John has a community for small business owners and marketers that he calls the Workbench. It’s a place where members can go to get ideas and tips and share their ideas with others. Recently on John’s blog, he asked his readers to share their business stories through video or audio, which he would then upload to the Workbench. A lot of business owners have joined John ’s Workbench and added their videos and podcasts, article marketing tips and ideas to their community.

This seemed like an idea worth sharing with our blog readers, and especially our MightyMerchant customers, as I know so many of you have very interesting stories behind your businesses and have a lot of personal interests that drive your success. Check out some of the other business inspiration videos and consider adding yours to the site.

Your video doesn’t have to be fancy. You can just point the camera at yourself and start talking! Share your story, ideas, or your passions and John will upload it to his Workbench so that others can view it. You’ll get some video you can use elsewhere on your site or blog, post to YouTube perhaps, and get a little traffic from the folks who drop by John’s Workbench.

Tags: business, story, video, business, ideas, tips, upload, video, host, video

There are a few people who seem to have an innate knowledge of the mechanics behind those glossy webpages we love to surf. They don’t mind spending the extraordinary amount of time and effort it takes to get professional results. Those are the people who’ll tell you you’re better off buying the software. Without their training and experience, you’re treating your business like a DIY project. I’m going to give you the same advice you’ve heard from friends the world over. “Save yourself the headache and hire a professional!” Personally, I’d rather enter a few dozen lines of copy, download an image or two, and go to lunch. I’m happy to let the professionals do the work for me. At the end of the day, I’ll total the sales and smile. Teh nice.

I shared my experience comparing hosted web solutions and desktop applications in detail on the MightyMerchant website.

Paige Pryor joined MightyMerchant in June as the new Account and Project Manager and self-appointed Environmental Coordinator. Her background and experience in marketing, sales, and database administration led her to web-hosted solutions as a convenient and cost-efficient method of relaying products and services to customers.

A brand is the entire picture of how you present your company to the world. It encompasses your job and how you do it, and your perceived value to every potential customer. An effective brand means that when you speak with a potential customer you can immediately move past the “so what do you do?” discussions and get right to the real issues–namely how your business can solve that customer’s problem. They already know what you do, because that’s part of your brand and message.

MightyMerchant has clarified our own messages of how our name relates to the services we offer, which has changed in some important ways since we opened up shop 12 years ago. Customers who have been with us for several years were first introduced to us through our corporate name, Datahost. We built our business around the MightyMerchant Ecommerce platform, and now we have a new marketing division, HEROWeb. Where does all of this fit into our branding?

We have always been involved in all of the varied aspects of life on the Internet: web design, website hosting, online marketing and search engine optimization, programming, and ecommerce. With such a wide range of services, we have needed to craft specific message for our different audiences - and we have several of them! Successful branding means that you know your target audience, you know the many different “buying personas” of the people you are likely to do business with, and you fine-tune your message for each one. It’s not always easy to do that, and the message often requires frequent adjustment as your business grows and changes.

When we formed our business in 1996, we called ourselves Datahost. The name conveyed the services of a hosting company, which we were, but we quickly grew into much more than that. Our web design and hosting business was built on the success of our MightyMerchant Ecommerce platform, which is the full-featured platform that we developed to offer shopping carts and richly integrated services for those seeking easy and customizable ecommerce websites or content management sites. For customers looking for an ecommerce platform, leading with the name MightyMerchant made sense and continues to make sense.

But like many companies, our offerings and business relationships evolved. Over time, we found that the ecommerce platform was irrelevant and confusing to some of our very important customers. While most of our sites are in fact ecommerce, many are not. Those potential customers that did not sell things online were not looking for a product named MightyMerchant, because the “merchant” aspect did not fit their business model, and hence turned some of our prospects against us. After focusing on our local message of delivering custom websites, ecommerce or not, along with full-service online marketing services, we created HEROWeb Marketing and Design. This division of our business is focused on delivering custom marketing strategy and website design.

So now we are three–Datahost, our corporate name; MightyMerchant, our ecommerce platform; and HEROWeb, our marketing strategy and design company. If you call our office, you’ll be greeted by one of our friendly staff thanking you for calling “HEROWeb and MightyMerchant.” We’re the same people we’ve always been, with the same commitment to incredible customer service. We will still get to know you and your business’ needs and sculpt a website you’ll love. Then when you are ready for marketing services, we’ll still be here for you, the same people you already know, in the same office, with the same phone number! We’re very happy to be able to provide these many varied but complementary services to all of our clients, and though our name may be new to you, the quality you’ve come to expect from MightyMerchant is still there, front and center!

Tags: web, design, website, hosting, online, marketing, SEO, search, engine, optimization, programming, ecommerce

Vinjamuri spends time with the people behind such successful brands as Columbia Sportswear (Gert Boyle), cragigslist (Craig Newmark), J. Peterman (John Peterman), Clif Bar (Gary Erickson), Baby Einstein (Julie Aigner-Clark), Burt’s Bees (Roxanne Quimby), and The Art of Shaving (Myrian Zaoui and Eric Malka). Some of our best-known brands were born after what may seem like little more than luck, but after getting to know these people through Vinjamuri’s observant prose, we can begin to think the way they did when they experienced their business epiphany, and hopefully distill their wisdom into a strategy that can be used in developing our own brands.

