'Net Features : wm-feature

3 Ways Merchants Can Make a Difference

Amberly Dressler — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:55:00 GMT

When the going gets tough, Americans get giving. This is because the United States is one of the most charitable nations in the world. In fact, in the last five years, the U.S. ranks third in global giving behavior overall, behind Australia and Ireland, according to the World Giving Index 2012, which looks at giving time, money and help to strangers.

Worldwide, it seems the list of causes that deserve our time, attention and dollars keeps growing. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways (three of which are discussed below) for digital enterprises to help increase their social impact and still chase the American dream by growing their business in the process.

Buy One, Give One

The first charitable strategy we’ll look at is the BOGO offer. In this context, that refers to buy one, give one. This most likely sounds familiar, because this is the model Toms Shoes company was made famous by. In Toms’s case, with every pair of shoes purchased, a new pair is donated to a child in need. Other companies follow a similar model.

For example, with each bag of dog food purchased from BOGO Bowl, an online premium dog food supplier, a bag of food is donated to a dog in need. Since its 2012 launch, BOGO Bowl has donated almost 21,000 pounds of matching food (roughly 84,000 bowls) to organizations like shelters and rescues, foster-based programs and pet pantries.

This program has legs (four, in fact), because despite its recent beginnings, BOGO Bowl has grown an impressive following thanks to exposure via social media, email marketing, word of mouth and other publicity, such as its appearance on the Today Show last September.

“Most people don’t realize the cost of sheltering a dog or cat for a single day averages $12.50 or $300 per month,” said BOGO Bowl Founder Sara Henderson who started and ran a charity, The Pet Project, which operates a Pet Pantry program. “The cost of a bag of food is a lot less. If a dog does end up in the shelter, having high-quality food keeps them in better health mentally and physically, making them more adoptable.”

After managing the Pet Pantry program for three years, Henderson learned how difficult it was to get healthy food for at-risk animals and made that the focus of her new business operations.

“Often it was a struggle to get donations of not-so-great food in damaged packaging, so quality food was nearly impossible to come by unless we purchased it,” said Henderson. “So, I set about determining if there was a ‘sweet spot’ – a point where I could make and sell really good food at a price that would allow us to give away a second bag of the exact same food to an at-risk dog in the buyer’s own community.

“Fortunately, it worked and BOGO Bowl was born. We have more than 50 organizations signed up and plan to add many more. There are 700 pantries we’re aware of, and 13,000 groups listing adoptable pets on Petfinder at any given moment. We see no reason we can’t help them all.”

Helping at-risk animals is just one of the many causes that companies can attach their brand to and grow their business in the process.

“There are so many things that need fixing, and if a business can find a way to help make a dent in that as part of their business model, it only makes sense,” said Henderson. “It doesn’t have to be as dramatic as what we do (making our food intending to give 50 percent or more away); even setting aside a dollar from each sale to a charity that makes sense for the business is effective or adopting a cause that is relevant to your customers and finding a way to affect it.”

iGive.com

One way merchants, in particular, can affect the causes their customers care about is with iGive.com, which connects around 350,000 socially conscious shoppers with more than 1,570 socially responsible stores to help 35,000-plus causes.

“The iGive shopper (80 percent women) chooses to shop at stores that help her cause,” said iGive founder, Robert N. Grosshandler. “She actively considers whether or not a merchant is being socially responsible. Even more importantly, she cares about her local charity…the pet rescue, the kindergarten class, the local chapter of a disease fighting charity. And because it’s local, she feels a strong connection, and is willing to make shopping choices that reinforce that connection. Better yet, she tells her friends when a store is going to help, so not only are conversions helped, but volume goes up, too.”

iGive works with the majority of major affiliate networks, so to get started a merchant would contact their network or visit iGive’s page for merchants and advertisers and iGive will do the rest.

SurveyMonkey Audience

SurveyMonkey also does the legwork for companies looking to add a level of social responsibility to their operations, with its product called SurveyMonkey Audience. This is the popular consumer insight platform’s donation-based feature, which gives companies access to a target demographic for whatever their survey project needs may be.

SurveyMonkey donated nearly $450,000 in 2012 and has a $1 million goal for 2013. It works with nearly three dozen charities, with several thousand waiting to get on board. According to Brent Chudoba, Vice President, General Manager of SurveyMonkey Audience, the reason why so many organizations are waiting to partner with the product is because SurveyMonkey Audience takes the necessary time to ensure it’s compliant with all federal and state laws, that it’s offering diverse charities to select from and that it’s building in-depth relationships with its partners.

Companies can also benefit from this methodical approach, because when people take surveys to help great causes, the result is clean, reliable data.

“Charity is where we put our stake in the ground,” said Chudoba. “And the things that happen as a result are higher data quality and much more efficient surveys.”

The decision to add charitable elements to a business’s operations is not one that should be made lightly. While we all want to do right by our planet, our animals and each other, giving to the wrong organizations (as defined by ones not practicing in legal or ethical manners) can have a negative impact on a company. The BBB offers these standards for charity accountability, which can assist donors in making sound giving decisions and can foster public confidence in charitable organization..

“People are starting to look harder at the companies they buy from, and having some sort of corporate responsibility or social bend is definitely seen as a plus,” said Henderson.

Content Marketing Without a Blog

Administrator — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 21:00:00 GMT

It’s no secret that content marketing has a phenomenal ROI (the statistics only seem to get better with each passing year). In fact, Kapost and Eloqua recently produced an eBook on the ROI of content marketing in which they stated that per dollar content marketing produces three times the number of leads as compared to traditional marketing.

Unfortunately, many businesses have shied away from content marketing, mistaking the term for a synonym of “blogging,” which is not the end-all-be-all of content marketing. In fact, I can think of seven ways you can do content marketing without a blog…

Vlog

Not much for writing, but love talking? Share your experience and knowledge through a vlog series on YouTube, and promote it through your Twitter and Facebook page. Trust me, this works. If you need any evidence, allow me to point you to the wildly successful "Will It Blend?" campaign by Blendetc.

Podcast

You aren’t much for appearing on camera either. That’s fine – go the route of the podcast. Interview experts in your industry, or just take 10 minutes to address your customers’ frequently asked questions. The podcast is still a viable form of content marketing. Plus, it’s the only non-visual form on this list.

Facebook & Twitter

It almost goes without saying that Facebook and Twitter are great ways to drive a content marketing strategy, but don’t take my word for it. 76 percent of businesses are using social networking for business objectives.

Infographics

Are you in an industry that loves statistics and facts? (Hint – the answer is a resolute ‘yes’.) Put the right amount of creativity and effort into it, and you can have an infographic that goes viral. Seriously, any business can leverage an infographic to their advantage. As an example, take Brilliance, a jeweler whose “Kardashian Wedding vs. Average Wedding” infographic went viral in 2011. The infographic brought in thousands of visitors to the company’s website because it was well done and interesting.

Whitepapers

So, I said I have seven strategies that avoid blogging, but not writing. If you’re a B2B company, then a white paper could be just the thing you need to widen your reach and generate hundreds of new leads. If there’s no one in your company capable of writing a rock-solid white paper, then it’s worth budgeting some cash to pay a professional to do the job. A half-baked white paper receives the same critical acclaim that a half-baked research paper earned you in high school. Back then, it was a C+. Today, it’s money down the drain.

Knowledge Bank

You can approach the Knowledge Bank strategy in one of these two ways (or both): your bank could be an organized index to all of the resources on your website, and/or it could serve as a roundup of the web’s “Best of the Best.” Either way, the point is to make valuable information organized and easy to find.

Pinterest & Instagram

At the end of Aug. 2012, the Los Angeles Times described Pinterest and Instagram’s growth as “meteoric,” citing a 2,183 percent growth over the course of one year for Pinterest. Instagram has performed remarkably well, too. From July 2011 to July 2012, monthly traffic increased from 56,360 to 12 million. On Thanksgiving Day 2012, Instagram users shared a jaw-dropping 10 million photos. If your product or service has a visual draw, then sign up with these sites today.

The Bonus

There are many benefits of doing content marketing with a blog. According to the 2012 Digital Content Marketing Survey, blogging is the second-most utilized form of Web content (75 percent), right behind social media (90 percent). Also, the best results come from social media content, e-newsletters and blogs.

Though we’re still waiting on the 2013 Survey, I’d be surprised if the blog isn’t holding steady.

About the Author

Amie Marse, is the founder and managing partner of Content Equals Money, a content writing service for agencies and Web-based clients.

Customer Happiness via Responsive Web Design

Administrator — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 17:10:00 GMT

By Robert Patrick

Gone are the days where you just had to build a website to work in multiple browsers. Now, you also need to support a wide variety of screen sizes, from smartphones to televisions and tablets. Enter responsive HTML.

