The guide is intended to introduce new eCommerce professionals or companies to the three most important phases of starting, promoting and maintaining an eCommerce business or website. Within it we will cover brief introductions to eCommerce, including what it’s, how far it has come and features specific to eCommerce. We’ll also be introducing, defining and explaining eCommerce marketing and eCommerce website design. In addition, the three main areas of this guide will list and explain many of the biggest benefits to conducting business Online, marketing Online and designing the site correctly.
What exactly is eCommerce & eBusiness?

eCommerce Defined:

eCommerce, that is short for electronic commerce, is the method used to distribute, buy, sell or market services and goods, and the transfer of funds online, through electronic communications or networks. Electronic commerce is usually referred to as Online commerce, Web commerce, eBusiness, eRetail, eTailing, e-tailing, ecommerce, eCommerce, e-commerce, ecom or EC.

Beginning & Way forward for eCommerce:

eCommerce basically began (although debated) in 1994 when Jeff Bezos started Amazon.com away from his own garage. Well known eCommerce stores include sites like eBay, Dell, Walmart and many more. Since 1994, businesses of most shapes and sizes have began launching or expanding their Online presence. At any given time, there are approximately 8 million consumers worldwide that actively shop and purchase through Web based stores or retailers (nearly one tenth in our world population). Online studies have claimed that online retail revenues will surpass the quarter-trillion-dollar mark by 2011.

eCommerce Site Features:

Typical business internet sites do not usually have the same features as eCommerce enabled web stores do. In order to effectively distribute, market then sell goods or services Online you will need certain features only entirely on eCommerce sites. Features might include a shopping cart, ability to process charge cards, online product catalog, automated inventory system, databases, bulk email program, statistics tracking as well as other non-computer technologies such as product warehousing and shipping transportation.
Which are the Benefits of eCommerce & eBusiness?

The processes involved with conducting business on the Internet and opening an eCommerce shop to sell from have several benefits to both merchants and the customers who buy from them. The greatest benefits of conducting business Online add a cheaper upfront cost to the merchant, it’s easier to setup and open the store and it’s faster to get an Online business up, running and making sales.

Helps Create New Relationship Opportunities:

Expanding or opening an eBusiness can produce a world of opportunity and helps to ascertain new relationships with potential prospects, potential business associates and new service manufacturers. Just by being in an easy to find location that is accessible to users worldwide, you will be available for others to discover and approach you about new opportunities. Customers that do not know you exist are fully aware of about you, product suppliers will request you add their items and other businesses will approach you about partnership opportunities. Many of these opportunities would not present themselves lacking any Online presence or site so they can discover you on their own.

Open for Business 24×7:

An eCommerce site basically gives you the ability to have unlimited store hours, giving your customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week use of shop and buy items from you. Some merchants choose to limit their hours to days a week, but orders can nonetheless be made over the weekend and customers could make contact 24/7 via email, phone or fax. In addition, the costs associated with having your store open 24/7 tend to be less than maintaining a physical storefront or phone operator with 247 operation capability. You are able to literally take orders and let customers shop while you sleep, take vacations or from remote locations.

Increases Brand or Product Awareness:

Through an Online business means that you can literally reach out to millions of consumers looking for everything you sell anywhere in the world. By contacting new markets and displaying your internet site prominently in front of them, you will be able to help increase your company/domain brand name and also increase awareness about your product line. By giving users 24/7 access in an easy to find location, you will help to create more word of mouth buzz for the eBusiness, in turn helping to promote your brand name and products. Users who haven’t been aware of you will discover you exist and help spread the phrase about you.

Helps Establish Customer Loyalty:

An eCommerce storefront will help create an easier means for your clients to purchase the items you sell and offers a unique way to display and describe your products or services in a informative, visual and interactive way. The customers you have will become more loyal shoppers every time they visit, making eCommerce ideal for improved customer satisfaction and visitor loyalty. If you are offer your products for sale Online, consumers will be able to shop from your catalog quicker, get updates on new items or product discounts and will shop or buy anytime they wish.

Possibility to Increase Overall Business Sales:

An eCommerce store that’s an extension of a physical storefront is a great way to boost overall business sales and potentially increase company profits in general. Companies who already work from a physical location are typically unaware of how much more they could be making only if they were to expand into their Online marketplaces. Selling Online reveals many opportunities for businesses both new and old. It’s a great way to increase sales, especially if you already have a physical store.

Possible ways to Increase Company Profits:

As pointed out above, opening an Online extension of the store or moving your organization solely Online are great methods to boost sales and potentially profits. Remember, just because SALES increase it does not indicate that company PROFITS increases also. Online businesses do have a better chance of increasing sales and profits by checking an eCommerce store to offer the items they offer. Sales and profits would be the lifeblood of any company, so it makes sense to increase them anywhere possible and whenever possible through the entire existence of your company. More sales, more profits, bigger budgets, etc.

Possibility to Decrease Some Costs:

Along with potentially increasing sales and profits, eBusiness owners may also typically reduce the costs of running their business by moving it or expanding it into the Online world. eCommerce stores can run with less employees including sellers, customer service reps, order fulfillment staff among others. eBusinesses also do not need a physical location in order to stay operational, which can keep your charges down related to building leases, phone bills, utility costs along with other costs associated with running a brick-and-mortar storefront.

Expands Geographical or Customer Reach:

As mentioned, owning an eCommerce business typically means no limits regarding who and where you can sell your products or services. Some countries outside the Usa have additional regulations, licensing requirements or currency differences, but generally you won’t be limited on the customers it is possible to reach out to. Physical storefronts are restricted to the city in which they are located, Internet businesses aren’t limited unless you put geographical limits set up. At the very least, you should consider targeting U.S. buyers, but additionally consider, Canada, UK, Australia yet others. Sell to anyone, anywhere, anytime!

Permits Smaller Market or Niche Targeting:

Although your customer reach may expand away from local area, you may only need to target smaller consumer markets and buyer niches to your eCommerce products. Owning an Online store gives the merchant much treatments for who they target and reach out to notify about the items for sale in their store. Currently, you can target women, men, a generation of users, a certain race and many more smaller niche markets. This is typically done by placing keywords those niche markets use on a regular basis when researching the items you offer.

Allows for Easier Delivery of Information:

An Online store and Web brochure are great ways to deliver and display information regarding your company and the products you sell. By having an Online presence your customers will have direct access to product information, company information, specials, promotions, real time data and much more information that they’ll easily find just by visiting your internet site day or night. Not only does it benefit your customers, but it’s also generally easier for merchants to update their site rather than break down an available display and put up another for the next event. It saves both your customers and you precious time and can enable you to plan more updates or better sales as it will be much easier for you to update and remove.
What is eCommerce Marketing?

eCommerce Marketing Defined:

eCommerce marketing can be defined in many different ways and can include both Online or Offline campaign strategies. Frequently, it’s considered to be the marketing of products and services over the Internet or any other electronic network (like a mobile phone or pda). eCommerce marketing is usually referred to as ecommerce optimization, internet marketing, search engine marketing, sem, search engine optimization, seo, catalog optimization, catalog seo, product seo, merchant marketing and more variations of those terms.

Beginning & Way ahead for eCommerce Marketing:

eCommerce marketing began once the first shopping cart enabled sites started showing up all over the Net. As competition in leading markets such as consumer electronics, gifts, clothing or apparel and outdoor goods began to grow so did the requirement for eCommerce marketing. Online retailers who first began to market through the Internet saw huge potential for success Online and many of them saw enormous profits all the way up until the dot com boom. Because the dot com boom, eCommerce marketing has evolved into a whole new mix of strategies and techniques designed to increase exposure from a multitude of channels to the eCommerce seller. Marketing professionals have spent hours and hours testing, experimenting and reporting which strategies work and which seem to have no positive affects. Presently there are many different ways to market an eCommerce enabled site.

Marketing Strategies & Techniques:

eCommerce marketing today is usually made up of several creative or unique mixes of traditional and new-age marketing strategies that may include techniques related to direct mail, email marketing, search engine optimization, CPC or sponsored listings, building related links, establishing brand recognition and social internet marketing. There are many other ways to market an eCommerce store and new means of reaching out to potential customers are always being discovered and tested.
What are the Benefits of eCommerce Marketing?

The processes a part of marketing products on the Internet and increasing company or brand recognition among consumer markets have several benefits to both Online shoppers and merchant store owners. The biggest benefits of eCommerce marketing include less costs than print advertising, helps build customer relationships, brand credibility plus it costs less to get an eCommerce marketing campaign running and operational.

