'Net Features : 32910

5 Social Shopping Backlinks for E-Commerce

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:27:00 GMT

The Easter holiday shopping season is in full swing and it may just be your last chance to make some big sales before the back to school season starts. Many merchants are expecting this to be a rather slow summer shopping season so taking some time now to build a few additional inbound links and position your brand on virtual product shelves across the Web will serve you well in the meantime. Let's let at a few must-have back links for e-commerce stores and how to go about acquiring them.

Before we start I'll go ahead and include the standard disclaimer: the sites listed below present opportunities for you to build back links and nothing more. There will be an investment (at least of your time) so understand that you'll need to build relationships with the users of these sites as you would anywhere else, ensuring message consistency across channels, revisiting frequently to promote competitive positioning and testing product offers to see what works in which community.

Also, even though you are participating in these sites for the purpose of gaining new inbound links (and hopefully sales), keep in mind that you will want to track the upstream traffic, monitor conversations and brand mentions and periodically assess your competition to make sure your e-commerce store is being seen in the best and brightest possible light.

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Kaboodle: Users of this social shopping community (owned by Hearst) are able to find, recommend and share products with others and retailers are able to get exposure with those serious about shopping. The main feature available for retailers looking to get into Kaboodle is the Brand Profiles offering. Users can add products themselves of course but merchants can aggregate products from their main domain, showcase popular products, interact with the Kaboodle community and access activity highlights within the community involving your brand through the use of these profiles. Perhaps the best part of it all is that your site will get a link for all that participation in the Kaboodle community.

Wists: Backed by Gawker Media, Wists is a similar social shopping and recommendation site for power-shoppers but it has far less traffic than Kaboodle. The upside (again) of course is that they will indeed provide a link back to your site but you'll need to do some legwork to get that done. Publishers/merchants can include "add to wishlist" buttons on their site that will automatically extract thumbnail images of catalog items.

StyleHive: Another social shopping/e-commerce bookmarking site worthy of mention is StyleHive. Users of the site (which could include the likes of you) are able to add any product and a link to where users can find it. StyleHive was recently purchased by ThisNext (the two companies rebranded as CurateMedia) another identical service in the social shopping arena.

StyleFeeder: Now a division of Time, Inc., StyleFeeder positions itself as a personal shopping engine and it has long made waves in both the e-commerce and affiliate marketing space. Retailers interested in getting seen on StyleFeeder will need either to submit product data feeds apply to affiliate networks, (GAN, CJ, SAS, etc.) or work with Stylefeeder to receive a custom quote for bulk data uploads or special promotions.

Google Adwords Search Funnels

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:00:00 GMT

Last week Google released a new report for AdWords accounts and it could encourage you to rethink how you are advertising on the Web.

The AdWords Search Funnels reports provide advertisers with some very valuable insights into what advertisements consumers see during the process of shopping or product research. The reports are currently in beta, but will help paid search marketers gather key information about what AdWords ads are contributing to a conversion and which "upper-funnel" keywords are assisting conversions.

Up to this point, conversions were attributed to the last click of an end-user. The problem is that advertisers don't know how much time passed since the first time that customer/client clicked your ad or how many other ads were seen. The Search Funnels report will show how keywords and campaigns work together to get conversions and the sequence of ad clicks and impressions. The data is generated from users conversion path.

Over the next few weeks, the Search Funnels beta will be rolled out gradually to all accounts in the 'Conversions' section under the 'Reporting' tab. To activate them, you must either have AdWords Conversion Tracking running or import goals or transactions into AdWords from Google Analytics. Also keep in mind that Search Funnel data is limited to search ads showing on Google.com, for ad impressions and clicks within 30 days of the conversion.

Marketo Aims for the Enterprise

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:45:00 GMT

Marketing automation provider Marketo's spring release is focusing on security and scalability. The company initially focused on small and mid-size companies with an "ease-of-use" marketing message but seems to be focusing on larger, more global enterprises with this most recent release.

The new enterprise architecture offers advanced user roles and access permissions, workspace and lead partitions, identity management, integration capabilities and according to the official announcement, a 12x improvement in performance. The new service also provides customers with "one-click" access to create a fully replicated, highly scalable on-demand replica of their Marketo environment for customization, integration, testing, development and training purposes.

“With the release of our new Enterprise Architecture, we are now in an even better position to offer our enterprise clients the ease of use and flexibility they expect with Marketo, but with even more advanced security, scalability and integration capabilities,” noted Phil Fernandez, President and CEO of Marketo. “Marketo Lead Management Enterprise Edition is the ideal solution for global organizations that require the utmost in scalability and security, without sacrificing usability and time to value.”

Live Chat Effective for Internet Retailers

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:29:00 GMT

Is providing live chat technology effective for Internet retailers? According to a report from Bold Software (purveyors of that technology) it certainly seems to - at least as it relates to purchase intent.

“When we filtered the data to create sub-groups of respondents indicating that they had recently shopped at particular types of retail sites, we saw convincing evidence that live chat drives sales across all retailer types but can be even more effective for some. For instance, 65 percent of shoppers at hardware and home improvement sites indicated live chat positively influences them to purchase,” said Bold Software President and CEO Steve Castro-Miller.

Out of the entire survey population, 56 percent reported that live chat technology had this effect. For the following types of e-tailers, however, the study found that live chat technology has a higher impact on purchase intent.

- Hardware/Home Improvement (65 percent)
- Health/Beauty (63 percent)
- Office Supplies (62 percent)
- Computers/Electronics (60 percent)
- Flowers/Gifts (60 percent)
- Jewelry (59 percent)
- Food/Drug (59 percent)
- Housewares/Furnishings (58 percent)
- Sporting Goods (58 percent)

Richard Gladstone, co-founder of Applause Theatre & Entertainment Service, was skeptical of live chat when an SEO consultant initially recommended it almost three years ago. “We rolled it out as a customer service tool, but it’s also turned out to be a great sales tool for us. There’s a low barrier for entry into this business, but through live chat we can really connect with the customers, and when we do that, they understand how well we know this industry. We’ve been specializing in Broadway ticket sales for 32 years now and our team really understands how to get people the best seats at the best prices. It’s turned out to be an excellent way to talk to our customers and prospective customers.”