Responsive HTML allows you to design a website so that it automatically "responds" to the screen size of the device that is viewing it. For example, if you're looking at a website on your desktop monitor then you can view it in its full glory. But on a mobile phone, things often need to be re-positioned (e.g.) small links need to become touchable buttons and other elements need to disappear all together.

Responsive HTML is essentially three key pieces of technology all working together to seamlessly "resize" a website for any viewing device.

1. CSS3 media queries identify the screen size of device viewing the site. Initially introduced in CSS2.1, and later expanded with CSS3, this technology features the ability to test conditions on the device such as resolution, minimum height, maximum height, orientation and aspect ratio.

You also have the ability to combine queries and test for multiple conditions using AND, NOT and ONLY as logical operators. By creating media queries you can determine which CSS style to display to that device, which is critical to achieving responsive design.

2. Fluid grid layout using div-based HTML and CSS is the magic behind allowing the page to expand or contract as needed and relative to the display space available. By avoiding fixed-pixel sizing within the page, the design is free to adjust itself by percentages and can dynamically change positioning without breaking other areas.

3. Fluid images scaling allow an image to fluidly shrink its dimensions so that it stays within the viewable area of the screen without requiring the need to scroll. When images are sized using CSS relative to their container, they work in conjunction with the fluid grid layout to achieve design flexibility.

Another related technology that is being explored is adaptive images, which allows the website to return an optimally sized image based on the screen size. While image scaling is a great effect, it still has to download a higher resolution image. Adaptive images gives us the appropriate-sized image needed based on the space, thereby saving bandwidth. This is especially important when the user is on a mobile device with slower or limited connectivity.

What are the benefits of responsive HTML?

Get ahead of the game - With mobile Web browsing growing at a tremendous pace, it is increasingly important to provide viewers with a well thought out Web experience, regardless of what device they are using to view your website. As new devices come out with different resolutions and screen sizes, responsive HTML will allow your Web design to work properly on those devices right out of the gate. There will be no need to make any development changes in the future, which will save you money.

Save money with fewer platforms - A responsive website can also save you the time and cost of building and maintaining separate mobile apps because it offers many of the same advantages. For example, if you run a business where your customers often need to find you on the go, such as a restaurant, coffee shop, or hotel, a responsive website experience can be the difference between a customer choosing you over a competitor. Mobile browsing has already surpassed desktop browsing in some areas of the world, and a responsive website is the gateway to those users.

About the Author

Robert Patrick is founder and chief architect of PhD Labs, a Southern California company that specializes in social media, mobile applications and Web development solutions. Visit www.PhDLabs.com.

Optimizing for Today’s Tablet Shoppers

Administrator — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:00:00 GMT

By Ken Burke, Founder and Executive Chairman, MarketLive

The numbers don’t lie. Tablets are taking over e-commerce.

The latest indicators of the tablet phenomenon surfaced over the 2012 holiday kick-off weekend. Data captured across several MarketLive merchants revealed the following statistics:

**Tablet traffic accounted for 8-19 percent of total shopping traffic from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday

**Total sales from tablet devices ranged from 7-17 percent, with iPads representing a disproportionate 94 percent majority

**Tablet shoppers converted as much as 38 percent higher and average order sizes were up to 15 percent greater

Tablets also figure prominently in pre-sale consumer activities. More than half of tablet users have looked up product and price information, searched for store location, or read customer reviews at least once in the last month and 17 percent have done so almost daily. Unfortunately, with respect to their tablet experiences, more than 40 percent of tablet users report that they regularly experience problems such as site crashes, functionality breakdowns and formatting issues.

So if you’re looking to boost sales, optimizing your e-commerce site for tablet users could give you just the edge you need. Admittedly the tablet landscape continues to evolve rapidly and is not without a few challenges brought by the growing array of new devices. Still, deploying a few key optimizations to tailor your online shopping experience for tablet visitors, without committing to native app development or to a complete, responsive design influenced re-platform, is an efficient, winning approach. What follows is a few of the recommendations for tablet optimizations.

The Need for Speed

The bar is high. According to Compuware, more than two thirds of tablet users expect websites to load just as quickly, or quicker, than they would on a desktop computer – in two seconds or less. A challenge, since tablet access is often via 3G or slow, public Wi-Fi networks. However, following a few basic development guidelines can rev up your site’s performance across all devices and networks:

• Make sure all page images are highly optimized. Consider using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to help.

• Limit the number of animations on each individual page.

• Remove legacy/unused JavaScript, CSS and tags.

• Reduce the number of ‘Include’ files.

The Significance of Swipe

Tablet users expect to be able to use their fingers to swipe, zoom and pinch. If key areas of your site aren’t swipe-able these visitors are more likely to abandon out of frustration. Presenting a slightly modified, swipe-friendly experience to these visitors is one of the most important tablet optimizations you can make:

• Modify featured content. Swipe-friendly features keep users browsing and shopping. Replace static feature areas and button controlled sliders with scrolling, swipe-able content.

• Update product carousels. On the desktop, product carousels are a great way to showcase top-selling products and special product assortments using a minimal footprint. Detect tablet visitors and switch from button to swipe control for improved satisfaction and increased exposure.

• Adjust alternate views. On your product detail pages, make it easy for users to switch between alternate images with a simple swipe.

“Tap-Ability” and Finger-Friendly Design

Good gesture-based interface design recognizes that tablet users “tap.” The easy click precision of the mouse arrow is almost impossible with finger access, so some of the most effective tablet optimizations you can tackle are to make sure key areas are “tap-ready:”

• Be “fat-thumb” friendly. Make buttons large and bright. Replace tightly clustered, small text menus with well-spaced buttons or larger text links, separate long category lists into small groups, and always be sure to surround all clickable elements with ample white space. These tactics improve click accuracy and activity and are proving equally successful as desktop enhancements.

• Replace hover interactions. The hover states used in navigation drop-down menus, button designs and to bring up quick view and “more info” windows can be extremely effective on desktop sites but can be almost impossible to control on many tablets. Often completely unsupported, they can result in frustrating click errors as tablet visitors make repeat attempts to open and close hover content. Instead, use fixed place buttons and links to invoke drop-downs and modal windows. Tip: don’t forget to incorporate large, finger-friendly visual cues including large close buttons to facilitate easy, accurate window exits.

• Create “tap-ready” order options. Replace product configuration drop-downs, such as color, size and other order options with “tap-on, tap-off” design elements. Color swatches, boxes with sizes inside and other picture-based elements are efficient and effective.

• Eliminate Flash animation. The ubiquitous use of Flash in website design presents challenges unique to Apple devices since the technology is unsupported. Although the adoption of Android and Windows devices is on the rise, iPad ownership and shopping visits are disproportionately large. To eliminate the frustration caused by broken content displays, replace Flash functionality with JavaScript, HTML5 and in some cases, static content.

(Example: large, easy-tap buttons in a tablet-ready, accordion checkout.)

Save Typing, Save Sales

Consumers generally prefer to use tablets over mobile phones for online shopping, yet one in five finds tablets as cumbersome as phones when it comes to entering information (Forrester Research). The right adjustments to search and forms will mitigate many tablet abandons and directly impact conversion and sales. Prefill or suggest content to limit typing wherever possible, and when there is no alternative:

• Help site search users with predictive, “type ahead” search suggestions.

• Prefill forms anywhere possible.

• Always invoke the appropriate keyboard for each field, e.g. alpha for name fields, numeric for zip code fields, etc.

• Make form fields large enough and long enough for the text required.

• Deploy clickable plus/minus signs for quantity adjustments.

• Use drop downs when there’s no other alternative.

(Example: This merchant's leverages good site search, improving the customer experience.)

If You Build It, Will They Come?

What is your best option for implementing a tablet strategy? Should you modify your laptop/desktop website for tablet visitors? Re-platform using responsive design techniques? Build a special tablet application? At present, the prevailing approach seems to be adopting a wait-and-see attitude to gain a clearer understanding about the primary needs, expectations and behavior of tablet shoppers. Most consumers surveyed by Forrester within the last year still generally prefer the “traditional” site during their shopping experience.

One already proven certainty is that a modest, immediate investment in an improved tablet experience can have a measurable impact on satisfaction and sales, and many of the same optimizations even enhance your desktop site effectiveness. Whether not to you decide to ultimately invest in building a separate app for tablet users, or to update your platform around responsive design, it’s still vital to start optimizing for tablet traffic as quickly as possible.