Regulations and tax breaks for Conducting Business Online:

It’s quite common knowledge that conducting business Online has certain tax advantages in comparison to brick-and-mortar selling. Many eCommerce merchants who qualify for such tax deductions may find that they can save more in taxes than when they sold using traditional retail or perhaps a physical storefront. Home-based eBusiness can deduct lots of the same things traditional businesses can. Traditional businesses can write-off utility, rent or mortgage bills as costs to do business and Online merchants also can write-off certain portions of utilities. Vehicles are another common deduction together with office equipment and other time allocated to setting up or running the company. Consider the tax benefits you might reap by conducting business through eCommerce.

Cheaper than Print Advertising:

Many traditional companies are used to more traditional marketing campaigns including print and yellow page advertising. Many traditional companies are not aware that a majority of eCommerce marketing strategies are far cheaper than any of the best Offline, print advertising methods which have been used for years. Traditional advertising continues to be a quality form of marketing, yet it’s not always cost effective, especially for smaller businesses. Print advertising can get expensive because there may be a need to update regularly, which requires new work be planned and generated. It’s much quicker and more cost effective to update and maintain eCommerce marketing campaigns, especially as technology continues to improve. By conducting business On the web and using the proven form of eCommerce marketing, merchants have the potential to generate far more in ROI with less spend compared to they could ever hope to expect from costly print promotional initiatives.

Interactive Ads or Marketing Campaigns:

Using advertising that engages potential prospects is key in todays fast paced, very little time consumer shopping space. One advantage of eCommerce marketing is the merchants capability to develop and improve several interactive advertising or marketing campaigns made to reach out and engage shoppers. Videos, flash, presentations, graphics, moving animations. They could all be used as interactive devices to aid entice shoppers to drop in and look around for the products or services offered. Interactive ads and applications on the Web are predicted to reach new heights as technology improves.

Flexible Ad or Marketing Campaigns:

Many traditional marketing strategies are limited with what they can offer and what sort of flexibility each initiative has. For instance, with print advertising there’s only so much you can do, but with eCommerce marketing there’s literally no cap no end to the flexibility of nearly any campaign. Merchants can get more creative marketing ideas and launch them with all the power and assistance of the Web (for both delivery and functionality). eCommerce marketing initiatives can be automated and are much more flexible than many of the traditional marketing or advertising methods.

Builds Lasting Customer Relationships:

The relationships you form with shoppers and existing customers can well determine the overall success associated with a business, Online or off, however eBusinesses use a lot more tools, methods and way of building long standing customer relationships than traditional businesses do. Technology and the reach of the Web makes it easier for eCommerce merchants to make long lasting relationships. That, combined with tools that make customer management and servicing more effective, using up less time, has also sparked more creative approaches to market to customers Online. eCommerce marketing and doing work Online can have a direct relation to how customers view the overall brand or product. If done correctly, it will help build lasting customer relationships, which in itself has benefits.

Helps Build Brand Credibility:

In several of the same ways eCommerce marketing helps you to engage and get to know customers, additionally, it has benefits which may increase brand awareness and credibility among shoppers searching for what you sell. With the ever expanding listing of Online marketing channels, it’s getting easier for eCommerce merchants to spread the word and saturate certain areas of the Web with their products and brand. As shoppers scour the net for information about a product that interests them they spot the companies and brands which they see, many take note and store the offending articles for next time. By utilizing the correct marketing channels in your niche, you might very well find yourself building long standing credibility and brand awareness among shoppers and existing customers. Better brand awareness and credibility likewise helps to increase word of mouth buzz.

Gather Feedback from Customers:

Having a website that displays and provides products for sale is a great way to attract customers, generate income and grow a business, however many eCommerce merchants don’t see all the additional advantages of running an eCommerce business similar to their ability to gather feedback about the site, brand or products directly from customers or shoppers. eCommerce marketing initiatives aren’t always about a promotion or selling the merchandise, some are meant to gather information or feedback from customers about how precisely the business can improve. Doing work Online and offering polls, questionnaires and feedback forms is a good way to get direct input from existing customers and also shoppers who haven’t yet purchased.

Conduct Cheap Researching the market:

Many eCommerce merchants use the website, customers and competitors in order to conduct market research surrounding a certain product or one in which they desire to introduce in the future. It’s much easier to catch a glimpse into a particular selling market while using resources and data online businesses, including your own. Wanting to conduct market research for a offline store can be difficult and may take much time to plan and execute. Using the availability of data on the Web and through the use of new technologies offered on the Web, eCommerce merchants have the ability to conduct market or product research quickly, efficiently and without hassle.

Lower Startup Costs Increase Efficiency:

Often it is much cheaper and takes less startup capital to spread out up an eCommerce business compared to a retail store location or chain. Internet business does not require as many of the ingredients necessary for business as a traditional business does. There’s typically no permits, fewer licenses, no lease to pay on, smaller utility bill, less or no employees to engage and no inventory to stock or manage on shelves. By beginning the business with less investment capital or startup funds, it can benefit to increase efficiency and leaves more available funds for actually marketing the emblem or products.

Lower Startup Costs Increase Profitability:

As stated, it cost far less to startup an eCommerce business than a traditional retail business. For most of the same reason that lower startup costs improve efficiency, they also help eCommerce merchants to potentially increase profitability. Obviously, if it takes less of the bottom line to obtain things up and running it may need less in return to generate a profit off of the eCommerce marketing tactics you choose to use. As mentioned, eCommerce marketing is cheaper than traditional advertising, therefore it costs less to work Online and costs less to market Online, than it will take less in return to really turn a profit, helping anyones chances for increased profitability.

Increases Growth or Opportunity Potential:

Online marketing has the potential to increase store growth in a much quicker rate than traditional marketing or retail business. eCommerce marketing can also generate more opportunities for almost any business no matter the products you sell and potentially at a much quicker rate. Major media networks may pick up on you via Online channels and report your business to consumers, while you may not have ended up on their radar had you simply sold offline. That’s just one example, there are many more opportunities plus a much higher chance of early growth through conducting and marketing an eCommerce business. The Online market offers a much fairer playing field and opens up doors that otherwise could be closed off to a retailer. It allows nearly any company, no matter their size to grow and have the same potential opportunities as larger sellers do.

Global Market Reach:

The internet spans across and reaches exactly that, the world. With the reach and technology offered through eCommerce, merchants have the ability to target consumers anywhere in the world, even smaller sections or local regions. eCommerce marketing initiatives can be deployed in a variety of ways, however the reach may span globally, rather than only within a certain city or region. possessing type of reach opens up the possibility that customers can find the business everywhere you look they reside and buy from their website without having to travel to another location. having global market reach means potentially having customers globally, without the limitations of traditional media or geographic boundaries.

Possible ways to Market Any Product:

The net constantly has millions of users hunting for a vast number of different products or services. When it exists, chances are there’s a minimum of a few people searching for it Online. eCommerce marketing and selling Online allows merchants to focus on and reach these audiences, even on a limited budget. This creates the potential for anyone to sell anything Online (assuming it’s legal to sell). Merchants can now offer niche items and market those things to the right individuals using creative and innovative eCommerce marketing ideas.

Flexible Schedule or More Personal Time:

Running an Online business can be as time demanding and require as much attention as a traditional business, nonetheless it does give merchants a chance to maintain a flexible schedule and will possibly even allow them more time out of the business to spend doing other activities they love. Having a schedule we control and private time is something everyone desires. Working Online and marketing through the different channels the net provides finally gives much more of us the freedom we desire. As mentioned, it typically takes far less time for you to startup and launch an internet business, however that doesn’t necessarily mean it will take less time to manage. The time it can save you can be used however you please.

Ability for Multiple Revenue Streams:

Once you’ve successfully launched and marketed one Web business you may wish to do it again with another online business, or maybe you already have a full-time job and you also run a successful eBusiness on the side. In any event, by conducting business Online you open all kinda of possibility of multiple revenue streams. May merchants have been able to successfully maintain their Online stores while still working their Job job. Others have opened a series or multiple Online stores to be able to generate multiple streams of revenue. eCommerce marketing makes it much simpler to own and operate multiple business or entity Online.

Streamlines Sales Process & Ad Copy:

eCommerce marketing and offering products available over the Internet can help businesses streamline sales processes and advertising copy used within marketing campaigns. With more customers and a greater reach it’s easier for merchants to gain insights and feedback concerning how marketing initiatives are performing and if each one is generating the desired ROI. Testing, experimenting and rotating campaigns or ad copy might help businesses to improve and streamline many processes within the store, from processes related to customers, sales or marketing.