Vinjamuri befriends each of his subjects, spending weekends at their home and shadowing them on the job. We get a sense of their business acumen as well as their mistakes and how they learned from them and used them to become stronger. One chapter focuses on John Peterman, the founder of the J. Peterman Company. He built his mail-order business into $70 million in sales and reinvented the catalog as we know it, with a catalog wasn’t called a “catalog” at all.

Peterman referred to it as an Owner’s Manual, and it was sized differently than other catalogs of the day. These are just two of the “rules of marketing” that Peterman intentionally broke. Rather than the usual product specs, the Owner’s Manual described the items in romantic and exotic settings, almost as characters in their own short stories. This approach resonated with the people who actually owned the items, and was an attractive source of novelty to people who discovered the catalog through word of mouth or Peterman’s direct mailings, which only served to increase their popularity.

Peterman and his small but cultishly popular catalog business was forced into the mainstream by the buffoonish caricature of him as Elaine’s boss on the TV show ‘Seinfeld’ starting in 1995. While most business owners can only dream of getting that kind of publicity, ironically it damaged him in a fundamental way. In 1999, Peterman went bankrupt at a time when millions of people heard his name each week during prime time television. Through conversations with Peterman, Vinjamuri helps us understand that this happened for the very reason that his company did not follow the “traditional” model of what a business was supposed to do and how it was supposed to grow. We also come to understand how Peterman was able to quietly restore his lost cachet and rebuild the empire he lost

What we come to realize is that the people behind the brands were ordinary people just like us, who didn’t follow the rules. For the most part, they had no formal business training so they didn’t know what they were “supposed” to do to market their fledgling companies. They weren’t following the advise of marketing focus groups and big-ticket PR firms, they listened to their own advice; they were the consumers and focus group participants, and they put all of their energy and resources into meeting a specific need they felt needed to be addressed.

Many entrepreneurs got lucky, and took many risks that some people might not be comfortable with. For instance, Gert Boyle gambled her home and her mother’s home to get money for Columbia Sportswear. But the wisdom that leaps off the page for each of these “accidental brands” is that for the most part, these entrepreneurs were convinced that they were going to be successful, and didn’t let any perceived failure stop them. If they didn’t get the idea right the first time, they readjusted and started over.

For anyone interested in how brands are built this is a must-read book. For other small business owners seeking inspiration on how to think for yourselves, follow your own rules, and develop a strategy that might seem to be outside the norm, I highly recommend reading this book.

David Vinjamuri is Adjunct Professor of Marketing at New York University and President of ThirdWay Brand Trainers. Find out more on his website, AccidentalBranding.com.

Tags: Marketing, Books, Books, about, Marketing, Accidental, Branding, Marketing, Strategy

Hero Web can help you formulate an online marketing strategy for your website or business. We will help you articulate your business goals, optimize your on-the-page website content, and look at strategies to increase your online profile through blogging, multimedia, email, or other routes that make sense for you.

As the name suggests, our expertise is available for web design both e-commerce and non, and online marketing strategies including email marketing, blog and forum set up, podcast and other multimedia integration, pay-per-click, analytics and reporting, keyword research, article writing, press releases…anything to increase your online profile and build a solid customer base.

It’s no longer enough just to have a website and sit back and wait for customers to find you, and regardless of where you are…in our local area of Eugene/Springfield, Oregon or beyond…Hero Web can help.
Take a gander at the official press release.

Tags: online, marketing,, seo,, search, engine, optimization,, internet, marketing,, web, marketing

Sam’s Club recently started offering online SEO (search engine optimization) services, including local search marketing, Pay-per-click advertising and web design services along with the pallets of BBQ sauce, paper towels and tomato soup. Truth be told, when I first heard about this late last year I laughed and forgot about it. When it crept back into my consciousness, I realized that with the popularity of these membership stores there are probably a great many people who are considering these services and would like to know if it is a good idea to buy SEO and Internet marketing services this way.

For those of you business owners too busy to read a whole blog post, let me summarize for you thusly, NO! Read on for the details of the why nots.

SEO Is Not A Bulk Commodity

First of all, I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that SEO can’t be purchased as a bulk package deal. Successful optimization requires taking the time to get to know the industry, the site’s needs, the personality of the site’s target customer, and industry-specific keywords. It takes time even for experienced optimizers to make changes and see results.

You can’t get much information about these services without filling out a form, but based on their introductory information, Sam’s Club explains that for $30 a month they will help you “establish a local profile” and submit your site to “the major search engines.” This is only a drop in the bucket of what true professional search engine optimization services offers. If this is all that is done, it is highly unlikely that any site would experience significant gains in their search engine rankings or traffic levels.

Search engine optimization requires an ongoing period of content creation and refinement. Attention must be paid to many different technical details of a site’s structure, which they do not even attempt to address with this service.

Site Submission Isn’t SEO

Sam’s Club is using the LeadConnect service from Innuity to provide the SEO services to their own members. LeadConnect allows businesses to create an online profile with business information that people can search for and find. If this sounds like pretty much the same thing as an online Yellow Pages listing, that’s because it is.