About the Author:

Ken Burke is the Chairman, Founder, & Chief Evangelist of MarketLive, Inc. Ken founded MarketLive Inc. as Multimedia Live in 1995 with $500 in start-up money. Under his guidance it has grown into a leading provider of e-commerce software and related solutions. Ken is the developer of the MarketLive Intelligent Selling System, MarketLive's enterprise-class e-commerce application designed to optimize selling opportunities, build relationships with customers and give merchants control over their online merchandising. Ken is the author of "Intelligent Selling: The Art & Science of Selling Online."

Turn Local Eyes into Global Sales

Administrator — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 19:00:00 GMT

By Michael Ni, CMO/SVP, Marketing and Products for Avangate

Growing businesses often struggle when expanding internationally, finding themselves entering into new markets without a clear strategy to plot out their infrastructure and activities. The costs associated with building proper sales, marketing and IT teams in multiple satellite locations are prohibitively high in many cases, and place an extreme burden on the organizations to “get it right” or suffer heavy losses. Not only this, but establishing satellite locations still limits your business to only having strong insights into very specific locale and peripheral knowledge, at best, about the surrounding region.

Most importantly, the high cost of global expansion, and the haphazard nature under which it often happens, results in a less than fully-baked effort at truly addressing local buyer behaviors and market stipulations. A strong localization effort, however, will address those behaviors and increase conversion rates and overall success significantly.

Where to Begin Practically?

The first step is to assess the top foreign markets driving sales or traffic to your site and balance that with the time they spend on your site. If you’re seeing short time spent on your site but lots of traffic from one region or country, it could be that visitors are being confounded by a localized search result. With this data in mind, it’s best to assess whether your expansion priorities should be based on gaining competitive advantage, keeping up with competitors, or simply addressing a market that is more valid than initially known for the business.

I Know Where I’m Going, Now What?

It’s time to build out your pricing strategy and currency support.

Starting here, the most obvious item on your to-do list is to add the local currency to your site and adjust it to reflect prevailing economic conditions. This means also optimizing your site and shopping cart to only reflect the local currency to ease concerns and quell any questions on the consumers’ side about what they are truly paying.

Crucial here are two things: ensure that your shopping cart is as automated as possible when it comes to selecting currencies and language to avoid shopper fatigue, while still offering manual controls. Second is to preserve the initial localized price throughout the lifecycle of the product or service to maintain a lasting recurring revenue engagement with the buyer. Even for this, you need to take into account factors such as fluctuations in exchange rates and change of taxation in certain countries affecting the final price paid by the customer, especially consumers who are more price sensitive.

Getting Paid and Making It Easy

Now you’ve identified what markets to address, create a foreign-language site and adjust currencies as the beginnings of your endeavor towards generating global revenue. A significant step is offering the preferred payment methods of your target market for as seamless a transaction as possible - any hang-up or questions in the payment process can easily turn a customer away.

Let’s look at some options by market:

Europe

● iDeal - In the Netherlands alone, iDeal accounts for 5 million transactions per month and has a high utilization rate at 75 percent. That number encompasses the fact that iDeal represents 97 percent of the Dutch market.

● Direct Debit - The European Payments Council acknowledges that Direct Debit was responsible for over 17 billion transactions in European markets.

Asia

● Alipay - As the safest and most pervasive payment solution in China, Alipay accounts for over 50 percent of the Chinese market and processes more than 11 million transactions a day.

● JCB Card - With more than 40 percent market share, support for JCB Card for Japanese customers is vital to any vendor’s online commerce, followed by the Konbini payment method where customers pay at local convenience stores.

Middle East, Africa & South America

● CashU - Largely focused on the Middle East and North Africa, CashU is highly focused on supporting transactions in the Middle East region.

● Boleto Bancario - Brazilian shoppers utilize Boleto Bancario for nearly 30 percent of their online transactions, making it one of the largest processors in the growing South American region.

Taxes, Not Death, Are Certain

Understanding and addressing local taxation laws and behaviors are next up in your global expansion. This is about abiding not just by the law, but also by how consumers interact with these laws to ensure that they are not negatively impacted by your pricing and purchasing models.

For instance, if a foreign company is expanding to the US market, leaving sales tax out of the purchase price is a customary practice, with taxes being added upon final authorization of purchase. The below graphic outlines the complexities of taxation in the US:

Conversely, the European custom is to include taxes in the upfront purchase price and tax all items, even if the vendor is from a non-EU market. However, if you are a non-EU resident purchasing from an EU vendor, you are not charged, or are reimbursed, any taxes.

Sales Are Happening, Now Support Them

With all the gritty items out of the way and with new sales coming in from your new audience, the last step in your successful expansion is localizing your support. Creating and actively highlighting local call-center numbers and choosing support personnel that is knowledgeable in language subtleties result in developing a long-lasting relationship with your buyers. Go beyond skin-deep as well, as localized subtleties like date formatting, optimized website layouts, representative graphics and more can also play a key role as your expansion efforts mature.

Looking at all the logistics involved in expanding your business and localizing it for your new markets, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of minute details your business will have to address to be successful. As you look to expand beyond your current borderline, take into consideration all the minutia highlighted above to evaluate the resource strain that your business might not be able to handle as it grows in its home market. The ultimate result of localization is the increase in conversion rates for your business on a global scale.

***

Michael Ni, CMO/SVP, Marketing and Products for Avangate

Michael Ni brings over 20 years of experience as a marketing and product executive in bringing successful innovation-driven businesses to market - from start-up to Fortune 500 companies. Michael’s business experience spans across software, telecommunications, consumer packaged goods and digital media.

Sensational Customer Experience Platforms 2013

Amberly Dressler — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 19:45:00 GMT

Customers are increasingly demanding more from the brands they do business with. As such, enterprises need to require more from the CRMs they use to obtain and retain their customer base. Today's CRMs need to not only offer best-in-class integrations, but also offer the ability to communicate via all customer touchpoints (e.g. social, mobile, etc.) and do so with unparalleled ease.

In the January 2013 Special Issue of Website Magazine, Sage North America's Brandon Balsley shared tips for customer retention on the Web. Among the tips were knowing what your customers want, tracking (tracking and more tracking) and auditing the customer experience. Of course, successful enterprises know they can't go into the customer retention battle alone.

Arm yourself with Website Magazine's mind-blowing customer experience platforms found here.

Multichannel Retailing in Focus

Administrator — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 19:47:00 GMT

Christmas and other gift-giving winter holidays are getting closer and this year is expected to see more online shopping than ever before. Will this holiday shopping season be a sign of things to come – culminating in the end of the humble Main Street? As online technology and product delivery mechanisms improve, will we become a nation that only shop via screens, staying in and waiting for our goods to be delivered?

The way we research and buy online may be changing significantly, but Main Street USA can still play a major part in this development. Technology will ultimately enhance and rejuvenate brick-and-mortar shopping, creating a more interactive and enhanced shopping experience.

Econsultancy’s Multichannel Retail Survey claims just 14 percent of people surveyed believe that retailers do not need to operate across the various channels. What retailers and brands need to do is promote their technology and channels effectively, or else risk losing profits to those who are.

The Multichannel Main Street

Technology gives brick-and-mortar retailers the chance to extend their sales reach beyond their store. As consumers look for the easiest and cheapest shopping solutions, retailers need to utilize all their creative powers of engagement to fend off the competition and get holiday shoppers into their stores and onto their e-commerce and m-commerce sites.

By distributing products effectively, and making them more accessible in e-commerce channels, retailers can make the shopping experience simple and, if executed properly, fun.

However, merely making this technology available is no longer good enough. Marketers need to become adept at making channel-specific offers and promoting them successfully, improving channel adoption by word of mouth.

They also need to educate the consumer in ‘how’ to engage with them across the channels, making sure that any problems that could lead to abandoned transactions are resolved. This work needs to be analysed and tied in with effective contact and CRM mechanisms.

The idea of having someone ‘in-house’ to deal specifically with content and how best to market and promote it across all channels is a good start, as retailers that can consistently personalise content to consumers via different methods will generate incremental sales.

M-Commerce

Mobile's influence on shopping is well-documented, but according to research from the IAB, only 40 percent of major brands have an optimized mobile website, which during the holidays can make all the difference when people are shopping on the go.

Websites that aren’t compatible with Smartphones frustrate potential customers, take longer to load and ultimately drive people elsewhere. If retailers don’t have an m-commerce site, they should still embrace the power of mobile with an optimized information page detailing nearby stores, holiday hours, etc. Having a presence on social media also generates free advertising each time a customer shares a retailer’s update. Both of these can increase traffic both online and in-store.

Fashion retailer Pretty Green, set up by singer Liam Gallagher, is embracing mobile and has adopted Mobile Money Networks’ (MMN) Simple Tap payment method to make customers’ lives easier. Once registered, customers can buy items securely and have them delivered to their home address with just one simple screen tap.

