Blog

Product Pages Basics

2008-07-02T19:03:24Z

I came across a graphic on elliance.com that does a great job of pointing five important elements that should be part of every product page. I would add a 6th - have a big, obvious "add to cart" button!

Want to do a SEO friendly Press Release?

2008-06-23T21:15:23Z

My friend Christine O'Kelly from SEO Content Solutions has put together a couple of great guides for doing SEO Friendly Press Releases.

Why would you want to do a SEO optimized Press Release (PR)?

You will get links back to your site. This will help you with in the SERPs.
The Press Release itself may rank well for your term and bring traffic to your site.
There is potential of getting press coverage

Keywords are critical for getting your PR done right. WordTracker or SEObook.com's keyword tool will help identify the phrases you want to target. Christine talks about whether or not your headline should be optimized for keywords or clicks and why.

I was surprised by her suggestion but it makes total sense.

The PR should be structured like this:

Headline
Summary
Body
About the Company
Press Contact

In Christine's follow up slideshow, she takes you step by step through the process of submitting your Press Release to multiple services.

What's great is that most of the services are free and the only one with fees charges $2.99!

My friend Jeff did a press release with Christine and got about 40 or so links from it. Not only that, he went from 29 to 8 in google in the next two weeks for his main keyword!

This process works.

The Continuing Value of Directories…

2008-06-16T18:36:31Z

Directories are still very valuable for any ecommerce store but with the changes Google made last year, you have be sure that if you are paying for a directory listing, it’s the right one.

Quality links are essential for success in Google. If you don’t have enough of the right links, it really doesn’t matter what you do on-page – you aren’t going to rank for competitive phrases.

Traditionally, directories were good sources for quality links. In the early days of the web, every entry into a directory was reviewed by a person to ensure that only sites of a certain quality were accepted. Over time, directories started charging a fee for that review.

When some people realized you could charge money for a directory submission, directories for pay started popping up all over the place. And guess what? Quality didn’t matter any more. What matter was that if you had a working credit card, you site was good enough.

As you can imagine, this lead to spam and prompted Google to downgrade hundreds of directories last year.

So, which directories are still good?

Here is a list of directories that still provide valuable links:

DMOZ.org – DMOZ is the best and is free. However, since it’s reviewed volunteers, it may take a while to be accepted.

Directory.yahoo.com - $299/year makes it the most expensive, but worth every penny.

Business.com - $299/year – Google Loves business.com

BOTW.org - $99/year or $249 one-time

Joeant.com - $39 one time

pr.com - $199/year for the Gold Package that also includes 30 free job posting, free press releases and you can choose the anchor text

webworldindex.com - $25 one time

goguides.com - $40 one time

skaffe.com - $45 one time

sptp.com $99/year

Is your ecommerce business stalling? Part 4

2008-05-16T21:02:45Z

4) Repeat Customers are the cornerstone of a successful ecommerce business.

    a. Are you finding ways other than price to compete?

                                 i. Can you customize products?

                                 ii. How can you improve customer service and self-service?

                                 iii. What can you do to be seen more as a trusted resource

                                        than just a store?

                                 iv. Have you created custom tools?

    b. Word of Mouth works for you or against you. Are you doing reputation management?

    c. Are you using sophisticated email methods or just a “mailing list”?

    d. Are you finding creative ways to build community?

Is your ecommerce business stalling? Part 3

2008-02-20T22:08:00Z

3) How well are you converting traffic and maximizing your profit?

How can you increase your Conversions?
Trust – Are you doing all the basics to show you are trustworthy?
Is the checkout process easy and re-assuring? Do you have a way to re-engage abandoned carts?
Analytics - What’s the score? i. What are you tracking? ii. How are you making it actionable?
Optimization – Are you doing multivariate testing for your important/profitable pages (i.e. home, product & checkout)
How can you improve the User Experience?

Information Architecture

Is your navigation simple and clear? Where are people getting confused?
Do you offer multiple filtering capabilities?

Does on site search work really well?
Are you merchandizing your products in an appealing way?
Are you using ratings & reviews?
Are you providing educational guides, product recommendations and customization tools?
Do you have multi-media? How-To Video’s?
What are you doing to increase your average order size

Up Selling
Cross Selling
Promotions

Are you testing which are most profitable?
Are you getting your vendors to support you?

Is your ecommerce business stalling? Part 2

2008-02-12T21:55:44Z

2) Are you making yourself visible to all potential customers?