After your profile is built, Innuity promises to submit your website to all the major search engines and Internet Yellow Pages. This is unnecessary! I wouldn’t go quite so far as to call it a scam to offer search engine submission services, but search engines find sites on their own and submission hasn’t been shown to make a difference. Besides, if your site is already listed and appearing on the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, you already know they ‘found’ your site and it doesn’t need to be ’submitted’ even if this did help. One nice thing…if your dashboard (as LeadConnect calls the profile) changes, LeadConnect will automatically update it across all of the services they have submitted it to and you can update it as often as you like. This could be worth $25 a month, but if you hire an SEO professional, managing your online phone book profile is something they would do for you, and how often is your business information going to change anyway?

Also, what happens when you stop paying? They will stop listing your site in these directories, so any traffic you had built up from their submission service is gone.

This service is focused on local search for local businesses,  and local search is definitely important, but it should be considered as part of a larger marketing strategy. Also, yes, people are searching for businesses in their local area, but they are often still using the major search engines and not necessarily online Yellow Pages, so this service may not bring much change in traffic to the business utilizing it.

Sam’s Limited Scope

SEO and everything that is involved in it can be a confusing landscape. It can sometimes be difficult for SEO professionals to effectively convey the many different aspects of site optimization, and the time and effort it takes. There are many different ways of approaching SEO, but calling this limited service SEO and charging only $30 a month for it may make it even harder to explain why all-encompassing SEO work can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars a month.

Conclusion

One good thing that could come of this is a raising of awareness of search engine optimization in general. Many online business owners don’t know what SEO is and aren’t aware that anything can be done to improve their search engine placement. If this service gets people talking about SEO and seeking information about how SEO can help them, that’s a good thing. However, those business owners that become invested in this service and don’t see the results they’re looking for may dismiss any further SEO services completely, thus wasting their money and losing out on potential gains. It’s fine to have an online profile for local search, but that needs to be part of a larger strategy, which this isn’t.

Have you used the Sam’s Club service? Let us know your experience or your thoughts on this in general.

Tags: Sams, Club,, SEO,, SEO, Service,, Website, Marketing,, Internet, Marketing,, Online, Marketing

What’s really going on here? Whether you champion this data sharing or run from it will probably depend on your opinion of Google in general: If you are interested in getting as much free information as possible, this could be a good thing while on the other hand this program will give more powerful site visitor and transactional information to Google and for many people this may be another reason to distrust Google Almighty.

Personally, I’m holding off on making a judgment call until I see more about how the program works and the benefits they say they will provide . . . There’s a long list of good things Google could do with access to this much transaction data but I have too many questions about how useful the data will actually be.

Data Sharing Options

Google is offering the option of sharing your analytics data three ways:

1) With Google products only

This is the most vague option, as Google says sharing information with other Google products (not third-party products) will enhance the services they offer “as they become available,” and of course only businesses that share data get access to the enhanced services. This sounds like Google wants your help improving their services without telling anyone what they’ll get in return.

2) Anonymously with Google products and benchmarking services

The benchmarking service allows customers to compare their data with other sites in their same or similar industry. The service also promises to let you compare your site’s data with unrelated industries. With some in-depth comparisons, you could determine if all sites in your industry are experiencing the same ups and downs in traffic and also provide insight into cross-promotional opportunities with other industries who may be booming while your traffic is flat. The data is not shared with competitors and is anonymized before being shared.

Truth be told, I’m not sure why Google feels like they need to ask permission to do this, as their Privacy Policy already seems like it gives them carte blanche to gather and share user data however they want.

One of the drawbacks I see is that only data from sites that agree to participate will contribute to benchmarks, so the data already seems skewed from the beginning. I have to question how valuable the data will be if only a handful of sites in any industry are participating.

3) No sharing at all

So Google is letting you share a little with some undefined return benefit to you, share a lot with a potential benefit for industry comparison which may or may not be valuable, or not share at all.

What do you all think about this? Does Google really need us to improve its services? Is the return for us worth it?

Tags: google, analytics, data, sharing,, ecommerce, analytics,, site, traffic, tracking

Your Point A is that you are a small business owner and webmaster. Your Point B is that you need content on your website. Get from Point A to Point B faster by creating content using what you already have. Whether you manage an ecommerce website or large informational site or anything in between doesn’t matter. In order to keep yourself in the game, ranking well in the search engines and getting a healthy amount of traffic coming to your site requires that you all play by pretty much the same rules.

What do the engines want? 

The engines do have preferences, and your job is to give it to them. They want freshness. Serve the engines new content to see each time they come your way. They want quality. No keyword stuffing, no spammy content, no content written by word generators. Just real, useful content that is of the highest quality you can provide. They want quantity. It’s not fair but the more pages you have that an engine can index the more they like you. They want links. Links means other sites trust you and want to share with other sites what you have to say. Linkbait content such as videos, podcasts, white papers, newsletters and other content that is useful to people and easily shared provides incentive for people to link to you.

Marketing guru John Jantsch has written a post called “Reduce, reuse, recycle and repurpose,” a slogan which he’s borrowing from the green movement and applying to the notion of  using content you already have to create more online content on your web pages. The post is from February 20, and I’m just reading it today (I’m behind on my blog reading…tell me you’re not?), but this advice never goes out of style. As I was reading it my thought process went something like this: a) Dang, I wish I wrote this post! b) Gee, our readers would find this really useful. c) Heeey, this matches up with advice I had given in recent posts about adding multimedia or other video content. d) I’ll keep the ‘reuse’ theme going by ‘using’ John’s post myself!

So here you go. I highly recommend clicking through to John’s original post, but here’s a tidbit of his advice.