Pretty Green incorporated this concept after its mobile traffic rose almost 200 percent in less than a year. As MMN’s mobile checkout is much easier than using an e-commerce checkout on a mobile, customers are less likely to abandon the transaction halfway through.

SoLoMo

The fact that a fictitious meerkat has more than 50,000 Twitter followers shows that social media can be a powerful influencing tool. Many stores are beginning to recognize the combined power of social, local and mobile (SoLoMo), offering free in-store Wi-Fi so that customers can ‘check in’, read product reviews, compare prices, find offers and share pictures before making a purchase.

Inviting customer interaction generates a buzz around the merchandise and, if combined with mobile and local targeting, should extend the longevity of brick-and-mortar stores. Retailers should utilize social media popularity as a clever way to reach smartphone users with offers and vouchers, particularly during the holiday season when people are looking for good deals.

According to TradeDoubler, 32 percent of smartphone owners search for coupons each month, so retailers can improve the shopper experience by targeting customers with deals before they look elsewhere.

Vouchercloud and Foursquare use geo-technology to discover a customer’s location and target them with specific offers from local retailers, which according to TradeDoubler, almost 60 percent of people are happy to receive. If customers are given an incentive, such as discounts or promotions, when they ‘check in’ to a store on their mobile, store traffic increases and retailers can see linkage from an online to offline conversion.

Today’s retailers have access to huge amounts of customer data, but very few make the most of it. Businesses that engage with their customers, offering targeted discounts based on previous purchases, recent tweets and current location, are destined to succeed. Retailers who are yet to embrace SoLoMo and are doing nothing to enhance the customer journey are likely to lose sales to their mobile-savvy competitors.

Interactive Stores

Although holiday shopping is often regarded as a national pastime, the convenience of online does threaten brick-and-mortars and retailers need to do more to convince customers to leave their devices and make the journey into their stores.

Marks and Spencer is one retailer that’s using the latest technology to provide an interactive in-store experience. High-definition screens advertise the latest trends, sales assistants use iPads and creative use of data feeds provide personalized product recommendation.

The new Burberry store on Regent Street in London integrates digital technology to create an exciting customer experience. Here too iPads are aplenty and, when approached with an item, the store mirrors transform to show the piece on the catwalk.

Although some features in these interactive stores are more for show, others have genuine practical uses. Interactive mirrors show customers how they look in several different garments and suggest matching items and accessories to complete the outfit.

By combining technology with practicality, retailers will ensure that customers have a reason to come into the store, rather than ordering everything online from the comfort of their sofa.

Online In-Store

Of course, busy people often do order online for convenience, but as we are all out and about, home delivery can be inconvenient. Providing a click-and-collect service lets customers pick up items ordered online from their local store. According to Econsultancy’s report How the Internet can save the High Street, 80 percent of people surveyed had reserved items online to collect in store, showing its popularity. Click and collect also gets e-shoppers into stores where they may be tempted by other last-minute gifts, driving incremental sales.

Several retailers have reversed this concept and created an Internet café-***-store. House of Fraser.com stores provide free coffee and access to their online inventory. Customers cannot take any products home, but clothes can be tried on and purchased online in-store and delivered the following day to the customer’s home or local store.

In India, Asian Paints use their Colour Store, not to sell, but to educate their customers. Visitors to the store can take part in colour workshops, create their own paint shade combinations and receive decorating advice from in-store staff, before purchasing their chosen paint online.

Apart from offering customers useful skills and a convenient way to shop, these ‘stores’ help to enhance brand reputation and customer feeling by promoting themselves as a company that doesn’t just focus on sales, but is dedicated to providing an excellent customer experience. They also provide consumers with the convenience of delivery on-demand, rather than the unhappy task of having to lug bags around all day.

The Future of Multichannel Retailing

As the Internet continues to dominate our lives and smartphone popularity increases, the simple Main Street retailer needs to move with the times and investigate additional channels to boost sales and maintain the customer experience.

When choosing which channels to target, retailers should consider the long-term advantages and retail benefits of each one. Retailers can now find out not just who their customers are, but also where they are and how to engage with them. All this data that customers are willingly providing should be exploited to get their attention.

Customers expect a good shopping experience in-store and online, so with multichannel retail the connections need to be smooth and consistent. According to Hitachi Consulting UK, more than 80 percent of customers will leave a store if the product they want is out of stock, especially in the run up to Christmas, so it is essential that store products are available online so that the sale can still be made even if the customer cannot take the item home that day.

Amazon and Tesco remain two of the few retailers that have an integrated desktop and mobile commerce site. Products added to the customer’s basket on a laptop will also appear in their basket on a smartphone, making it easy for people to continue their shopping on the move.

The main thing that retailers need to remember is that customers expect a good overall experience. Customer service now needs to extend from having polite sales assistants, to responding quickly to a tweet and providing a simple online checkout process. By keeping this in mind, retailers will be able to seamlessly adopt, not just multichannel retailing, but omnichannel retailing.

About the Author: Rob Durkin: A natural entrepreneur, Rob’s first foray into Internet marketing was when he set up a DVD e-commerce site at the age of 16. His success and interest in this field led to his decision to read Computer Science at Girton College, Cambridge where he met fellow student and entrepreneur Chris Conn. Upon graduating they formed a partnership and began working with e-commerce and data extraction. After teaming up with Lee Brignell-Cash their business focus shifted more toward marketing and thus FusePump, of which Rob is the CEO, was created in 2009. FusePump provides simple and profitable marketing technology solutions for e-commerce retailers. Its e-commerce marketing platform allows websites to effectively promote their products in all the major online channels (affiliate, comparison shopping, marketplaces, search, display etc.) with little or no technical effort, improving the consumer buying experience and driving increased sales.

Building a Customer Vending Machine

Administrator — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 19:32:00 GMT

By Lewis Bassett, Bassett Providentia Ltd

In the first article of this series, I explained how you could use Google AdWords to build a customer or lead vending machine and buy new customers and leads whenever you need them. I showed you how to estimate the cost of building the machine, and the approximate return on investment you can expect from every dollar you put into the machine. This is determined by the cost of buying a new lead or customer – cost per action (CPA) – and the value of each new lead or customer – value per action (VPA).

Then in the second article, I demonstrated why it was important to always be testing two Google ads against each other: it constantly drives the cost per click (CPC) down, which helps to reduce the cost of buying a new lead or customer.

Another way to reduce the cost of a new lead or customer is to reduce the number of clicks that are required to get one signup or sale. And you do that by increasing the conversion rate of the landing page.

Conversion Rate
When a searcher clicks your ad, they’re taken to your landing page. If the landing page does a good job of persuading them, they will buy something or complete a form for more information. This is called an action.

Not every person who clicks on your ad will complete an action. And that’s entirely reasonable; your offer won’t appeal to everyone. But a certain percentage will. We call this percentage the conversion rate. If 20% of the people who click on your ad complete the form on the landing page, the conversion rate is 20%.

Cost per Action
You can work out the cost per action by dividing the cost per click by the conversion rate of the landing page.

For example, let’s say you have a landing page that collects leads for a whitepaper. If it costs you $1 per click and the conversion rate of your landing page is 5%, then it costs you $20 to get a new lead. That means the cost per action is $20.

You can set up your Google AdWords account to calculate and display the cost per action for you automatically. I’ll come back to this later.

Crafting Your Landing Page
There are loads of different ways you can craft your landing page. And there are many different techniques for persuading people who click on your ads to take an action.

The most important thing – by far – is that you have a solid framework for measuring conversions and testing changes that you make to your landing page. After all, every question about how to craft your landing page comes down to the cost per action. Whichever method gives you the lowest cost per action is the one you should use, and you find that out through testing.

Content Experiments
Google Analytics has an excellent feature called Content Experiments, which allows you to run two versions of the same landing page side-by-side. It tracks the conversion rates for both landing pages and reports the results of the test once a statistically significant winner has been found. And it does all this automatically.

To use Content Experiments, you need three separate web pages.
- First, you need the original landing page. We call this the control.
- Second, you need a modified version of the original landing page. We call this the variant.
- Third, you need a conversion page. This is a page that is displayed to the visitor after they’ve performed the action. Regardless of whether that action is a sale or a signup, the visitor should be taken to a “thank you” page that is only displayed after an action has been completed.

Google Analytics gives you some scripts to insert into each page. When traffic hits the landing page, half of it remains on the control and half is redirected to the variant. And when visitors from either version perform the action, the script on the conversion page records that the action took place. So Google Analytics keeps track of how many visitors from each different landing page completed an the action.

After the experiment has been setup, you don’t have to do anything. Google will keep track of the recorded actions and alert you when there is a winner.

If the variant has a higher conversion rate than the control, make the variant page the new control. Then create a new variant to test something new. And if the control has the higher conversion rate, make a new variant.