Helps Promote Brick-and-Mortar Businesses:

So, imagine if you own a brick-and-mortar business already and you’re thinking of expanding into eCommerce? Don’t think long, it’s a great idea and also the timing couldn’t be more perfect. Many traditional companies are finding that by expanding their business design and marketing plans to the Online space that they in turn get more exposure to their physical stores. eCommerce marketing initiatives work great for promoting an offline business, however you still need an Online place for customers to reference on the internet. In a perfect world all brick-and-mortars would in addition have a presence Online, but it’s not the case as of yet. Jumping into eCommerce and ultizing the power of Online marketing is a great method to promote and help grow a retail brick-and-mortar location.
What exactly is eCommerce Web Design?

eCommerce Web Design Defined:

eCommerce web design is normally defined as the planning, creation and arrangement of files, text, graphics and processes used within an eCommerce enabled website. The files make up different sections of the site which typically include pages, categories, subcategories and products. eCommerce web design is commonly called web design, web development, site design, site development, shop design/development, store design/development, online store design/development, eCommerce design/development or shopping cart design/development (including variations of those terms).

Beginning & Future of eCommerce Website design:

eCommerce designs have evolved over the years from plain looking designs with few graphics and little attract fully interactive eCommerce sites using the latest in graphic design and programming technologies. The periods of simple layouts and fashions are pretty much done with as competition increases and much more merchants are attempting to improve the look, feel and usability of these eCommerce designs. Now it is more widespread to see gradient graphics, more selections for shoppers, features surrounding customers, better layouts, faster load time, videos, more payment options and far much more. New age eCommerce design is about being creative and original, just about anything that can be though of may be accomplished using current eCommerce design technology to have an eCommerce business.

eCommerce Design Methods & Features:

eCommerce design today typically includes several unique features or elements and can be performed using a variety of popular web design methods. A database, shopping cart software, ability to accept payments, security certificate, products, policies and more are all common eCommerce design features. There are also eCommerce design and shopping cart application process best practices that can increase the risk for task of knowing how to style and eCommerce site easier. Popular methods of eCommerce design include using HTML (and stem languages), ASP, ASP.net, PHP, CSS, Ajax, JavaScript, XML among others. Popular methods for creating eCommerce graphics include using Photoshop, Flash as well as other graphics or video programs.
Which are the Benefits of eCommerce Web Design?

Allows for Faster, Easier, Efficient Discovery:

A web-based business’ ability to be discovered by shoppers, current customers and search engines is extremely important for merchants who aspire to grow their eCommerce adventure into a success. Quality eCommerce design allows for quicker, easier, more efficient discovery by consumers or search engine bots. By using eCommerce design guidelines and following certain usability guidelines, you’ll find that the discovery process will nearly look after itself, meaning the merchant could have little to no maintenance down the road. The faster, easier and more efficient you can make your processes of discovery the faster your organization will grow to the next stage. For optimum results, keep improving, keep testing and constantly refine your designs.

Potential to Improve Accessibility:

Having an online business that is easy to discover is just part of the formula within eCommerce design. Additionally, merchants will need a store which is accessible to their shoppers, existing customers and also search engines. Accessibility is a major factor when making and implementing a site, if users and search engines cannot access Your entire important pages you will find that it may dwindle your chances of success or at the very least slows down chances you would have experienced if the store was originally constructed with accessibility best practices in mind. Use hyper links as opposed to image links, utilize a sitemap, keep track of indexed pages and link your website together in an organized, straightforward, easy to use way. Make sure that pages that lie deeper inside the site can be accessed from pages higher in the site and the other way around. Making your business site more accessible in the beginning will save the merchant long, hassle and re-designing in the end.

Possible ways to Improve Usability:
Using quality eCommerce design methods won’t make your site easier to discover and access, additionally, it may potentially improve how shoppers, current customers and check engine use the site. The way a site is built can hinder how users interact and make use of the site. If you put up features that become roadblocks, the site will become less usable. If you put up features that are made with usability best practices in mind you will find that shoppers will be happy with their experience, customers will return and appearance engines will give you the placement you deserve of their listings. Many merchants don’t know that the way in which a site was created can actually make or break the sites usability ultimately. Study what users within your niche want, give it to them to make it easy to understand, within a visible location which is easy for anyone to use.

Simpler to Maintain Over Time:
If an eCommerce design is performed correctly from the very beginning, it’ll make the task of design maintenance easier over time. Typically, merchants must update their site regularly anyway, but using design recommendations from the start will make you updates more uncommon and easier to implement. not only this, but whenever new eCommerce design guidelines are discovered, viewers it takes you less time and less steps to catch up with those, giving you more time to actually run the business enterprise, manage customers, products and things like marketing strategies or promotions. Simply speaking, make your site easy to discover, make it accessible to users and make it usable to anybody who may eventually land on your page. In the end, you’ll reduce expenses time updating and maintaining your website than others who were not aware, ignored or didn’t pay attention during the design and implementation phase with the business.

Things have changed a lot in internet marketing over the last 2 years, as they always do in this industry. One of the biggest changes has been that of relevance as it relates to Page Rank. To put it simply, I no longer care what the PR is of a domain I am purchasing; I’m much more interested in the subject matter of the website that was on it while Google had it indexed. You see, Google’s massive database tracks this sort of information and an OLD domain featuring a website that has constantly been about a particular topic is worth much more than one that just has high PR.

Here’s just one a several real world examples in which I’ve seen this be the case. Before becoming a full-time internet marketer, I was a real estate appraiser. I had a .net domain that was about 2 years old, was a PR3 and ranked on the first page (but not top 3) for many local terms. I decided I wanted the .com and the plurals of my domain name so I contacted the owners of those domains. One domain, the plural, was being “squatted” on by a reseller. I coughed up the $700 to buy this domain purely for branding purposes, it had no PR, no pages indexed, no real value other than being the plural of a domain I was about to purchase. The singular version of my .com was owned by older, retired gentleman in California (I’m in Texas), who no longer performed appraisals. However, the domain was 10 years old, PR1, had a simple 5 page site on it, was about real estate appraisals in his local area AND had been indexed in Google for years.

At this point in time I had no idea the value of this domain, I was purely interested in the branding of my company. After purchasing the domain for $50, I transferred it to my account on the same registrar as the former owner, and promptly moved my website to it. I 301 redirected all other domains and all the pages on my previous .net domain. Within 3 weeks I was now #1 in Google for almost ALL searches in my market area. The kicker was, I hadn’t done any SEO in over 2 months, and I certainly had not done SEO for the NEW domain name. After doing more research and testing the scenario again, I quickly realized that it was the domains age and topical relevance, even though targeted to another geographic region, that had propelled my site to the top of the SERPs.

I repeated the process several times within other markets to tweak the process and determine exactly what needed to be done, and NOT done, to make this work. So here are my guidelines and tips for purchasing an aged domain to use for your next internet marketing project. If you follow these, you will no doubt rank your site MUCH faster than if you had bought a new domain or just a non-relevant high PR domain.

1. Search for domains that contain a highly relevant keyword within the domain name. – This is usually a dead giveaway that the previous website was topically relevant.
2. I prefer domains that are AT LEAST 3 years old, older is better though.
3. The domain MUST be currently indexed by Google, just the homepage is fine. If it is still indexed and cached with a “Page For Sale”, “Parked” or other registrar page, that is fine. This only proves that Google must have a lot of faith in the domain to STILL have it indexed with a known dead site.
4. Page Rank doesn’t matter so long as the domain is indexed.
5. Use Archive.org to take a look at the site’s previous content. Look at several snapshots throughout the years to make sure the content was the same throughout time.
6. Use domaintools.com to make sure the domain has never “dropped”.
7. Once you find a good domain, pick it up at auction or however it is being sold.
8. Once the domain is in your possession, change the Registrant info and immediately apply WHOIS protection so Google doesn’t easily see the change of ownership.
9. (Optional) If you are intending on ranking a LOCAL business then change the WHOIS info to the exact business information and do not apply protection
10. Do NOT move the domain from the current registrar for at least 12 months.
11. Move your website to the new domain and don’t forget to 301 redirect ALL important pages to the new domain.