• If you get the same questions over and over again, answer them all in an audio format.
• Take those same questions and turn them into blog posts.

Speaking at an industry event? Record all of your slide presentations and upload them to sites like YouTube and Slideshare.
Check out John’s “Reduce, reuse, recycle and repurpose” post for more easy ways you can utilize content you already have.

Tags: website, ecommerce, seo, search, engine, optimization, content, indexing

Top-level categorization 

There should be clear top-level categories. There could be only a handful or twenty, depending on how much information you have to spread around. The name of the category does make a big difference. If your site offers books, DVDs or other informational how-to products along with your regular product line, you might have one link titled ‘How-To,’ or ‘Media.’ Maybe ‘Books & More.’ The idea is to avoid naming your link something generic like, ‘Stuff.’ The top level category names should be general enough to encompass what you want them to contain but specific enough that customers immediately know what’s there.

Looking at one of our sites, PondBiz.com, their large and successful pond products site lists 24 categories in the left navigation bar. It could be really annoying to have to click through each category and then click again to get to the products or information within. But their site makes good use of another good usability idea, minimizing clicks.

Minimize Clicks

One way to allow for easy, quick navigation is to keep the site structure somewhat ‘flat’ so users don’t have to click many times to get to products.

The PondBiz.com navigation utilizes popout dynamic menus. Mousing over the navigation links reveals new subcategory options, saving a click.

Another of our sites also uses the click-saving technique in a different way. PrewittsWorkWear.com uses an expandable menu. With this option, a little plus sign appears next to the main categories that have subcategories within them. Clicking the plus to the left of ‘Specialty’ reveals sub-menus for ‘Flame-Resistant’ and ‘High-Visibility’ work wear. This does involve an extra click to open the subcategories, but it is another way to keep navigation tighter, and some people don’t like to chase the expandable menus.

Give More Ways to Shop
MightyMerchant’s site manager allows the option to set up different category structures to give visitors more ways to shop. For example, it can be easy to set up Shop by Manufacturer, Shop by Brand, Shop by Season, Special Discounts, or Shop by Theme, as just a few examples.

LearningServicesUS.com is one of our sites with a huge product catalog of educational materials for teachers. They utilize the same dynamic pop-outs for navigation that PondBiz uses, but what I want you to notice on this site is that they have a regular search but also cross-category searches. These narrow down searches by subject, manufacturer, and grade level. If your catalog is huge, or even if it’s not and you just have multiple brands, provide multiple ways for people to find what they’re looking for.

The important thing is to think of the experience for the customer. We want to have navigation that allows customers to have a good experience that makes it easy to find items, but not be split up or mashed together to the point that it’s silly. It doesn’t make sense to have one category with only two or three items inside, and neither does it make sense to have too few categories with many items inside.

Tags: website, usability, web, design, ecommerce, categorization, categories, navigation

The Long Tail Concept

One topic that sometimes escapes people is the ‘Long Tail’ approach to SEO. It’s an important concept in search optimization and one that really forms the basis of a successful natural search optimization effort. Let’s look at what this means.

*Image source: Wikipedia, ‘Long Tail’

The above graph is an example of the concept, with the y-axis being revenue and the x-axis being keyword. The green part of the graph represents the majority of general search terms which comprise the bulk of your revenue. As you trail off into the yellow part of the graph, you see more narrow, focused and specific search terms which also relate to less revenue. In this yellow area, traffic starts to fall off but people are searching for specific items. Get those specific items in front of them, and they’re likely to buy.

Long Tail SEO Example

For example, a seller of backpacks might compose their top list of keywords thusly: backpacks, black backpacks, brown backpacks, rolling backpacks, kids backpacks, and leather backpacks. These are fine, sensible keywords and it makes sense that these might be the most popular search phrases related to backpacks. Optimizing your site for these terms is nothing but smart.

Looking at that Long Tail graph, these would be the keywords in the green part, the ones which will probably make up the bulk of your site’s revenue and searches. But these are also going to be the most competitive words that you’ll have a harder time ranking organically for.

A quick look at the free Google AdWords Tool reveals 140 more related keywords, revealing many more potential keywords to optimize for. These keywords would be in the yellow ‘tail’ of the graph, and while each keywords is associated with less revenue, there are many more search terms in the tail, so that revenue piles up.

The Long Tail Keywords

For backpacks, ‘black mesh and leather water bottle backpack’ is a less popular search term but at the same time is more specific. If someone searches for this term and finds it on your site, they will be much more likely to buy it than someone searching for simply ‘backpacks.’ Another example of a Long Tail search term might be something like ‘rolling camera backpack cell phone pocket.’ A customer searching for this knows what he wants! These are made-up terms, and nothing I made-up could substitute for actual keyword research, but you get the idea.

Applying Long Tail to PPC

Looking at that graph, keywords in the green part are more expensive because they have more search traffic associated with them. The yellow portion represents the numerous low-cost keywords that may actually equal the revenue potential of the expensive, popular keywords if taken together over time. You could spend the bulk of your PPC budget chasing after the expensive big-time words, or you could target the lower-cost words with less competition.

Researching the Long Tail keywords

Paying for top words can be quite costly, and if you’re budgeting for PPC naturally you want to maximize the positive impact on your revenue. A keyword research tool will be your best friend in this regard. MightyMerchant’s article, A Comparison of Keyword Research Tools, is just that, a look at a few top free and subscription keyword tools.