Just like with Google ads, make it a golden rule to always be testing two different landing pages. That way, your conversion rate will keep improving. This means the cost per action will keep going down, and you will be able to buy customers or leads for less.

The Most Important Elements of a Landing Page
Usually, when a visitor arrives on your landing page, they’ll look at the headline. They need to see keywords and a message that matches the search they made and the Google ad they clicked on. This lets them know you’re continuing the conversation you started on your ad.

If the benefit (or implied benefit) of the headline is strong enough, their eyes will move to the call to action. This is usually a button or a short form. And if the call to action is strong and congruent with the benefit of the headline, they’ll complete the action that you’re asking them to do.

So these two things – the headline and the call to action – are usually the most important part of a landing page. When I’m crafting a landing page, I put most of my effort into finding a headline and call to action that work together, and are strong enough to inspire the desired action on their own. I fill the rest of the page with “lorem ipsum” text. I only enter the real text after I’ve found a strong headline and a call to action that work well together.

These are the two things that you should concentrate most of your tests on. Experiment with different headlines and calls to action that communicate different benefits and offers.

Traffic
The more traffic you can send to your landing page, the quicker you’ll be able to complete these tests and improve your conversion rates. So it is very important that you are willing to spend money buying as many clicks as possible at this stage.

By increasing the click through rates (CTR) of your ads, you can purchase more (high quality) traffic for less. So a high CTR really helps with maintaining a good testing velocity.

When you first begin building your machine, the click through rates of your ads are going to be low, which means that less traffic will be hitting your landing pages and tests will take longer to complete. As you make progress, your testing velocity will increase. You can also increase testing velocity by spending more.

Cost per Action vs. Click Through Rate
Earlier, I mentioned how you can use AdWords’s Conversion Tracking feature to keep track of actions that are performed when searchers reach the landing page. Google AdWords provides you with another script, which you put on the conversion page (keep the Content Experiments script in place too).

AdWords will count the number of actions that take place for each of the two ads that you’re testing, and will automatically calculate the cost per action for each Google ad. This information is gold.

Different Google ads attract different types of people to your landing page. And these different types of people will convert differently, because their mindsets are different.

As your landing page becomes more efficient, you will find that the Google ad that brings the traffic often has more effect on the conversion rate that the landing page itself. This is why it is so important to measure the cost per action for each ad, as well as the click-through rate. The better ad is the one that provides customers or leads for the lowest cost - i.e., the one with the lowest cost per action. That might not necessarily be the one with the highest CTR.

Compound Testing
If you are always testing two versions of your Google ad and two versions of your landing page, the amount it costs you to buy a new customer or lead will keep going down. (This is because the cost per click is always going down, and the conversion rate of the landing page is always going up. And these improvements multiply together.)

After a few months, you should be able to buy a new lead or customer for significantly less than you make from them. When this happens, you effectively have a customer vending machine. You can buy new leads and customers whenever you need them, and at a fairly stable price.

Eventually though, your progress will slow and it will take you increasingly longer to improve the cost per action. So what happens if progress slows right down, before you’re breaking even? Does this mean the market is not viable? Not necessarily.

Value per Action
This article has been concerned with only one side of the marketing coin: buying customers as cheaply as possible.
The other side of the coin is increasing the value of each customer, by getting the average customer to spend more with you over their lifetime as a customer. This means you make more profit from the average customer, which means you can spend more to buy a new customer or lead. (When the average customer is worth more to you, the average lead is too.)

You can increase the value of your average customer to you by building deeper relationships with them, and providing them with more value. In my opinion, this is the more powerful side of marketing. But it’s also the one that gets the least attention. But increasing customer value is a topic for another day.

Building Your Customer Vending Machine
These principles – measuring cost per action and using testing to drive that cost down – apply to any method of generating new leads and customers. This includes direct mail, social media and print advertising.

This method of acquiring new business is both sustainable and scalable. You’re limited only by the volume of your market.
If you need more customers, you just increase the amount of money you put into the machine. And when you want less, you just ease back. And if you’re making more money from each customer than it costs you to acquire them, you’ve effectively got a license to print cash. You can spend $1 in marketing and get $2 back in profit.

For part 1, click here.

For part 2, click here.

About the Author: Lewis Bassett is an online marketing consultant and speaker, and helps companies to increase their revenue. Bassett Providentia Ltd is his consulting practice.

How to Build a Vending Machine for Customers or Leads (Part 2)

Administrator — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 22:30:00 GMT

By Lewis Bassett, Bassett Providentia Ltd

In the previous article, I explained how you could use Google AdWords to build a customer or lead vending machine. It will give you the ability to buy new customers or leads – however many you want, and whenever you need them. This can be one of the most valuable assets your business will ever have.

We examined some techniques for finding one single keyword to focus on, and for determining whether or not that keyword represents a viable market. If you’ve followed those steps, you should have a reasonable idea of how much you will need to invest to build this customer/lead vending machine.

You’ll also know have an approximate idea of how much it will cost you to buy a new customer, and how much a new customer is worth to you. And you can use this to determine the return on investment (ROI) you can expect from any money you put into this machine – once it has been developed.

In this article, I will show you how to build the Google AdWords part of the machine. You’ll also learn how to use real market data to refine your ads and make them more efficient. This helps to lower the cost of buying a new customer.

(This article is not a beginner’s guide to AdWords, though no previous knowledge is assumed. If you require step-by-step instruction on how to use Google’s features, please refer to Google’s own help pages.)

Setting up Google AdWords

Open a brand new AdWords account. Google uses previous account history to help calculate the price you should pay for each click. And the chances are, if you’re like most AdWords advertisers, you have a sub-optimal history. For the purposes of building this machine, it’s best if you start with a clean slate.

Create one single campaign, which we’ll use for the whole customer/lead vending machine. If you want to create additional machines in the future, create separate campaigns for them too. (Once you’ve accumulated a good track record for your AdWords account, it makes sense to leverage that for future projects. So don’t create another new account; just create a new campaign instead.)

Within a campaign, you can create multiple ad groups. For now, just think of ad groups as a way to group related ads and keywords groups.

Create a single ad group, for the one single keyword that you’ve decided to focus on. If you want to expand your machine later to include other keywords, you can create additional ad groups for groups of related keywords. For now, we just need one.

Creating Your Ads

When you’re creating the ad group, you’ll need to enter one ad. Use the following formula to guide you.

For the headline, enter the search keyword. For example, “Tooth Whitening Kit”. This will stand out to the searcher as relevant, and Google will also display it in bold because it matches the keyword the searcher entered.
The first line should contain a key benefit of the product or service that you are offering. This benefit could be a positive (e.g., “Get White Teeth within 10 Days”), or a negative (e.g., “Never Repulse Women Again”).
Use the second line to communicate one or more key features of your product, service or the offer itself. For example, “Daily Paste. 100% Guaranteed.”
Enter a descriptive URL – preferably one that includes one or all of the keywords – into the display URL. This URL has to resolve to a page on your website, although it doesn’t have to be the actual landing page. For example, “www.ToothWhitening.com/Kit”.
Finally, enter the URL for the landing page that searchers will be taken to if they click the ad. For example, “www.ToothWhitening.com/landing/january-offer”.

This is a good formula to use when creating your Google ads. There is plenty of scope for testing different benefits and features, but the structure will keep you on track.

The landing page URL should absolutely not point to your homepage. You need to create a specific landing page for the offer that you are advertising. Either the searcher buys something on that page, or they complete a short form and sign up.

Entering Your Keyword

To complete the setup of your ad group, you will need to enter your keyword. You should enter the exact match, phrase match and broad match versions of the keyword.

Exact match is the keyword in square brackets, and is used to display your ad whenever someone enters your search phrase exactly as you’ve entered it (or very close variations). For example, [tooth whitening kit] is an exact match for “tooth whitening kit”, but not “tooth whitening” or “organic tooth whitening kit”.

Phrase match is the keyword in quotes, and is used to display your ad whenever someone enters the exact same keywords (or close variations), but with other keywords too. For example, “tooth whitening kit” is a phrase match for “organic tooth whitening kit”, but not “organic tooth whitening”.

Finally, broad match is the keyword without and quotes and brackets, and is used to match all other searches that all the keywords appear in, but that are not exact or phrase matches. Variations and related terms are matched too.

If your keyword is “tooth whitening kit”, you should have the following entered as keywords in your ad group.

[tooth whitening kit]

“tooth whitening kit”

tooth whitening kit

The reason we enter all three versions of your keyword is so that we can track metrics for all three different types of matches. In the future, this information will help you make adjustments so that your advertising is more efficient. These adjustments are outside the scope of this article, but it’s a good habit to get into right away.