And that’s it. It is really that easy to pickup a domain that will allow you to start ranking sooner. And because these domains are old, pre-existing and still on topic, you can blast them with a lot more links then you could a new domains. Final Note: These domains can sometime be had for dirt cheap as But It Now and Final Offers such as GoDaddy’s $5 closeout domains.

]]> http://www.ecommercemarketingtips.com/buying-and-using-aged-domains-for-stores/feed/ 0 http://www.ecommercemarketingtips.com/sell-products-that-excite-your-customers/ http://www.ecommercemarketingtips.com/sell-products-that-excite-your-customers/#comments Sat, 07 May 2011 17:58:25 +0000 James http://www.ecommercemarketingtips.com/?p=190 Products that customers are excited about tend to be reviewed more often. People also tend to talk about these products more socially and they usually include where they purchased it.

Ways to create excitement around products can vary, including:

• A waiting list or pre-sell
• Quickly selling out, taking back orders
• Lots of product promotion leading up to a launch date
• Rumors and buzz about the product prior to anyone actually seeing or using it
• Creating a teaser video or “classified” style photos

Put these ideas to use for products that you plan to sell. Some of the easiest products to do this with are those that have new models released every year, such as software and some clothing items.

I have to admit that for my first few years in online marketing I completely avoided anything to do with e-commerce. My reasoning for this was simple and typical of why we avoid many things in life – it looked like too much work. Even a simple drop ship store (one in which you do not carry any inventory, it is all shipped directly from your supplier’s warehouse) required that I check with suppliers and update my inventory daily to ensure nothing was out of stock. I also would need to constantly monitor pricing and submit my orders for shipment several times a day. And I’m not even going to get into the setup of an online store – finding a shopping cart system, finding suppliers, receiving reliable hosting, SSL certificates, store design, adding all your products, creating unique content, SEO, etc etc etc.

And if that wasn’t enough of a nightmare for any would-be internet entrepreneur to abandon their thoughts of creating an online store, there is still the inescapable fact that you will need to deal with CUSTOMERS on a daily basis. Yuck! For years that had been the final nail in the coffin for me when it came to considering starting an ecommerce site. Even when I came across several niches that were completely under-served and ripe for ecommerce, I still avoided it. From my standpoint, the trouble and effort wasn’t worth it. I mean hey, I was making good money with just affiliate marketing so why deviate from what was working?

But over time my views of ecommerce started to change. Or rather, my views of all the other types of online businesses began to become more clear. I started seeing some of the drawbacks and limitations of all the different types of online businesses; from affiliate marketing, CPA, Adsense, info products, etc. Each and every one had their own set of disadvantages, but they all shared the same major issue – Google and the other search engines were becoming harder and harder to game. That singular source of traffic that so many online marketers depended on for bringing visitors to their sites had gotten too smart for simple SEO techniques to affect. If you were in a niche that had a competition level higher than what most would consider “easy”, it was going to take more than just in-house linkbuilding to rank #1 in Google.

Like any good marketing I started researching additional methods for influencing the search results and my site’s rankings. There was social media, swapping or paying to be promoted on other people’s lists, PPC, display advertising, review sites, video marketing, press releases, and so on. But the more I looked at these other types of traffic generation, the more I realized they were more brand building strategies than just straight linkbuilding. Some, like social media marketing, were very dependent on other users syndicating your links as well. Which in turn meant the site you were promoting needed to be much more than just a simple lead capture or four page blog; you needed to have an actual resource or something of value to promote. Not to mention your site needed to be generating a lot of profit to make all the extra work worth it.

With all this in mind, I started thinking of what it would take to create a site that had enough “substance” to be effectively promoted in this manner. My original idea was to create large, community driven review sites that also had price comparisons and various promotions for products that I was affiliated with. But the more I planned out this idea, the more I realized just how much work would be involved in designing, maintaining and promoting such a site. As an affiliate site, it would only make at best 10-15% commissions on sales. And it would most likely take 6 months or longer to start seeing any profit since the site would need to build a community around it first. The last painful realization was that this site as well would have limitations on it that could have some devastating consequences with regards to its income generation. Most notably, since I don’t own the products I would be promoting or control the affiliate programs, I would never be in full control of my own earning potential with this site. That really sinks in when you think about how much time you invested.

If I was going to put that much work into a project, I wanted to make sure that it was an absolutely concrete business model with as few limitations as possible. Suddenly e-commerce made a lot more sense as a long term business model that could produce steady income and survive any “changes of the wind”. Additionally, all the seemingly negative aspects of creating, owning and maintaining an online store became some of the more important advantages of ecommerce.

Here is My Summation of the Advantages of E-commerce Over Other Online Businesses:

Better Profit Margins - This one is a no-brainer. Regardless of whether you intend to carry your own inventory or just drop ship from your supplier, your profit margins per sale are going to be much higher than you could make with an affiliate program or other incentive based model. Since you are making more money per sale than you would as an affiliate, this also opens the door up to more marketing and being able to compete in PPC bids.

eCommerce is Growing - Every year the number of people who said they did the majority of their shopping online grows and exceeds the previous year’s projections for dollar amount spent online by consumers. While this may not be a direct argument for e-Commerce over other business models, you can guarantee that more and more online services will cater to eCommerce sites due to the growing amount of money being spent in this sector.

You Don’t Control Other Business Models – Affiliate programs, CPA networks, etc., they can all end or remove you without notice, effectively killing a site’s income and throwing all your hard work down the drain. I’ve experienced this first hand when an affiliate disapproved of a product review I wrote. Their response… they removed me from their affiliate program and kept my $1,500 check for the month’s commissions. While the site wasn’t a total lose, that was still about 40% of the total profit generated from the site. Not cool man, not cool.

Business Liquidity – If someone asks you what it is that you do for a living and you tell them that you have an online store or an ecommerce site, they immediately know what you are talking about. If you tell the same person that you have an affiliate site, cpa site, adsense, etc, most people will look at your puzzled and have no clue how it is that you make money. That is another huge benefit of ecommerce sites in the fact that they are an immediately recognized business entity by everyone. This translates into something that has value and if you wanted to, you could easily sell an online store to an investor or stay at home mom that wants a side job.

Business as an Asset - From a banking and lending aspect, an online store is a much simpler asset to prove the value of. Your books are usually simple; Profit = Sales – ( COGS + Marketing + Overhead ). Pretty easy to keep track of and calculate for any banker. With an asset like this, you can easily walk into a bank and walk out with a new line of credit or business loan. That is something that you are going to have a much harder time achieving with other online business models.

More Avenues for Marketing and Promotion – With an online store there are a ton of new ways you can promote your site and get your name in front of people. Some of these include merchant review and product review sites, price comparison sites, running contests, vendor “dealers” pages, product search sites, listing your products for sale on 3rd party sites like Amazon and sponsoring events or people with your products. And these are just a few ideas of the top of my head. And don’t forget you can run your own affiliate program and have others promote your products and site for you.

Analytics, Customer Tracking & Segmentation – If you follow any of my marketing advice you will know that I’m a big advocate for properly tracking and segmenting customers based on their buying behavior. I’m also a huge fan of really digging through your site analytics to mine out important information regarding anything you can imagine from buying trends to market area penetration.

These are simply things you cannot do when you are not the party actually making the sale. Imagine the power you now have when your email list can be broken into segments based on where the customer lives, how much they’ve spent, what they bought, average order size, etc. Your marketing to these customers can now become so targeted that it will be as if you know them personally. Which brings me to the next advantage.

Building Relationships - While you can certainly build a relationship with a list creating through affiliate marketing, they are never YOUR customer. And make no mistake about it, the relationship between someone who tells you what and where to buy and the company you actually purchased from is very different. As an online store owner, the people on your list are actually your own customers which brings a new level of trust and openness to any conversation you have with them.

And not be forgotten are your vendors and suppliers. Relationship building with those that provide your goods for sale is a key component of running an online store and can benefit you in many ways including better prices, better support service, and depending on the relationship, you may even get perks. I actually had a vendor fly me to Maine to check out their operation and spend the weekend sail boating. Pretty wild!

You’re Automatically a Resource – While most internet marketers strive to have their sites be seen as an actual resource within a community, online stores are already perceived as such simply by the fact that they are the source for the products people are talking about. When people start a discussion on a blog or forum about a specific product that you may carry, and someone who has purchased from you joins the conversation and provides a link back to your site, that is a simple demonstration of your store as a resource. If you want to become even more useful, include product reviews, product videos, unique product descriptions, user submitted photos, product demonstrations, articles and anything that helps inform potential customers and existing owners about the product.