In the absence of a subscription, utilize every free keyword tool you can find, as the data is bound to be different from each one. Keep note of every different permutation that comes up. Keep in mind that some search engines utilize word stemming when they return results and some don’t. So for instance, a search query such as ‘picture frame,’ might return results with the words ‘framer,’ or ‘framing’ in addition to ‘frame.’

One important strategy that people often overlook is to simply ask people what they would really search for. One of our clients, Bruce Berg, who is a wedding photographer here in Oregon, also receives a lot of business from ‘high school senior portrait photography.’ This was the actual search phrase that Bruce pursued for a while, until he met up with some real high school seniors and asked them how they looked for their senior class photographer. When he learned that the popular search phrase was ’senior pics,’ and not ‘high school senior portrait photography’ as he had assumed, it didn’t take him long to be on the first page for that term!

Long Tail Bottom Line

The take-home point is, neglecting less popular search terms=bad. Optimizing for the popular search terms and the less lucrative but less competitive search terms=very, very good.

Tags: ecommerce,, seo,, optimization,, usability,, keywords,, keyword, research,, long, tail

RSS defined

Well, not to make the topic more complicated than it needs to be . . . but there is a little debate over just what RSS stands for. Initially, when it was first introduced in 1999, it stood for ‘Rich Site Summary.’ Now there are a few different ‘flavors’ or versions of RSS, and one stands for ‘RDF Site Summary.’ It is widely accepted that RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and that name pretty well explains what RSS does. RSS is a format using ‘feeds’ to easily share (’syndicate’) content that is frequently updated, such as blogs, news sites, or other media such as podcasts. RSS automatically checks websites for new content, and provides them to the user in the form of excerpts or the full text. This makes it easy for users of RSS to monitor their favorite sites which update often without having to manually check for new content.

Examples of RSS feeds

RSS feeds are so common, there’s a good chance you already use them but just aren’t aware of it. If you have created a personalized home page on Google or Yahoo and automatically receive news, weather reports, or stock quotes, you are receiving those in RSS format.

If you use the Firefox browser, you may have created a Live Bookmark to follow a Craigslist category (hello, free stuff!) or a blog. In that case, the bookmark will update with a number in parentheses to let you there is a new post. This automatic notification is also an RSS feed.

RSS feeds can be set up on a website to pull information from other sites to the first site automatically. Check out MightyMerchant’s Squidoo lens as an example. I have a module set up that automatically displays the title and a short excerpt from the three most recent MightyMerchant eCommerce Blog posts . . . which leads me into a great way to use RSS on your own site.

Uses of RSS

John Jantsch at the Duct Tape Marketing blog wrote about a method of automatically adding content through bookmarking. His video explains it well, but in essence you surf the web finding content that you want to add to your site–something in the news, or mentions of a certain topic, business info, whatever. Tag it using del.icio.us, create a feed, and then take that feed to FeedBurner to publish the content to your site. This pretty simple technique allows you to repurpose info from other sites onto your own site with just a little effort.

The potential for other uses is only limited by your imagination. Anything that can be published in headline or title format is a prime candidate for an RSS feed. Depending on the type of site you have, you could create and publish feeds for any number of things, such as a feed of job openings, new real estate listings, or new forum discussion threads. Calendar events can be published as RSS feeds, as can new listings on eBay or other auction sites. You can even create feeds of photographs, from Flickr or your own site. Think of anything that can be broken down into individual items and you’ve got the raw material for a feed.

Creating feeds

Most blogging platforms like TypePad, WordPress or Blogger automatically generate feeds. This makes it super easy for blog readers to subscribe to feeds of their favorite blog posts, like this one, using the ’subscribe in a reader’ feature that is in our right sidebar (more about this coming up). Knowing how to code in XML makes it pretty easy . . . you just define whatever you want to publish as a list of items, give them a title and description and a link, and you’re halfway there. If coding like this makes your head spin, MightyMerchant can create feeds of your website content for you with a little bit of set up. And of course there are inexpensive tools such as Feed For All or JitBit which allow you to enter your item information and they create the feeds for you. When you have created a feed, you’re ready to publish it.

FeedBurner is the feed publication leader. All you have to do is sign up for FeedBurner account, enter in your site information, and your feed is ready to be distributed. FeedBurner allows for email subscribing to your feeds, automatically notifies directories and aggregators (feed readers) when you publish new content, allows for tagging, and ensures that your feed is readable in any reader no matter what format (remember the ‘flavors’ I mentioned?) it was created in, to help your feed reach a maximum audience. FeedBurner also offers stats that lets you track the number of subscribers to your feed, clicks from your feed, and republications of your feed.

Feed readers

There are many feed reading applications and online services. Popular applications include NewsGator, FeedDemon, and the Firefox Live Bookmarks service I mentioned earlier. Online options include PageFlakes, Netvibes, Bloglines, My Yahoo, or my personal favorite, Google Reader. All of the feeds I subscribe to are compiled where I can easily manage my subscriptions and read them all in one place anytime I want. Thanks to a free utility called Google Gears, I can even read my feeds when I’m offline.

Subscribing to a feed

A great thing about subscribing to information via readers is that when you want to unsubscribe, you just trash the subscription! When you’re ready to break up with the feed, no hearts get broken because you don’t have to provide your email address in the first place. That also means that no one else can sell, rent or otherwise hustle your contact information.