Complete the creation of your ad group.

Click-through Rate (CTR)

Google keeps track of how many people click yours ads, out of all the searchers it was displayed to. This is displayed as a percentage, and is called the click-through rate (CTR). The higher the CTR, the more people thought your ad was relevant and clicked on it.

For various reasons, it’s in Google’s best interests to display ads that are more relevant to searchers. Therefore Google rewards advertisers that display relevant ads. If an advertiser’s ads are more relevant than their competitors’ ads, they pay less to display their ad in the same position.

This means that the higher the CTR for your ad is, the less you’ll pay for each click. You calculated your numbers in part one of this series, so you know why that’s so important: your cost per customer will go down.

You need to make it your mission to always be improving the CTRs for all your ads. And there are two ways you can do this.

First, constantly improve the ads themselves. You do this by creating an additional ad in the ad group. The second ad should be identical to the first, but with just one aspect modified. For example, communicate a different benefit or feature. Then set up the ad groups so that all ads are rotated evenly. (This ensures that every ad gets the same number of impressions – roughly.)

After some time has passed, you will see that one ad is getting more clicks than the other – even though the number of impressions is very similar for each. When one has significantly more clicks than the other, you know that it is more relevant than the other ad.

Discard the inferior ad, and replace it with yet another ad with a new modification to test. There is loads of scope for testing new things. Keep repeating this cycle constantly, and you will see the CTR for your ads increase gradually. And this will reduce the average cost per customer from your vending machine.

Make it a rule to always be testing two ads against each other.

Testing Velocity

The more clicks you are paying for, the quicker you can complete these tests and make progress. This is why it’s so important to be willing to spend money developing your machine. You need to get the CTR as high as possible, as quickly as possible. The more tests you can get through quickly, the faster you’ll increase the CTR for your ads.

Negative Keywords

The other way to increase the CTR for your ads is to stop them from being displayed for searches that are not relevant to what you are offering. Regardless of what you are offering, I can guarantee that there will be some searchers who will never be interested in your offer.

Even though they’re not clicking on your ads, the ads are still being displayed to them. This reduces your CTR score for those ads, which means Google charges you more per click.

You need to stop Google from displaying your ads for particular search terms. For example, if your keyword is “tooth whitening kit”, you do not want to display your ads for searchers that enter “free tooth whitening kit”.

You can do this by entering negative keywords into the ad group. Just enter the keyword, pre-fixed with a minus sign (e.g., “-free tooth whitening kit”). Google will not display your ads for those searches.

Additionally, you can view the CTR for each actual search term that your ads were displayed for. Look for search terms with CTRs that are much lower than other keywords. They’ll stand out. These are the keywords you need to enter into your ad group as negative keywords.

Again, make it a habit to regularly check what actual search terms your ads are being displayed for, and the CTR for each keyword. Regularly eliminate bad search terms by entering them as negative keywords into the ad group.

Over time, the cost per click Google charges you will go right down, and the volume of relevant traffic going to your landing page will increase.

You’ll recall from the previous article that cost per click (CPC) is one figure that affects how much an action (a new customer or lead) costs. The other figure is the amount of clicks required for each action – your conversion rate.

In the final part, I’ll show you how to systematically increase the conversion rate of your landing page. And we’ll setup a way to automatically measure the real cost per action for your customer/lead vending machine.

For part 3, click here.

For part 1, click here.

About the Author

Lewis Bassett is an online marketing consultant and speaker, and helps companies to increase their revenue. Bassett Providentia Ltd is his consulting practice.

Use Progress Indicators for a Standout, Multi-Page Checkout

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 20:50:00 GMT

As you read this, consumers are filling their virtual shopping carts and the industry, as a whole, is on pace to shatter all previous e-commerce records this holiday season. Even so, there are merchants that won’t benefit at all from the increased seasonal buying activity. The reason is their checkout process, of course. It’s been proven time and again to either influence (negatively or positively) the success of retailers depending on how well it is thought out, monitored and measured.

Website Magazine has written extensively in previous issues on the essential elements of the checkout process – those elements that every e-merchant must address in order to stand out in the hyper-competitive retail landscape. But the checkout process, at each and every online store is unique.

For retailers using multi-page checkout or single-page checkout, there is simply no right or wrong, just what results in a conversion for your online retail enterprise. That being said, if you’re using a multi-page checkout, progress indicators can save the day. It seems like such a basic approach – let users know just how many steps remain until their order is completed - but is widely underused.

Progress Indicators for Multi-Page Checkout
Progress indicators often have a bad reputation. They can be seen as an incentive for users not to complete what they set out to do (e.g. “there are too many steps in the checkout process – forget it!”). In reality, including progress indicators within a multi-step checkout process is important to implement because the mind (that of the consumer) automatically breaks down complex purchase process into smaller, simpler parts for understanding and comprehension. When merchants opt to visually lay out the multi-step process, users are as likely to complete their order as they would be on a single-page checkout.

Another interesting consideration to make is a retailer's audience. In the case of a retailer selling higher-priced items, or items designed for an audience that does not buy online regularly, multi-page checkouts make more sense. The consumer may feel safer in a slower process, where it's possible to double-check their order before completing it. This may also prevent the checkout process from seeming overwhelming. For this audience specifically, this is often the case when they are forced to interact with longer, one-page checkouts. These pages typically require address and billing information immediately for order completion.

Progress Indicator Best Practices
There are several things to keep in mind when developing a progress bar. An Internet retailer should number the steps, provide action visuals, such as arrows to suggest a sense of action is possible, should always highlight the user's current page and should include a “review order” step in the process.

A merchant’s responsibility also extends to the form functionality itself, regardless of whether it is a single- or multi-page checkout. Online retailers should make every effort to “carry” information, such as billing address to shipping address fields to reduce repetition by users. They’ll also need to remove distractions so the user can focus exclusively on the transaction – although there is something said for introducing a last-minute offer or product suggestion.

Progress Indicator Showcase
There are myriad uses of progress indicators on websites – and it’s not necessarily exclusive to retailers. Progress indicators can be used for multi-step forms, product tours, and, of course (and for our purposes here), online ordering. Let’s showcase a few progress indicators in action during this holiday 2012 shopping season:

Amazon.com: Amazon takes a rather minimalist approach to its checkout process. It includes a progress indicator, but deemphasizing it by placing it at the top of the page, nearly out of direct view of the shopper.

DrugStore.com: The point of including a progress indicator is so users can see in a near instant where they are in the checkout process. Drugstore.com does this well by using bright colors in its checkout progress indicator.

Macys.com: The use of color is an important consideration in relation to progress indicators, but not so important that retailers should sacrifice brand recognition. Macy’s does a good job by highlighting the active step by using its familiar red color and greying out the other steps.

LLBean.com: The best progress indicators leave no doubt about the reason for their presence and can quickly indicate to users through a variety of means (e.g. color, highlighting, etc.) where the user is in the checkout process. LLBean does well to present its checkout progress indicator predominantly and forcefully.

Crafting an SEO-Friendly Facebook Page

Michael Garrity — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 20:30:00 GMT

Facebook is gradually becoming the standard, go-to destination for consumers that are interested in learning about a brand. In fact, according to an infographic from the marketing research company Lab42, 50 percent of consumers say a brand’s Facebook page is more useful than its website.

On top of that, 75 percent said they feel more connected to brands with Facebook, while 35 percent said they feel like brands listen to them more on the social network. Overall, a whopping 82 percent of respondents said Facebook is a “good place” to engage with brands.

This growing preference for interacting with brands through Facebook means that companies need to start putting as much (if not more) effort into optimizing their Facebook Pages for higher search engine rankings as they do for their websites, because it appears that consumers are going to head there first to check out their brands.

Here’s some SEO you can do to catapult your Facebook page to the top of the SERPs:

Claim Your Name
Obviously, the best place to start with your SEO is with your Facebook Page name and vanity URL; you know, all of that branding stuff. Your Facebook Page name will appear to search engines with the prominence of an <h1> headline, so you should name it after your business or brand and stay away from trying to stuff the title with keywords, which could hurt your viral growth on the social network because the Page will seem like spam to users. Putting your company’s name in the title ensures that consumers will be able to find you with little-to-no confusion, especially when they’re looking on search engines. However, once you select a name, don’t change it unless you absolutely have to, as Google (and presumably others) penalizes pages that change their titles.

And it doesn’t just stop there, because you also have to find the best possible vanity URL for your Facebook Page (although this option is only available for Pages that have at least 100 fans). You can select your username at Facebook.com/username, but keep in mind that the site won’t just let you pick generic keywords for your URL. While there may be some leeway that allows you to use keywords in conjunction with the name of your brand, you will probably be better off just using your brand name (or the closest unused variant you can come up with). Mostly, just make sure that your URL, like your Page name, contains the name of your brand and is carefully crafted to help you stand out on the SERPs.

