Sherpa says some attempts may be deterred after seeing security statements, press releases and security icons. Data analyzing can also be directed to track customer trends and discover “positive data.” Read more.

How to move to a new eCommerce platform
Before moving your site to a new eCommerce platform run down Practical eCommerce’s ten steps to transitioning. Early on, check domain ownership. Can you log in? Are you the administrative contact? If not, see if your current provider will switch over ownership. If you can’t change all page and subpage URLs to match the old URL’s, use 301 redirects to your new site. Next see how your Security Certificate (SSL) will switch over to the new system, checking for compatibility, upgrade availability, etc. If your checkout page displays ” https:// ” in the address bar you have an SSL. Learn more.