As you’re browsing the ‘net, look for the icons that indicate feeds are present. You may see the standard orange RSS icon on the site or in the browser bar where the site’s address is displayed:

Subscribe in a reader

Or you may see ‘chicklets’ like those below indicating that you can subscribe using your feed reader of choice. Clicking on any of the buttons will take you to the appropriate subscription page for that service.

Tags: RSS, Feed, Icon, Ecommerce, Website, Create, Feed, Use, RSS, What, Is, RSS, About, RSS

Actually, when your ecommerce site is new, a cautious approach to filling orders and shipping is a good idea. For new ecommerce sites considering whether or not to ship internationally, there are a few things to keep in mind which could cause you to avoid shipping internationally or at least delay it until you have more experience and your site is more established.

The two major issues involved in the decision of whether to sell your products internationally are order/credit card fraud, and shipping costs. If your business is based in the United States and you decide to sell internationally, it is likely only a matter of time before you are faced with a fraudulent order. That’s not to say that fraudulent orders don’t originate in the United States, because of course they do, but there are a few reasons why overseas orders are particularly problematic.

Price

One of our new sites, LearningServicesUS.com, sells educational software for teachers. As the site owners were preparing to get their site ready to go live, they were investigating international shipping options and discovered that the shipping to Brazil for one item would be over a thousand dollars! Probably not realistic to consider shipping at that rate. After discussing the options with LearningServicesUS, the verdict was that after they build up clients and sales that they would revisit the international shipping issues and reconsider later. In general, we wouldn’t advise new ecommerce sites to offer international sales, partly for this reason of exorbitant costs, and also because order fraud is much more rampant overseas.

Lack of enforcement

Many developing and Third-World countries don’t and can’t allocate the resources necessary to properly monitor fraud, track fraudulent activity online, and pursue and prosecute thieves. There’s just no money for these tasks. Additionally, the market for stolen credit-card numbers is most active outside of the United States. If you do offer overseas shipping, you may want to consider avoiding orders from certain high-risk countries where fraud is known to be a major problem. Countries such as Romania, Latvia, Belarus and other Eastern European countries have high fraud risks, as does Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana, countries in southern Asia (Phillipines, Thailand, Malaysia) and Middle Eastern countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya). *

What you can do to avoid fraud

It’s wise to have some internal checks in place on your ordering system. These suggestions for protecting yourself from fraudulent orders hold true even for domestic orders, but are especially important if you do decided to offer international shipping.

Avoid shipping to post office boxes. United States Postal Service (USPS) shipping rates are more affordable for overseas shipping when compared to UPS or FedEx, for instance, but USPS can’t track overseas packages and postal service in the destination country may be unreliable.

Compare the credit card billing address to the shipping address. For an overseas order, insist that they match.

Hand review each order over a certain amount. Pick an amount that makes sense for your business and manually review all orders over that amount. If you normally get orders averaging only$100, a $250 order may ring some alarm bells. Consider calling all customers who place orders above this set amount to personally verify their orders. Depending on your product and sales volume, maybe a $500 order would seem suspicious. Just keep in the back of your mind that a “too good to be true” expensive order really may be too good to be true.

Do a BIN look-up. The Bank Identification Number, or BIN, is the first six digits of a credit card. These numbers identify the bank that issued the credit card. The free service at http://all-nettools.com/toolbox, financial allows you to enter the BIN numbers to determine the issuing bank. It’s worth investigating if the issuing bank is located in a country other than where the order is originating.

*source: Scribd

Tags: ecommerce, website, overseas, sales, international, shipping, internationally

Present a professional appearance - This is probably the hardest to define but perhaps the most important. Often a site just “doesn’t look right,” possibly due to a clashing color scheme, too many flashing and whirling animations, misspellings and poor grammar, or just a tone that is “too commercial.” Use clear language and a familiar navigation. You only have a few seconds in which to impress upon a potential customer that you are trustworthy, and if your site doesn’t meet expectations it’s only too easy to click away and go to the next one.

Display your guarantee - Guarantees give customers peace of mind. There’s no doubt in your mind that you are a legitimate business that sells quality products you stand behind, right? Give your customers that same confidence with a guarantee. Place the guarantee on your home page for all to see, as well as include it on the order now, view cart and check out pages.

It makes sense to display guarantees and credibility indicators near the actions that they are most closely related to. Credibility indicators are affiliations with or endorsements by trusted companies or trade association such as Better Business Bureau Online, TRUSTe, and Hacker Safe. These should be displayed on your check out pages as well as home page.

Testimonials - Include positive customer testimonials throughout your site. If the testimonial is from a customer with a website, link to them so people can click through. I have been amazed in the past to look at sites offering search engine optimization and marketing services, promising incredible results and providing testimonials that don’t link to the customer’s sites! That makes their claims really hard to believe. If you have a testimonial that mentions the ease of ordering, responsive customer service, or the ease with which a return or exchange was made, consider adding that to the order page for some extra reassurance. [MightyMerchant’s article Gathering and Using Testimonials has more info about this topic.]

Contact info– Prominently link to your contact information, official company address, and customer support phone number and other support information. Include your support telephone number on the check-out page. I’m a big fan of About Us pages to give a sense of the people behind the products, and I think they engender trust.

Privacy policy - Include a statement outlining how personal information will be used, or not used.