Make Your Text Count
We’ve all heard about the importance of writing up original content that provides value to users while also taking advantage of the most important keywords in your industry or niche to help you appear higher for related searches. Well, that practice is just as important, although far more limited, on Facebook.

On the social network, you should incorporate as much SEO-friendly text (i.e. heavy on keywords) in your “About” section. This area on a Facebook Page is the only one the site gives you to include a lot of text, and they present useful opportunities to improve your chances of being noticed by searches for some of your brand’s most important keywords, because in addition to the regular About section (which can include a company overview, general description, etc.), there is also space for basic information, contact information and more.

Don’t Forget Multimedia Content
These days, so much of what is posted and shared on Facebook is multimedia content in the form of images or videos. It’s no secret that search engines have a difficult time crawling this content because it isn’t text-based, but luckily it still can be optimized for the search engines.

This is most easily be accomplished by simply appropriately naming any images, logos or videos that you post on Facebook with a filename that is descriptive and, if applicable, uses keywords. Since the titles of videos hare more heavily weighted, it is the easiest type of multimedia content to optimize. Once you’ve got SEO-worthy names, you can add more content to your photos and videos, such as captions or comments, that will also attract search engine bots.

Foster Discussion
It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that Facebook is a social media platform, and that your first task on the site is to be social with your fans. Conveniently, this sort of interaction can actually be beneficial to your SEO efforts, as well. By fostering discussions with other users on your posts, photos and videos, you’re allowing them to generate a wealth of additional content on your page. So, as long as your discussions remain on-topic, all of those user-generated comments could conceivably help improve your rankings for certain keywords. Unfortunately, it’s not known for sure how much weight search engines give to Facebook comments, but we do know that Google at least indexes them.

It’s (Still) All About Links
Links are incredibly valuable for SEO, a fact that remains true even on Facebook. And, as with traditional website optimization, the more links you can accrue, the better. If search engines see your Page getting linked to in numerous places (both on and off the social network), especially from respected or authoritative sources, it will be weighted much more heavily and likely rank higher.

You can start by linking to your Facebook Page on all of your other available Web properties (i.e. your website, Twitter page, YouTube channel, etc.), but you certainly shouldn’t stop there. If you’re going about acquiring links, you could also ask that they link to your Facebook Page in addition to, or in place of, your regular website.

However, the easiest way to get a bunch of links is simply to get more people to Like your Page. Since the site automatically puts links to the Pages that a user Likes right on their profiles, each new fan you get results in one intra-Facebook inbound link to your Page. Then once you foster more discussions and get fans to comment on and Like content on your Page, search engines will see even more reciprocal links in your content stream between you and your fans, since each user’s name on a comment or Like links back to his/her profile.

How to Build a Vending Machine for Customers or Leads (Part 1)

Administrator — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 16:00:00 GMT

By Lewis Bassett, Bassett Providentia Ltd

Imagine if you had a machine that allowed you to buy customers or leads. You put some money in, wait and then a new signup or sale appears in your inbox a few days later.

That would be a huge asset to your business. You could spend more time helping clients and working on your business. And each month, you would acquire new customers, according to your quota, like clockwork. And if you needed more customers than usual, you’d just put more money in. And if you needed less, you’d just ease back.

If you’re willing to spend money building this asset, I’ll show you how to do it – using Google AdWords and a Web page.

If you can afford the development expense, a customer or lead vending machine is one of the greatest assets your business will ever have. You’ll be able to control deal flow just as you can control the flow of water from a tap.

In this three-part series, I will show you how to use Google AdWords to purchase search traffic and turn it into customers and leads. This isn’t an introduction to Google AdWords, though no previous knowledge is assumed. And I won’t be exploring all the individual bells and whistles either.

Google AdWords and the other tools I mention are always changing, but the principles remain the same. And since this article concerns strategy and principles, I won’t be providing any step-by-step instructions or screenshots. (The official Google help pages are more than adequate for that.)

Throughout this three-part series, we’re going to be focusing on converting search traffic from one keyword only. This allows you to focus ruthlessly on the core essentials, though you can expand to other keywords later when your machine is profitable.

Finding Your Keyword

Imagine a customer that is ready to buy whatever it is that you’re selling. You don’t need to educate them, and you don’t need to persuade them to accept the concept. If you sell golf insurance, this person has made up their mind to purchase golf insurance right now. And they’re using Google to find a suitable provider. Now put yourself in their shoes.

Make a list of the most likely keywords that they would enter into Google. Depending on your product or service, there may be just a few, or there may be many.

Enter each keyword into Google to get a sense of what sort of information people who enter this keyword are looking for. Google does a good job of matching a search term to what searchers want to find, so this exercise is worthwhile.

Give each keyword a percentage rating for how well it matches the profile of your imaginary ready-to-buy customer. For example, if you search for the keyword and see a listing of different companies selling the exact thing your ready-to-buy customer is looking for, give it 100 percent. If you don’t see a single relevant site, give it 0 percent.

This exercise is highly subjective, and that’s OK. Market research isn’t an exact science, and at this stage we’re just investigating the viability of each keyword.

Before we make any decisions, we need to know how much search traffic each keyword gets. A keyword that has a relevance of 60 percent and 1,000 searches per month is more viable than a keyword that is 100 percent relevant but only gets 500 searches.

Use the Google Keyword Tool to estimate the number of searches that each keyword gets per month. Depending on the nature of your business, you may want to use the global or local figure. (If you use the local figure, make sure you’re logged in. Or at least let the tool know what country you are in.)

Now you can work out the volume of relevant search traffic for each keyword. Just multiply the monthly search volume by the relevancy percentage.

For example, suppose the monthly search volume of the keyword “tooth whitening” is 201,000. And suppose that you consider it to be 20 percent relevant to your imaginary customer, who is looking to buy a tooth whitening kit. The relevant search volume is 40,200.

Before you can choose your most viable keyword, there’s one last step you need to take.

Use the Google Traffic Estimator to determine the highest amount that other advertisers are willing to pay per click. Enter the keyword and run your mouse over to the far right of the line on the graph; the “Max CPC” value is displayed in the label that appears. Note this figure down.

This isn’t the amount you will be paying for all your clicks. But for most markets – particularly competitive ones - it indicates the amount that other competitors are making from each click.

Multiply this figure by the number of relevant searches a keyword gets per month. This is a crude way of determining how much money there is in a market. But for our purposes, it allows you to determine which one keyword you want to focus on to begin with. (You want to focus on keywords where there is money to be made. This best indicator of this is if other competitors are already making money.)

For example, suppose the highest cost per click shown is $22. If there are 40,200 relevant searches, then the estimated value of all that monthly traffic – for our purposes of choosing the right keyword to build our machine on - is $884,400.

Estimate Development Costs

I mentioned at the beginning, you have to be willing to invest money into developing your customer/lead vending machine. This means you’re going to be paying for clicks that will not convert into customers, at least to begin with – possibly for a few months. We need those clicks for testing. So it’s essential that you estimate how much investment is required.

Again, use the Google Traffic Estimator to determine how much you will probably need to pay per click to display your ads at position four. (You don’t need position one. In fact, position four most often converts better than position one.) After you enter the keyword into the tool, you’ll need to enter a “Max PPC” figure into the tool and see what position Google estimates you’ll get. Revise this figure until you get to position four. This is a rough estimation of how much you will need to pay per click.

Your ads are not going to get clicks from every person that searches for that keyword. We’re aiming for 3 percent of relevant searches. To determine how many clicks that is, multiply the total number of relevant searches by 3 percent. That is the number of clicks your Google ads are likely to get, once your machine has been developed.

For example, suppose the keyword “tooth whitening” gets 40,200 relevant searches. That means you can expect your ads to attract 1,206 clicks – once your machine has been developed.

To estimate the cost of those clicks, multiply that figure by the new cost per click we just estimated, for position four. That is the total amount of investment required, if you want to get your machine up and running as quickly as possible.

For example, suppose the estimated cost per click for position four for the keyword “tooth whitening” is $4.28. The total cost of 1,206 clicks would be $5,161.68.

Realistically, you’re going to get a return on your AdWords investment within the first month. And there’s a good chance you’ll start to make a profit before the end of month two. But plan pessimistically. Can you afford to invest the amount required for three months without any return?

(If your budget is tight, you can spend less per month, but it will take you longer to develop your machine. Likewise, once it’s developed, you can ease back your monthly spend if you require less customers or leads.)

An automated machine that puts sales or leads on your desk – according to your own required deal flow – is a very valuable asset. If you want your business to grow, you need a strong supply of new business. Can you really afford not to make this investment?