Forecasting and Historical Data – You can get much more in-depth historical data from sales and traffic generated by your store then you could as an affiliate. This type of data allows you to plan ahead for changes in sales patterns or push promotions for specific products at key times when you knowing their buying season is heating up.

You can also get this type of historical data from your vendors or suppliers. They may also be keen to let you know ahead of time about new product launches, changes to current products and other insider information that can put you ahead of the curve when it comes to marketing.

Longtail Searches – People use some odd queries when searching online. It’s for this very reason that about 50% of the traffic that most sites receive come from longtail search terms. Because your store will likely have hundreds, if not thousands of product pages, you will receive tons of traffic just by way of these long tail searches. While any site can benefit from these searches, ecommerce sites get a boost due to the fact that most of these searchers are looking to buy; that is why they are searching for a specific product. Add to that the fact that there are now a lot of Shopping Portals which are just product based search engines and you have the potential to gain a lot of traffic without needed to do much SEO.

Customers Become Promoters – If you provide a customer a good experience, then you can likely find a way to encourage them to be a cheerleader for your store. Simply asking for a review after the purchase is usually good enough to get small percentage of buyers to leave comments about your company. Remember that presence = presence; the more people that see you the more traffic you can expect to get.

Brand Building Becomes Easy – Probably my most loved aspect of online stores is the fact that it is much easier to build a brand around a store. Granted it takes work and dedication to the store, it can be a seriously rewarding accomplishment both personally and financially. This is the type of marketing that makes you a household name to everyone within your market. It can consist of one major marketing push using a single method such as video marketing or link together many to create a huge campaign that utilizes every method available to you. Which methods you choose ultimately depends on your market but being active in related forums or blogs, video promotion and keeping an updated blog are a few of the most potent strategies when first starting out.

The first calculation that we need to get is Gross Profit Per Visitor. We find this value by taking a product page’s Revenue Per Visitor and multiplying it times the gross margin of that product. The calculation would look something like this:

Total Product Revenue = $5000
Total Visitors to Product Page = 1000

$500 / 1000 = $5.00 – Average Revenue per Visitor

Average Revenue per Visitor x 25% Profit Margin = $1.25 Gross PROFIT per Visitor

Now we know that this example product generates $1.25 PER visitor to its product page. Place this information into your spreadsheet and you can now quickly organize which products should be your focus.

The one final piece of the puzzle is page traffic and search visibility. These products remain unknowns until you actually GET page traffic to the product pages. You may know you have some products in your catalog that have high margins and SHOULD sell well. I call these products the “Unknown Potentials” because they could potential have a very high gross profit based solely on the numbers, but we have no idea if they will actually sell well. Since we can’t waste precious marketing time on unknowns we must find a way to sift out their stats without too much effort.

My first thought would be to pay for traffic to the page long enough to calculate the metrics we need. Unfortunately this is a backwards approach because you will need to totally optimize the page to ensure that your advertising dollars are spent well and true profit potential is seen. So this method doesn’t work.

The best way to approach this is with heavy use of onsite product promotion. Examples of this are cross sells, up sells, best sellers (you’ll need to fake these), customers also purchased (and these), homepage banners and offers, etc. Anything we can do to funnel some traffic to these products with unknown “potential”.

I’m particularly fond of using cross-sells, up-sells and “customer’s who bought this also bought” techniques because you get to test these products off the back of your ongoing marketing.

The way I would set this up is take the products in your list that you’ve determined have the highest Gross profit per visitor and start your marketing campaigns with those products and categories as the emphasis. Meanwhile, make sure to include a few of the “unknowns” as cross-sells and up-sells to all of those products. This way your marketing efforts are feeding both your increase in sales of high-profit items AND helping test out the potential of the unknowns by pushing traffic to them.

So there you have it, my approach for selecting which products to promote and in what order.

One last note, don’t forget to factor in the lifecycle of a product. If you are selling something that will likely be obsolete in a few years, you need to consider this when investing your time in marketing the product.

Definitions:

Revenue Per Visitor: Sum of Revenue Generated / Visitors = Average Revenue per Visitor

Gross Profit Per Visitor: Average Revenue per Visitor x Gross Profit Margin

If you have an online store with possibly thousands of products, where do you start when it comes to content, SEO and marketing that can take tons of time and effort? I’ve discussed in previous posts that it is a fool’s errand to put much effort into trying to rank the homepage of your store unless you have a VERY specific niche or your store has already reached high popularity. You’ll get a much greater and faster return if you focus your efforts on category and product level SEO while your store’s homepage slowly build links by its own gravity.

The first thing you should do is take an inventory of all the products you carry. What are the margins? What are the current search rankings? Which are best sellers? I keep an excel spreadsheet of these items so that I always know my catalog statistics. You could even break these stats down seasonally so that you could predict trends in product sales.

The typical approach is to go after products that are making you the most money right now; however, that may not be the most profitable investment of your time. We need to factor in all the other stats to determine which products we should concentrate our marketing on first. You must also consider that products that have the greatest exposure currently, will naturally be making you more sales. We need a way to take all of this into account and create a calculation for “product priority”.

In part two of this article I will discuss just how to find product priority based mainly on each products Gross Profit, and potential Gross Profit.

Opening Paragraph: The first thing I recommend is writing an intro paragraph, in your own words, about the product. It doesn’t need to be long, just a few sentences. This is the ONLY manual content creation I recommend. The reason for this is that you want the first few sentences that a visitor reads to convey your store’s personality as well as a benefit to buying the product. It is your opening sales pitch for the product and keeps the reader interested. If I land on a product page and the first few sentences are hype or specifications, I’m likely to keep looking for the product elsewhere.

Product Questions: Another great source of unique and helpful content that is created by OTHERS are product questions. Many shopping cart platforms have the ability to, or extensions/modules that allow, the asking of questions about a product right from the product page. You in turn answer these questions and post the questions and answers on the product page. This not only serves as a resource for potential customers in the form a product FAQ but it is also easy, free unique content.

Product Reviews: Encouraging product reviews is a no brainer but it is somewhat of a catch-22. You first NEED shoppers visiting the product page and buying the product to receive a review. Since we are trying to create unique content for the product to get the page indexed, it may be that product reviews will need to come AFTER the other methods are implemented. But keep in mind, good site and category structure and strong category specific SEO can lead to sales of any product you carry.

Unique Tags: Using tags on your product page is another great way to include LSI keywords, buying keywords and customer submitted tags (terms you may never have thought of). You can use Google’s keyword tool or the Wonder Wheel to try and come up with a few tags that are off the beat path.

Unique Image Names: While every product is going to have at least one image of it on the page, you need to take care in naming these images. While you should certainly include keywords in the image name and alt tags, try and add modifiers that make it unique. For instance; instead of “big-bertha-gold-club.jpg” you could use something like “buy-big-bertha-golf-club-online.jpg”. Small things like this add up, trust me!

Product Videos: This is another HOT technique for getting unique content on any page. The problem with this technique is that it can be VERY time consuming and costly to create videos for your entire store’s catalog. You can use videos from 3rd party sites, but be very careful to ask for permission before posting them on your store. Also, creating your own videos and submitting to multiple video hosting sites will yield a better chance of ranking highly in the SERPs for product related searches.

I’m currently researching a few video creation products on the market. Some have a lot of potential but I have concerns as well. I’ll report back on this when I’ve had the time (and money!) to test them fully.

You see, to be successful in all other forms of internet marketing whether it be affiliate marketing, CPA, adsense, PPC, etc, you need a robust and advanced skill set. You must first and foremost have a firm understanding of how the internet and search engines work. You will then need several other skills to be completely self-sufficient or you will need to hire people to complete certain tasks for you. Considering most people trying to get into “making money online” are on a tight budget, outsourcing entire aspects of the marketing isn’t really an option.

Some of the various skills you will need to be able to succeed in this industry are:

• Webdesign – HTML, PHP, CSS, WordPress or Other CMS

• Graphic Design – Complements Webdesign, also used for banner advertising

• Solid SEO Knowledge – Understanding of how search engines rank sites

• A  Specialization- What you will make the majority of your money doing (adsense, cpa, etc)

• Writing – From website copy to ads, it is essential to be a good writer

• Video creation – Becoming a necessity in the new internet

• Fundamental Marketing Skills – You need to be a good marketer in the first place!

And as you can imagine, each of these skills has numerous subsets of skills and specializations. And as your business grows, you’ll find you need more and more skills… such as employee/project/time management.