“What will happen next” statements - Let people know what to expect before they complete an action. Let them know if they will they receive an email or phone call, what the expected delivery date is, and any other pertinent information.

Prominently display shipping prices and policies. It stretches the limits of acceptability when these appear to be hidden or choices in shipping costs aren’t offered.

And finally, avoid unexpected redirects to another site. Link out when you have to in order to provide complete and necessary information, and have the link open in a new pag. In the event that this is not possible for some reason, provide a warning message that people will need to leave the site.

These simple elements combine to give potential customers a high-quality experience on your site, which will in turn reflect how comfortable they are giving you their money. As your website’s usability works together to reduce customer anxiety, you should see an attendant rise in your sales or other conversions.

Tags: ecommerce, website, design, optimization, usability, reduce, customer, anxiety, increase, sales

To those of you who have never utilized the services of Google Video or YouTube, the process might seem intimidating. I’m here to tell you that it’s actually quite easy, so if you have ever had the idea to add some video content to your website or blog, there should be nothing holding you back. Let’s take a look at how the process works and why you might want to use video.

Adding Streaming Media

Streaming video or audio files are sent in compressed form over the Internet. The file is played as it arrives, in almost real time. With the advent in recent years of large web content providers such as YouTube and Google Video, the equipment and infrastructure necessary to serve huge quantities of video and audio at little or no cost is in place and provided free for the general public to use in almost any way they like. [Note-As I write this, I just learned via TechCrunch today that Yahoo has relaunched Yahoo Video with some changes to the service. Instead of offering only user-generated content, Yahoo Video is now displaying videos from other Yahoo properties music, movies, TV, news and sports.]

Here is how the process works:

1. Set up an account with a streaming media provider, such as Google Video, Yahoo! Video, or YouTube.
2. Create a video, using basic video recording equipment. For marketing purposes, the video should be of as high a quality as you can afford.
3. Upload your video to your account, using the service’s terms of use. There will be instructions to guide you through the upload process. It’s usually just a click or two, no different than uploading a jpeg image.
4. The service provider will typically review the video for appropriate content, resulting in a short delay before the video is made available to you to post publicly.
5. Some services allow the videos to be set to ‘private,’ so only users you invite can view the videos. In order to post your video on your website or blog, you must allow the video to be public, to be shared, or to be ‘embedded.’
6. The streaming media provider will generate a code or URL to display your video stream. This code can be pasted right into your WordPress blog through the ‘upload video’ feature, or added to your website for other uses.
7. There is a little bit of setup work involved on our end to include the video stream on your website, but typically, it can be accomplished in less than 30 minutes

One of our clients, DenLorsTools.com, sells automotive tools and supplies and mechanics equipment. They created a series of videos which are viewable on YouTube and on their site. Over the past 6 months, their video “Bench Bleeding a Master Cylinder” has been viewed more than 6,000 times. Check it out for yourself by going to YouTube.com and doing a search for “DenLors Tools.” Other videos include Volt Tester Tool, and Using the Robinair 34700 A/C Machine.

On DenLorsTools.com, the videos are placed in the “Tech Articles” category, where one of the most-watched videos is “Honda and Acura Timing Belt Tips, Crank Pulley Tool.”

Marketing benefits of video

Obviously, the primary benefit is free advertising! Each time someone views DenLors’ videos, they’re getting a message like, “Free shipping $99 and up at DenLors Tools.com.” or information about the various products they sell and pricing. This is permission-based marketing at its best. The people viewing his videos are choosing to watch them, they’re interested in the subject already, and all DenLors Tools owner Dennis has to do is put the message in front of them.

Dennis explained some of the benefits he has seen from including video: “Customers do mention the videos when they call and we have noticed an increase in sales on some of the products featured in the videos. We even had a salesman from the manufacturer of the Honda crank pulley tool (Powerbuilt) contact us to say he saw it on YouTube and that it was a great idea.”

Ideas for integrating video into your site’s content

The popularity of video sites like YouTube can’t be underestimated. People turn to videos for entertainment and information. There are lots of ‘how to’ type videos on YouTube already, so it’s natural that people would check there for ‘how to’ information on auto repair and tools, like what Dennis has created.

What can you offer? A tour of your facility? The making of a hand-crafted object? How to use or install one of your products? Before and after project images?

The possibilities really are endless.

Tags: multimedia, video, streaming, YouTube, Google, Video, hosting, ecommerce, websitestreaming-video

Now the MightyMerchant blog has a “Subscribe By Email” feature. Simply go to the blog, and on the right side enter in your email address. You will then receive excerpts of every blog post, right in your inbox. If you choose to register, you will have access to an options screen allowing you to select whether you want to receive excerpts or the full blog post, and whether you prefer it in html or just plain text. You also have the option of subscribing to only receive posts contained within certain categories of your choosing, like link building or SEO and Site Optimization.

Thanks for reading the MightyMerchant eCommerce Blog, now delivered right to your inbox. (If you don’t receive the confirmation email that you have registered, check your spam folder.)

Got a topic you think would make a great blog post? Let me know.

Tags: blog, email, sign, up, mightymerchant, ecommerce, blog

Normally, striving to give a potential customer personal attention would be considered a good thing, but I came across a site yesterday that took that goal a little too far, and sacrificed their website usability and the customer experience in the process.