How good is your SEO?
Are you doing the basics for On-site SEO? How about beyond the basics?
Off site - are you getting quality links? Do you have a strategy?
Are you using the shopping engines and are you optimized for them?
Are you optimizing your Google Product Feeds?
How well is your PPC performing? Did you try it and give up on it?
Are you in marketplaces like eBay or Amazon?

Should you be on them? (it’s not as simple as you might think)
How much can you really sell there? (a ton)

Are you using RSS product feeds?
Are you using trigger-based emails?
Are you doing things like “deal-a-day” promotions?
Are you blogging?
What’s the health of your affiliate programs?
Have you looked into creating micro sites that appeal to different segments of you marketplace? Would you like to become you own competition?
Are you working at increasing international business?

Is your ecommerce business stalling? Part 1

2008-01-16T21:53:29Z

Maybe it’s time to look at all aspects of your business with new eyes. Seek improvement across the board.

Perhaps you’ll find the skill sets and competitive advantages that got you to this point need to evolve. It’s no longer enough to be really good a just a few things.

In this series, we’ll look at four areas where you can improve. Starting with…

1) How well are you dealing with the technical side of your business?

   1. As you grow, are you using technology to improve the efficiency of your processes (shipping, inventory, CRM, warehouse management etc.) or are you throwing more bodies at the problem?
   2. Are you using custom tools to make your site more valuable to customers, improve search results and create competitive barriers to entry?
   3. Are you doing enterprise ecommerce hosting or are you still trying to do it on the cheap?

Trigger Based Emails - 9 Creative Ways TO Sell More

2007-12-18T21:51:27Z

Trigger-based or dynamic transactional emails are emails that are sent out based on customer activity. When you combine them with personalized and rich content, they become incredibly powerful.

Emails that are personal and immediate mean something - our eyes don’t glaze over them like they do with the rest of the spam that fill our inboxes.

Use these ideas to convert browsers and shoppers into long-term, repeat customers.

1) Ask for reviews and testimonials 21 days after the purchase. People love to talk about the benefits of a new purchase while is still fresh & new. Ask me for a review when I am most excited and mostly likely to share. If you add in a contest or promotion for additional motivation, you will have tons of reviews. This will put you well on your way to making your site incredibly valuable for new shoppers. Also, after I have given a review, I will be bonded more closely with your site.

2) Remind people to re-order. Items ranging from running shoes to ink cartridges to batteries to supplements are purchased over and over again on a predictable schedule. It pays to send out reminders for re-orders. For example, if you sold me a 90 days supply of a vitamin, remind me at day 75 that it might be time to re-order. If I have been missing some days, give me the opportunity to request a reminder in another 7 or 14 or 21 days. If you have the actual product page in your email with a strong call to action, your sales will sky rocket.

3) Include personalized product recommendations in your everyday emails. When you send me an order confirmation, show me what other items that I might want to buy. We’ve found if you tie those recommendations to your global purchase history (like how Amazon or MaxEXP does it) your conversion rate can increase by as much as 500%

4) Mine the gold in abandoned shopping carts. If I added an item to my shopping cart and didn’t buy, remind me. Offering a promotion works but be careful not to train your customers to abandon their carts. A better way to increase conversions is to include reviews and testimonials for the exact product(s) they were considering.

5) Use your web site to generate leads. Would you like to do a better job closing big orders? What about that that long-term customer who just quoted out $25k worth of products? Is it worth a phone call? Is it worth an email? Do both. Send a email to your sales rep and another to your customer. San Diego Media has a customer who closes well over 6 figures a month from leads generated off his ecommerce web site. It’s easy to use your ecommerce site to generate leads.

6) When you are running low on stock for a particular item, send an email to everyone who has that item in their cart or wish list. Let them know you are running out and give them some urgency to buy now. This is a great email idea that I found out about on PalmerWebMarketing.

7) For items that are out of stock, put an “email me when back in stock” button on the product page. When you get the item, the sales will roll in immediately and automatically.

8) Make personalized, automatic recommendations to customers who have ordered an item that is on back-order. Don’t have black? Offer brown. Offer a similar item. Offer an item other people purchased with that item. Find a way to make the sale now and satisfy the customer.

9) Promote new items. When you have a new item, send an email out to people who previously purchased a similar or discontinued item

Don’t make Amazon’s Seller Central your crack habit

2007-12-07T19:56:12Z

Focus on building your online business - not theirs.

A couple of years ago, I worked with a merchant with a love/hate relationship with eBay. He used the analogy of being “addicted to eBay like a crack addict”.