Here are just a few of the reasons I believe eCommerce to be the better alternative for the rest of the world:

Quick Start – You don’t need many of the skills listed above to get started. You could start an online store that looks great using a hosted shopping cart like 3dCart or Volusions.

Diversification - Even if you are making some money in other avenues of internet marketing, you should always work on diversifying your income streams enough so that if one goes down it doesn’t wipe you out.

Liquidity - Online stores are seen as much more of a “real business” than other online businesses, especially to those that are unacquainted with online marketing. Imagine an older retired couple looking to buy an “online business” and you are trying to explain how your amazon affiliate empire works? That’s a tough sale. But if you had a simple online store with easy to show numbers, that’s an easy pitch.

Now I don’t usually advocate the build and sell mentality because I think it keeps people from putting their all into a project. But, knowing that your store is an asset that can easily prove its income gives you a feeling of financial security.

Tracking - While MOST other methods for making money online have the ability to track and analyze every aspect of the project, there are times when you just can’t see everything. Take for instance privately rank affiliate programs – some do not offer ways to fully track your efforts.

With eCommerce there are tons of applications and services that can help you track everything from ad to checkout.

Better Margins – You usually find that you can make better profit margins with an online store VS. something like an affiliate website. This really depends on the market, but don’t forget to factor in the time you put into running the store and/or what you pay others to work for you.

New Lead Sources – Typically yours leads are generated from just a handful of sources/methods based on your specialization. Adsense? You’re probably relying solely on click thru traffic either from the search engines or some other marketing (articles, videos, etc).

With eCommerce sites you can bring in leads from all the old traditional online marketing methods but you are also privy to many other methods. Price comparison sites, ebay, amazon, your own affiliate program, direct mail, etc etc. And let’s not forget the most powerful lead source you have … REFERRALS.

Now I know I’m going to get some smart-ass that says something like “Well a lot of those are available to other online businesses, not just eCommerce”. True, but they lend themselves to eCommerce much easier.

Viewing Videos in Higher Quality

Some Youtube video giνe you the option tο switch to а higһer quality; however, you can сheck if a video іs available in а higһer quality format by appending ‘&fmt=18′(stereo, 480 х 270 resolution) or ‘&fmt=22′(stereo, 1280 x 720 гesolution) fοr even higher quality.

Embedding Higher Quality Videos

While tһe аbove trick woгks fοr playback, іf yoυ want to embed high quality videos you need to аppend “&ap=%2526fmt%3D18″ and “&ap=%2526fmt%3D22″ to the embed url.

Link to a Specific Moment in a Video

Tired of watching the fіrst 3 minutes 22 secοnds of a video before thө goοd stuff start? What if үou could makө it start AT 03:22? You arө in luсk. All you have to do is add #t=03m22s (#t=XXmYYs fοr XX мins and YY seconds) tο the end οf thө URL.

Hide the Search Box

The ѕearch box appeaгs when you hover oνer an embөdded video. To һide the search box add ‘&showsearch=0′ tο thө embed uгl.

Embed Only a Portion of the Video

Just append ‘&start=30′ to skip first 30s of the video. In general you can modify the value after start= to the number of seconds you want to skip the video for.

Autoplay an Embedded Video

Use this at your own risk! Normally when you embed a Youtube video and load the page, the player is loaded and it sits there waiting for you to hit the play button. You can make the video play automatically by adding ‘&autoplay=1′ to the url part of the embed code.

Loop an Embedded Video

Not sure why you would want to do this but if you append ‘&loop=1′ the video will start again without user intervention after it reaches the end.

Disable Related Videos

Related videos can not only be annoying but they can steal your visitors attention and possibly lead them away from your store! Add ‘&rel=0′ to the end of the url part of the embed code and you just turned off the related video suggestions!

Bypass Youtube Regional Filtering

Some videos arө only available in certain paгts of the ωorld. Your IP Addгess is used to determine yoυr locаtion аnd tһen allow or deny access to the video. Change thө υrl from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= to http://www.youtube.com/v/

Download Video

Althοugh nοt inherөntly a youtube trick but useful all tһe same for downloading videos. Just сhange youtube to kickyoutube in the uгl of thө video and it will taĸe you tο kickyoutube.com witһ all the οptions fοr downloading the video you wөre watching.

Honeypotting is an IT term used to describe setting up a trap, called a honeypot, to detect attempts to exploit a system in some manner. The description is vague because honeypots can be setup for just about anything. They are commonly used to detect email spammers, network hacking attempts, open proxies, etc. But I’ve developed a new method for honeypotting that isn’t just a detection method, it’s actually beneficial to your OWN marketing efforts.

Before I get into the actual method, let’s first talk about blog comment spam.

We all know that comment spam on blogs is rampant on the internet. This is what lead to the creation of the NOFOLLOW html tag. But all comment spam is not created equal. Some commend spam is meant just to gain a backlink, while others is left in a promotional way to generate buzz about your site.

The most insidious type of comment spam is created through automation. Spammers will use automated tools to scrape lists of blogs and then comment to them in mass. These comments are usually totally unrelated to the blog post and add nothing at all to the post. Delete. I call these type1 spammers.

The  type2  blog spammer will hire outsourced employees from other countries to hunt down blogs that fit specific criteria and post comments to them. Depending on the skill of the employee, these comments can range from generic garbage (Hi, I like your site.), semi-related but grammatically hideous, all the way to an actual intelligent response with a link cleverly woven into the comment. The latter is fairly rare.

But this bring us to the last type of comment; one left by a SMART spammer – the type3. Smart comment spam has the qualities of being relevant, 100 words or more and grammatical correct with the link cleverly woven into the comment. They also tend to appear more on higher PR pages because of the time involved  with creating these comments, the spammer wouldn’t waste it on low PR sites.

These types of comments have a much higher published and stick rate because they are less offensive to the blog owner. From my standpoint, if someone leaves 100 words of FREE content on my blog that is relevant, I’ll allow them to squeeze in a backlink so long as the linked site isn’t offensive. (Most whitehats are still type3 spammers)

Now onto how we use this.

We’ve determined that a honeypot is a trap designed to appear as an irresistibly easy to exploit system. For my method,  blog posts on your own high PR blogs that appear open to comments are going to be the honeypot. I emphasis the use of this method with higher PR blogs because we want to try and attract type 3 comment spammers, not just the previous two.

The first thing you will want to do is remove all comment spam protection from your blog. Any plugins, Akismet and Spam-Free for wordpress, and any captcha systems as well. We want to blog to appear completely open for comments. The next step is to be sure you have two or 3 comments on a few of your higher PR blog posts and that at least one of them has an outbound link in the comment. (You can create the comments yourself if you want and link to another one of your own sites.) Finally, be sure that ANYONE can leave a comment but that all comments are held for moderation before being posted. I also turn off the email notification because I don’t want to be emailed every time a spammer leaves a comment on one of my blogs.

The trap is set. Now all you need to do is wait.

Depending on the popularity of your blog it could take just a few days for you to amass a lot of comments. Check the blog comments section every few days and when you have a good many there it’s time to start sifting through them. This is the only real work involved with this method, at least until you act upon the information gathered – but we’ll get to that in a moment.

As you are looking through your comments you want to pay close attention to the IP address that the comment originated from. If your site was hit repeatedly by the same IP address, you know this person was using automation and that they are probably type1 or type2 spammers. These comments can usually be disregarded.

Now we want to move onto looking for diamonds in the rough by trying to locate any type3 comments. If you find a comment that looks like a type3, visit the URL they are trying to leave a link to. What’s the PR of that site? What’s the PR of the homepage? Chances are pretty good that if the site has PR, then they have been doing a decent job of backlinking. Now comes the fun part.

*Alternative Method for Market Samurai Users*
If you have Market Samurai then we can make the above process much easier. Just make a list in notepad of all the URLs that the comment spammers have tried to link to. Just follow the instructions below adding customer URLs into MS under the SEO competition tag. Uncheck all filter boxes at the top except PageRank. When you generate results you will automatically see the PR of all the sites.

We’re now going to reverse engineer the spammers website to find where they are getting links from. Since we already know that they are using spamming techniques to get backlinks, we know that we can just as easily leave smart comments in the same locations they have and most likely get a link from that site as well. We’ve basically just let the spammer do the grunt work and leveraged that for our own marketing. Sneaky huh? But it gets better.