One of our clients, InnocraftDesigns.com, is a full-service home remodeling company that specializes in CAPS certified “Aging In Place” home accessibility remodeling. This means that they work with aging seniors to remodel their home with walk-in showers, safety bars in the bathroom, doorway widening for wheelchair access, and things like that to allow them to continue living in their own home as they age. Inno-Craft Designs is a local dealer for EZ Access ramps (www.homecareproducts.com). Installing wheelchair ramps is a big part of the company’s accessibility remodeling.

As I was making an effort to build some incoming links for this client, I checked out the EZ Access website. As a dealer for their products, I wanted to make sure that EZ Access was linking to my client. On the home page there is a “Find A Dealer” search button, which of course I clicked on.

Instead of taking me to a page of “locate by State” or “enter your ZIP code” or something like that which I was expecting, I am taken to a form entitled “Information Request,” with first name, last name, phone number, email address, city, state and ZIP code as required fields.

This surprised me for a number of reasons, one of which is that their primary target buyers are the disabled and the elderly. Many elderly people are going to be reluctant to provide this type of personal info just to locate a store. Not to mention the fact that they may not have an email address. Secondly, there was nothing on the page to indicate what would happen next. Would someone call me? Should I check my email? Would clicking submit give me what I wanted?

I fill out the information and click submit, hoping that the next page will provide me some useful info. But it doesn’t. It merely says, “Thank you for your submission” and a close window button. Huh? Now what happens? What about that dealer info I wanted? I close the window and poof! It disappears, along with my personal information and their opportunity to keep me happy.

At this point, I start making myself some lunch, totally confused about what would happen next. To their credit, a friendly sales rep called about 5 minutes later. When I explained what my intentions were, the lady said the website was previously set up to locate dealers by ZIP code but the owners wanted to provide a more “personal experience,” because people sometimes don’t understand the type and length of ramp that they actually need for their situation.

Got it, but there’s a big gap here between the good intentions and the implementation. EZ Access is a great vendor with high-quality, useful products and an obviously responsive customer service department. But after going through their website as a customer would, I found a simple, positive way that they could improve the site experience of their visitors with the addition of one or two sentences on that Information Request page. A little more effort and they could have some really informative content in place about how they want to provide for the best customer experience by making sure their needs are properly met. Without this, it’s a missed opportunity to connect with customers and an example of customer service gone awry.

Tags: website, usability, web, design, ecommerce, customer, service

Tags: website, usability, web, design, ecommerce, customer, service

If you’re planning on sending a Valentine’s Day promotional email to your customer base, you’re not the only one. According to a recent survey conducted by Constant Contact, 68 percent of small businesses plan an online Valentine’s Day promotion. Since it’s quite likely that your email won’t be the only one landing in your customer’s email inbox over the next few days, it’s important to make it stand out.

Constant Contact’s Valentine’s Day email templates can help. With choices from simple e-cards to newsletters, these templates can get your message across with eye-catching pink and white, hearts and flowers.

Template Examples: 

With just ten days left until the holiday, it’s not too late to prepare an email and send it using these or 8 other easy-to-use templates. Email promotions can definitely help drive traffic to your site on this important gift-giving holiday. 

What do people search for around Valentine’s Day? I checked the search phrase “Valentine’s” on the Digital Point keyword tool and found the following list of holiday-related phrases: 

Phrase                            Hits Per Day

Gift Valentine                2,676

Valentine’s Day               1,277

Craft Valentine               1,217 

Valentine Hearts            725

Valentine Poems            560

Gift Idea Valentine        436 

Valentine Graphics        426

Gift Man Valentine        556 (see, it’s not only men who have a hard time deciding on gifts!)

Candy Valentine            187

Chocolate Valentine     152

Gift Romantic Valentine  134

Unique Valentine          126 (now there’s a good term to optimize one of your gift pages for!)

For the greatest impact, work any of these terms into your page titles, product descriptions and other on-the-page content. But, I would think twice before optimizing that power tool set or vacuum cleaner for Valentine’s Day. My local newspaper insists on running an ad each February for a store advertising specials on vacuum cleaners with the headline, “Give her what she really wants!” Guys, I’m here to tell ya, don’t fall for it!  Let me know, do you intend to send a Valentine’s Day promotional email?

Special Note-The MightyMerchant eCommerce Blog now has a subscribe by email option–the easiest way to keep up with these blog posts. Simply enter your address, and choose if you want to subscribe only to certain categories of content or to all categories. Click on the ‘profile’ link below, set your preference, and these blog posts will then be delivered right to your inbox. Thanks for reading!

Netscape Navigator, the iconic browser which brought the web to the majority of Internet users, will not be updated anymore. Ah, Netscape, you were my guide when I first set out to explore this brave new world of the Internet. Its introduction as an easy-to-use way to navigate ushered in the new era of the age of commercial Internet, and the white N rising above the Earth became so familiar.

When it first launched in 1994, Netscape was designed to be user-friendly and became the most used Internet browser through the 90s. When Microsoft wanted a share of the popularity, they licensed the source code from Netscape’s developer and created Internet Explorer. Netscape continued to rise in popularity until Microsoft began offering Internet Explorer free with Windows 95 and later versions. Users switched wholesale, and Netscape’s profits and popularity continued to dwindle. It fared no better when it was bought by AOL in 1999.

AOL recently announced it would no longer issue updates for Netscape as of February 1, 2008, e