He did a ton of business on eBay but that takes a ton of effort. His staff was constantly overwhelmed and worked on little else. They relied so heavily on eBay for sales, they were, in effect, addicted. He was afraid he couldn’t afford (or so it seemed) change.

Most importantly, he wasn’t able to focus on other, more profitable, ways to grow his business.

I covered some of the negative aspects of eBay on my personal blog a couple weeks ago.

But how about selling on Amazon’s seller central? That’s totally different, right?

I mean, how could it be anything but positive? You get to sell to Amazon’s vast customer base, don’t have to pay a penny until something sells and don’t have to deal with eBay’s demanding and cheap users.

Well, just like your mother once told you, there is no such thing as a free lunch. And selling on Amazon’s seller central is no different.

To understand why, I need to explain my simplistic view of ecommerce. I believe there are three things to worry about:

Exposure - Getting in front of as many of the right prospects as possible as cheaply as possible.

Profitable Conversion - Maximizing the profit and revenue generated from those prospects

Ownership - Maybe the most important - is getting them to buy from you again and again and again.

Well, how does Amazon match up?

Exposure? A+ There is nothing like Amazon’s installed base.

Profitable Conversion? Hmmm…. A little more mixed. There are tons of ways to be creative on Seller’s Central, but at the end of the day, you are competing on price. After including your commission, you aren’t making a ton and what worse, most of the cross-selling and up selling opportunities all belong to Amazon. I have a friend who sells Orovo on Amazon and he does better elsewhere.

Ownership? F- Basically, you are paying a 15% commission to build Amazon’s business - if you are selling something with good margins, like Tiffany Lamps, you are doing fine. You do a great job of customer service and offer a product at a great deal? Great! Amazon’s relationship with that customer just got deeper.

The problem is that it all looks easy. It all seems so predictable. You list products; you ship products and you collect the money from Amazon.

But you aren’t building your own business. Think about it – in essence, you are an interchangeable fulfillment house for Amazon. They can (and will) replace you in a blink of an eye.

I have a friend who had some temporary issues with his warehouse outside his control. Despite a couple years of stellar service, Amazon shut him down overnight.

He ended up not just laying off his employees but declaring bankruptcy.

If he had been building his web business, the warehouse issue still would have been painful. He would have lost some customers, but he would still be in business today.

So sure, keep selling on Amazon, but don’t forget to build the rest of your business.

And my friend addicted to eBay? I just talked with him. He is doing great. He’s broken his eBay addiction and business is better (and more solid) than ever.

Four Levels of Ecommmerce Architecture Monitoring

2007-11-16T02:23:31Z

Why does your ecommerce architecture need four levels of monitoring?
Here’s why:

Imagine going your site is up and running fine, but your payment gateway is down. Customers are adding items to their cart but can’t check out. It’s costing you sales and what’s worse, nobody knows.

Or

Imagine being frustrated and angry on a Tuesday morning. You just found out that your $5 shipping promotion was fat-fingered in as a $500 shipping promotion. It’s cost you thousands of dollars in sales over a long holiday weekend that are gone forever.

Or

Imagine your new PPC campaign is humming along and orders are pouring in but your fulfillment house isn’t keeping up. Products aren’t being shipped. Customers are getting frustrated. You are paying tons of money to acquire customers who will never want to do business with you again. And what’s worse, again, you don’t know….yet.

Those scenarios illustrate why we provide four levels of monitoring in our MaxEXP ecommerce infrastructure.

1. We use KeyNote to make sure the site is up and performing within established performance metrics. KeyNote, which is also used by Cisco and eBay, checks your site from multiple servers around the US. If your site is down or being sluggish, KeyNote will alert us so we can fix the problem.

2. We perform tests to make sure that system and integration points are up and running. Is Verisign’s payment gateway working? Yup. Is your integration with your ERP system working? Yes. Is FedEx working? No? That’s ok we set up a contingency to use flat rate shipping (or whatever you want) instead.

3. We check to make sure that sales are happening at expected levels. If sales dip below what is normal, we fire off an alert and take action. Normal is defined by historical sales volume over the past year and takes into consideration your growth rates and personal threshold levels.

4. We make sure you logistic processes are working. Are orders sent to fulfillment shipping? Are you getting confirmation numbers? Are all order status’s what they are expected to be? We run checks that find orders that have fallen through the cracks. Repeat & referral business is the life blood of ecommerce and we make sure your standards are being met.

So you can see, there really is more to ecommerce architecture monitoring than just checking to see the site is still up.