At this point you could go in several directions. You could use automation to comment spam the list of sites you found when looking at the spammer’s own backlinks. Or you could manually comment on each site. But I prefer to segment the sites into those that are high quality and those that are not, allowing me to use automation on the low quality and hand write the comments for the higher quality sites.
So how the hell do I determine which sites are high or low quality? Well I use the nifty little all purpose tool called Market Samurai. If you don’t have it, click the banner on the right and go get yourself a free trial. (I’m sure there are other tools that will do the same thing but MS makes it fast and easy.)

Go ahead and open up Market Samurai and create a new project. Click on the SEO competition tab on the left. Uncheck all the filter boxes at the top except PageRank. Click Add custom URLs at the bottom right. In this box we are going to enter the URLs that the spammer was trying to get links to in his comment spam. You should enter the domain name (without www.), the full name (with www.) AND the actual URL (if different than the homepage).

Now there is  small down arrow to the right of each URL that you can click on. When you click it a bar drops down under the URL and you’ll see a button for PR Analysis to the left. What this will do is download a list of backlinks pointing to these URLs and automatically gather the PR of each backlink. Now you can see where the spammer has gotten “easy” backlinks and what PR each site was.

And there you have it, a list of easy places to get backlinks and the PR for each. You can now download the list as CSV a segment them as you wish. I’ve found several PR6 sites and 1 PR7 EDU using this method. And keep in mind, save these lists as they can be used over and over for all your projects.

The idea behind Favicon usage is simple, you want people to associate an image with your website. As a matter of fact, the more associations you can get people to make with your online store, the more “stickiness” you have created with that customer. They also make a site look more professional (when done properly) and can really be a good finishing touch to an already well designed store. But you can also display a personality and tone with this small 16 by 16 pixel image. Oh, did I mention that? You only get a 16×16 pixel square to work with when designing your Favicon… that’s not much real estate.

Surprisingly enough, with a little creativity you can come up with a design that fits your store perfectly.  There’s also a pretty neat tool found here: Favicon Generator that will help you in your design efforts. You can start designing from scratch or you can upload an image and it will convert it into something you can start with. If using this feature, I recommend you downsize your images to under 300  pixels and go ahead and make it a perfect square. This will result in the converted image being easier to work with and more closely resembling the original. Also, try and keep the number of colors in the original to a minimum. You may have better luck converting the image to greyscale and working from there, replacing it will color as you design.

If you have already invested in a logo, try and incorporate it into your Favicon to keep your brand marketing cohesive. If your logo is too large to use, try taking just the part of it that commands the most attention. You may consider creating an “alternative” square logo to use in various places across the web and use this as your Favicon as well. Try to keep the design inline with the tone of your website. You’ll find that it is very easy for the image to start looking “cartoonish” and while this may be suitable for a toy site or childrens products, it wouldn’t look right on a more professional site.

Once you are finished with the creation of your Favicon, you’ll need to upload it to the root directory of your store. And that’s it for Favicons, 256 pixels of instant professionalism and brand awareness. Use them on your stores and create something memorable for your visitors.

]]> http://www.ecommercemarketingtips.com/favicons-creating-brand-awareness/feed/ 0 http://www.ecommercemarketingtips.com/developing-customer-profiles/ http://www.ecommercemarketingtips.com/developing-customer-profiles/#comments Wed, 29 Sep 2010 01:46:16 +0000 James http://www.ecommercemarketingtips.com/?p=75 If you are an online retailer, you must be smart with the management of your store. This includes using every tool available to you. The A/B or multi-variate testing capability is an example of a tool you may not be using, but you should be.  If you are a seasoned internet marketer, then you have likely at least heard of this concept. It’s possible you have already used it in the past. It is based upon measuring your promotions for effectiveness. 

You essentially pit two different versions of the same promotion against one another and find out which one customers respond more strongly to. You are looking for the campaign that will generate the most response. Response equals profit.  You are basically testing out new promotional campaigns and ideas to find out which ones are worth your time.  You then use your feedback to create the best ad you can based on the best concept. You use customer feedback to make your decisions.

This approach by itself is extremely powerful and useful. However, what is even more powerful is to boost this feedback with customer profiles. If you are not using profiles, you should be.  Sure, all business keep a generic, typical shopper profile of their customers but these profiles are more advanced. You need customer profiles that will tell you the demographic information about the customer. Basically, you want psycho-graphic information about the person. This will help you figure out why customers do what they do. This in turn helps you predict behavior.

These profiles are the key to building a relationship with your customer. That relationship will translate into business from the customer.  This allows you to tailor your promotional efforts. When you can target promotions to your customers’ needs, then you are positioned to really be successful.  If you are considering an email campaign, then you definitely need these detailed customer profiles to guide you. Otherwise you are just wasting your time.  When you have accurate customer profiles, you can reach amazing results.

These profiles give you insight into your customers and your potential clients.

You have to be able to make market predictions. But you can’t do that without understanding your customers’ lives and needs.  How can you give someone what they need if you do not know what it is? You cannot answer a question if you do not understand what’s being asked.  A lot of people run full speed into the online business world. They just throw out promotions randomly, hoping somehow it will reach the right people.  But customer profiles give you a leg up on everyone else. You can target your marketing efforts.

Your interactions with your customers will be more meaningful to the customer.

You want too relate to your customers. It is important that they know that you understand their lives, and their needs.  You can customize your email messages and promotions if you really understand what they need. Knowing your customers flings the door wide open for you.  In our society, there is always something vying for your time and attention. But your tailored, targeted messages will hit their target.  When your customers know that you know what their lives are about, then you create a bond. They are more likely to come to you first to do business.

You will know more about what to offer and what advantages of your products to highlight.

You have a limited amount of time to get your customer’s attention. You need to know exactly what to highlight and bring to the forefront for your consumer.  True, the product is what it is. Its features are static. But what entices one person, may not draw interest for another person. You have to know what to play up.

Personal finance software can be marketed a number of ways. But you won’t know that without this insight into your customers. How would you know that small business owners would really benefit from this program as well?

You will know which emotional buttons to push in your marketing.

You will want to use psychology as much as possible, since many purchases are emotional ones. You want to know that as you write your letters. You can’t do that without knowing how your customer will respond to what you’re writing.  Your customer profiles allow you to better market your services and products. You can directly reach your customers where they live and where it matters.

You will know more than other markets about what your customers value and appreciate.

When you make your initial marketing campaign, you want to have your entire strategy mapped out. In fact, when you are putting a product onto the market, you should have your entire campaign mapped out.  Customer profiles help you make market predictions, which are the key to staying in the black with your profits.

Too often, companies simply report the weekly numbers because it’s “what we’ve always done”; there’s no thought or understanding of how to turn that data into a goldmine of opportunities that could lead to some significant income growth – carting ratios, for example, are blandly recited with no potential impact analysis having been performed nor any examination of the root-cause of any changes.

You must, at all costs, avoid this danger. Metrics are about more than just seeing how you’re doing – smart metrics is about a deep understanding of the why of your company’s performance. All those numbers and ratios should be able to point you towards a plan that with greatly improve your overall performance. Look beyond that “aren’t we doing great” notion and start asking some tough questions about what your data is telling you:

Learn the Typical Ratios for Your Market

You may be feeling pretty good that your cart-to-visit ratio is 6%, but if that ratio is, on average, much higher for others in your industry than you’re not capturing all the business you could be. This can also apply to checkout-abandonment ratios – if yours is 70% and the industry average is much lower, then you need to start asking why yours are so high. Remember, numbers are nice but they can’t help you until you place them in the proper context.

Why are My Metrics Where They Are?

Once you understand that your metrics are higher or lower than the industry average, you need to ask “why” your numbers are better or worse than your competition – it may be a reflection of the lead-generation technique you used, the construction of your web site, the types of offers you have or some combination of these factors. Let’s say you notice that your checkout-abandonment rate is quite a bit higher than average – before you can resolve the problem, you’ll need to determine if it’s a slow server response time, high shipping rates, lack of payment options or some other issue that has led you to this point. It’s a lot like being a doctor – before you can develop a cure, you need to identify the problem.

Why is This Metric Changing So Dramatically Over Time?

Understanding any significant changes to a metric that occur over an extended time period is one of the important elements in building a successful company. For some markets, if you see a dramatic increase in your orders-to-visits conversion rate, it may mean that there’s been a shift in your competitor’s pricing, and you may be loosing out on an opportunity to bring in more money by charging too low a price. Or if you start to see a large decline in your cart-to-visit ratios, you might be experiencing an increase in unqualified traffic; this could be a real sign of trouble if the source for this traffic is a paid source.

How Can I Turn My Metric Research into a Sustainable, Profitable Plan?

The first step in creating profitable, system-wide improvements for your business is to understand the real reasons behind the changes in your metrics and each of the elements that can impact the data. Let’s take a look at the high checkout-abandonment rates again, and say that six possible causes had been identified. Beginning with the easiest and least costly problem to solve, you can work your way through the list to find the real problem.

One of the best features of e-commerce is that it’s very easy to measure successes and failures. But all that measuring and data gathering can’t help you if you don’t understand how to use it – if you don’t identify problems and opportunities, you’ll never be able to fully develop your company’s potential.

Now that you have these five customers in your sales funnel and on your radar you can now begin to promote additional products to them on the “back-end”, using your newsletter to inform them of new product videos, promos and industry related information. Now let’s say just three of these customers comes back and buy a pair of tap dancing shoes that cost $100. These shoes cost you $50, so your net profit on each pair of shoes is $50 which totals $150 from the three sales. You little PPC campaign is now running with a positive profit since you spend $200 but made $250 altogether. And since shoes wear out fairly quickly, you can assume that these three customers will buy again once a year.

Now let’s break this down futher and get to all the components, then I will show you how to use this scenario to calculate your own customer profitability and lifetime value.

• 5 customers buy the initial DVD and then 3 become long term customers buying 1 pair of shoes per year for 3 years
• Your profit on the shoes is $50 per sale on average
• Initial PPC ad spend cost you $200
• It cost you $33.40 to bring in each customer which is your initial loss divide by # of customers ($100 / 3 = $33.4)

We can now take these numbers and plug them into this formula for lifetime customer value: (Years) X (# of Items Sold) X (Profit) – (Cost to Acquire)

From our above example the lifetime value of this consumer would be (3) x (1) x ($50) – ($33.4)= $116.16

Take this and apply it to the entire group of customers that you received from your initial $200 campaign and you will have a lifetime net profit of $348.48

Social media takes “word of mouth” to a whole new level. Frequented by millions daily, these sites have the power to start a lovingly viral buzz or a damning firestorm of negative opinion about your store. Those that know how to market in this medium can sway the outcomes in their favor.

To get started you should create a company account at Facebook, Twitter and possibly Myspace. With facebook it would be best to create a fan page for your store and then a personal page for youself. (This is where you hardcore loyal customers will find you). You can market your page to all previous customers and offer special promotions here. It’s a great way to get people to share your information with others. Remember, the goal with these platforms is to get your name out there.

The next step up will be twitter. This service will take more work to get followers but could be well worth it, allowing you to blast out short and sweet updates to thousands of people at a time. One good method for getting more followers is to offer something of value to make people actually WANT to follow you. For instance, an ecommerce store selling soccer equipment may keep a live update of tweets covering soccer games all over the world. The purpose of the feed is to keep everyone up to date on happening in the soccer world, but on the back-end you are occasionally marketing your store’s products.

Here’s a last thought. Be sure to research all the available social media sites and determine which one has the biggest concentration of potential customers. This could take a few hours or a few days but can mean the difference between investing or wasting your time.

Traditional SEO tells us to target high volume / low competition keywords for the best traffic. While this approach works well for internet marketers just trying to get traffic, for ecommerce marketing you need to be a bit more selective. We aren’t trying to cast the biggest net and then throw back everything we didn’t want, not yet anyway.

Unless you have found just an amazing niche with good volume and no competition, your SEO efforts will be better spent going after very targeted keywords and phrases. Picture your stores products and offerings as a pyramid. At the base we have the broad category your store fits in. Next up we have subcategories that your products are grouped into. Then we have the actual products themselves. And finally we have the super-long-tail, product type and attributes listing.

Using that image let’s look at what an ecommerce store retailing athletic clothing would look like. First we have the broad category; athletic clothes. Then we have basket ball jerseys category which has the option of men’s or women’s. Finally we drill down to size and color to end with the long tail of “women’s blue basketball jersey size 2″.

This is where you should start your SEO marketing. Perhaps not THAT granular, but you get the idea. If you focus on ranking for women’s blue basketball jersey then picking up traffic for the next level will be easier. And obviously the competition will be less stacked for such a search term.

Now this isn’t to say that you should totally disregard the broad category. You would still want to slowly build links to this example site for the term “athletic clothing” but a good rule of thumb is to keep it split 50/50 between long categories and the broad terms.

Another positive effect of this is that your site will get more natural backlinks over time pointing to your internal pages as well as your homepage. Overtime, as your ecommerce site starts to dominate the sub categories you can shift your focus to a more broad search.

Over-Planning: Believe it or not, you actually can take too much time in the planning phase for you e-store. Once you have performed your initial marketing research, have idea of your numbers and a solid goal, you should move forward and get your store online. Overhead usually isn’t that much for an online store so get it out there and let the search engines find it. Just be sure you have analytics in place before you launch so that you can measure the impact of all of your future marketing efforts.

Under-Planning: Ok, so there are some things that can lead to a very bad store launch if not planned out. These would be the three I mentioned above, marketing research, numbers and a goal. Each of these will provide answers to the following questions:

• Is there a reasonable demand for the products you will carry?
• Where are the best traffic sources? Search Engines? Forums? Blogs?
• Are people actually buying these products online?
• How stiff is the competition? What are their prices? Can you compete with their price?
• What should your profit margin be?
• What are the possibilities for expansion or cashing out?

Once you have these questions answered you should know if you have and ecommerce store worth pursuing.

Since the dawn of the smart phone revolution marketers have been trying to reach mobile users with their marketing via apps, direct messaging and in-program advertising. While most attempts have been fleeting, some companies have scored big hits and further improved their marketing advantages. In addition, mobile marketing is growing by leaps and bounds every day.

Advertising directly to your mobile customers is evolving as well with many retailers now collecting cell phone numbers and marketing to them just like email lists.  The most common method has until now been broadcasting of SMS (Short Message Service) text messages to your lists about upcoming sales, promotions or just sending a happy birthday message. This has great impact since study show that on average, email advertising has a typical open rate of only 40% while text messages are opened 90% of the time! The medium has again evolved and now MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) messages are the new wave.

Imagine having your list segmented into users who purchased specific items from your online store. You could create a video review of that product, or show a famous person using it, any type of video promotion, and then broadcast that to all the customers who have purchased the product. MMS messages could also be simple audio messages sent to use’s devices.

So which devices are being most used and does it matter? Well it seems the iphone, which previously held the top spot over the last few years is now slowly falling behind the Google android. But, with new laws that will make mobile device “unlocking” legal, you will probably see this start changing direction again. As programming for mobile devices becomes more complex, the issue of browser compatibility could be raised by either of the leading mobile device makers. So far most mobile sites are scaled down mini version of the full site. Since shopping online will always focus on the product, programmers will need to improve how users view product images and videos on mobile devices. Whichever device manufacturer or mobile network increases bandwidth first will most likely gain a larger market share.

One final note, while iPads are mobile devices, they have fully functional browsers and can view any website just as you could on a PC or MAC, so these aren’t the type mobile devices that would fall under mCommerce.

The advantage of an online business is that you can sell a complete selection of products, with no limits on space or inventory. You can sell products you stock or products that wholesalers drop ship for you. For instance, an auto parts store can only carry so many parts in their warehouse, but online your can display and sell the entire catalog of car parts available.

An online business is typically more automated and more efficient as well. Online marketing is highly targeted and ultimately ecommerce overhead costs are much lower. On the flip-side, if not managed well, e-commerce costs can skyrocket and sink your business.

An ecommerce store cannot benefit from people passing by and seeing your shop. A well planned marketing strategy is needed to get visitors to your store. However, just like an offline business, you want to attract customers that are actually interested in the type of products you sell. It is essential that you build a relationship with your customers to offer them valuable information and products on the back-end.

Just like any other business, if you do not plan, forecast and budget properly you will struggle to make profits with your online store. The key here is to invest wisely and put your time and effort into the e-commerce marketing strategies that yield the best returns. It is a sad statistic but some 97% of ecommerce websites make $0 profit in the first few years. The first ecommerce store I brought online made over $2,000 profit in its first month.

What was my secret? I already had a solid marketing plan in place and all I had to do was “flip the switch” and launch my ecommerce site. Of course I spent three months prior to launch designing, testing and tweaking, but the results were a great ecommerce store that has continually increased its profit each month.