As you carry out testing and enhance your ads and landing pages, the return on your AdWords investment will increase – quite sharply. Once it’s generating more profit than your spending, you’ve reached breakeven. Within the limits of the search volume of your chosen keyword, you now effectively have a license to print cash.

Estimating Return on Investment

Just because you can afford something, it doesn’t mean it’s a sensible investment. Before you can make a choice about whether or not to build your machine, you need to have some idea of the estimated return on investment (ROI).

First, you need to know what a customer or lead is worth to you.

The starting point is to know the average or estimated lifetime value (LTV) of your average customer. You should know this, or at least have an estimation of it. There are many different ways to calculate or estimate this figure, and it’s essential that you have it – even if it is only an estimation .

If you will be selling a product or service straight from the landing page of a Google ad, the LTV of your average customer is all you need to calculate ROI.

If you will be using your landing page to generate leads – for longer or more complex sales cycles – you will need to work out the average value per lead. Simply divide the LTV figure by the number of leads required for each new customer – on average. This is average value of each lead.

For example, suppose an average customer is worth $50,000 of profit to you over their life. If one out of five leads convert into a customer (on average), then the average value of a lead is $10,000.

From here on, we’ll be referring to a lead or sale as an action. So whichever of the two figures above is appropriate to you is the value per action (VPA). To calculate the ROI, we need to know the cost per action (CPA).

Again, I must stress, this is not an exact science. Real market research comes from being in the game, not from being a spectator. At this stage, we’re only estimating your costs and returns. As you collect real data, you can refine these figures and adjust accordingly.

To begin with, assume that 1% of your clicks will purchase something from your landing page, and 20% will complete a short form – once your ads and landing pages have matured. So divide your cost per click (CPC) by the appropriate figure to estimate the cost per action (CPA).

For example, suppose you will be selling tooth whitening kits straight from your landing page. If a click costs $4, the estimated cost of each sale is $400.

If instead you were giving away a free report to collect leads, the estimated cost of each lead is $20. (It takes less commitment for someone to enter his or her email address, than to buy something.)

Hopefully, the value per action (VPA) is higher than the (CPA). This indicates that you can expect a positive return on investment. Reduce that ratio down (or increase it) so that the CPA is $1. This basically says that for every $1 you invest in Google AdWords, you’re effectively getting back $x.

For example, for every $400 you spend, you get a new customer. And the average customer brings $800 dollars in profit over their lifetime as a customer with you. So for every $1 you spend, you’ll get $2 back.

That is your ROI – the most important metric in marketing, and the one that almost everyone ignores.

After completing these steps, you should have two metrics.

First, you should have an estimation of how much it is going to cost you to develop the machine. This is the monthly cost of the relevant clicks you can attract, multiplied by two or three. (I think it’s better to plan for the worst, but aim for the best.)

Second, you should have an estimation of what the return on investment is going to be for every $1 you invest into your machine buying customers or leads.

You now have enough information to decide whether building a customer/lead vending machine on your chosen keyword is viable and worth your while. Use your own subjective judgement to help you with this decision.

In the next two articles, I will show you how to actually build this machine.

For part 2, click here.

For part 3, click here.

About the Author

Lewis Bassett is an online marketing consultant and speaker, and helps companies to increase their revenue. Bassett Providentia Ltd is his consulting practice.

What Small Biz Can Learn from Big Biz

Amberly Dressler — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 20:15:00 GMT

And how big businesses learned from them.

Sandwiched between Black Friday and Cyber Monday is Small Business Saturday, a day dedicated to supporting small businesses nationwide, and the brainchild of American Express. Aside from all-important holiday revenue, participating small, local businesses have much to gain in the way of digital growth.

This is because American Express provides participating businesses with free online marketing materials, such as digital banners to place on their websites promoting their participation. Small business owners also receive sample tweets, Facebook posts and emails to use. By utilizing and understanding the importance of these resources, as well as taking a look at how big businesses use them every day, small businesses can truly establish or grow their Internet presence.

And, although it’s estimated that more than 50 percent of small businesses are operating without a website, the following tips on what small businesses can learn from big businesses, is made with the assumption our readers are also website owners or workers.

Social Media

For many small business owners, it may seem like an uphill battle to participate (let alone compete) in the digital realm. Their worries, however, don’t diminish the importance of doing so. Consumers, especially young ones, want a best-in-class experience at all times – across all channels (e.g. mobile, social, website, in-store). And, there is no better way to begin meeting their demands than through social media.

Example: Nordstrom’s number one goal has always, and always will be, to improve its customer service. And, the 100-year-old-plus company looks at its social media pages as an extension of its customer service. Jamie Nordstrom, president of Nordstrom Direct, even said that at one point the company’s Twitter account was shut down due to sending out too many tweets answering customer’s questions.

“The customer is completely in control,” said Nordstrom. “The retailers who are embracing that are going to thrive.”

Additionally, Nordstrom has stern and even out-of-the-box social networking guidelines for its employees. Among the latter is “be humble.”

“Our number-one goal is to offer each customer great service, but we're certainly not perfect and we do make mistakes. Let's stay focused on working to deliver great service instead of bragging about it.”

Lesson Learned: Small businesses should heed Nordstrom’s example, as it is not enough to create social media pages and post about company-related topics, but it also important to actively respond to customers. Additionally, small businesses should set its social media guidelines to include ones that are in-line with company goals and ethos. Don’t type something on a social media page that you wouldn’t say directly to a consumer, in-store. A business’s customer service hat should never come off, even in the comfort of the digital space.

Online Advertising

Eighty-five percent of consumers search online for local businesses, according to Local Consumer Review Survey (2012). That said, business owners not advertising online and employing SEO tactics are also not raising awareness about their business, they are not encouraging repeat visit and they are not generating sales (or conversions). They are also likely losing out to their competitors, as according to e-Marketer.com, next year’s spending predictions include a $7 billion increase in online ad spending. But, even those who are spending the most can still struggle.

Example: SEMrush estimates Groupon’s search engine traffic (the cost of purchasing the same number of visitors through ads) as $1,014,508. Clearly, Groupon makes significant investments to acquire subscribers through online marketing initiatives, such as search engine marketing, display advertisements, referral programs and affiliate marketing. But while this may have worked for the company’s original goals, which was to acquire new subscribers, the company now has to leverage different promotions (e.g. discount codes) to achieve its current goal, which is to activate subscribers (get those who have subscribed to actually purchase). Groupon, however, doesn’t go at their online advertising alone. According to BuiltWith.com, Groupon uses Google’s DoubleClick.net for online advertising assistance.

Lesson Learned: In the virtual world, businesses (of all sizes) have to be flexible with strategies and goals. Being open to change, as well as virtually asking for help, by employing agencies or seasoned professionals, can improve the bottom line and improve a customer’s experience.

Email

The long-standing relationships that many small business owners are able to create and sustain with their customers are only in the dreams of many large enterprises. The former’s face-to-face interactions, not only give consumers a face, but merchants are also on hand to customize their customer service approach and promotions to them. However, many small businesses are missing out on using that information for future communications, such as email.

Example: UGG Australia uses a combination of marketing emails with a segmentation strategy based on interest, triggered actions and personalized communication based on browsing behavior. In order to ensure all of its email communication with the consumer is effective, the company leverages consumer data, sales trends and product interaction to reach a positive return on investment. Additionally, the majority of its email communications goes through a third-party email service provider, Silverpop. The company also leverages Demandware’s native functionality for transactional and back-in-stock emails. Its personalized email communication comes from integration with MyBuys.

Lesson Learned: Again we see that third-party providers increasing a company’s digital prowess and improve customer experience. There are plenty of available email marketing solutions that can help small businesses. For 50 of them, visit Website Magazine’s 50 Top Email Marketing Service Providers article.

The true lesson learned for any business – both small and large – is to put customers/clients first. And, while small, local businesses don’t often (if ever) make news for quality customer relations, it is to them large, digitally responsible companies turn to and try to emulate. We see that through Nordstrom’s use of social media, Groupon’s online advertising and UGG Australia’s email practices. Let us not forget who is driving our success, and ask for help when needed. Innovation is happening all around us and plenty of digital companies – covered every day at WebsiteMagazine.com - can accelerate digital growth.

And as a final note for small businesses looking to reap benefits of Small Business Saturday, look at how American Express uses the same design elements, logos, banner ads, etc., in all the event’s marketing collateral and try to emulate a streamlined experience of your own, long after Small Business Saturday closes.

The Mobile Impact; Stats, States, & Data

Allison Howen — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 20:45:00 GMT

Mobile traffic is valuable traffic.

In fact, a recent Monetate study reveals that nearly one out of every five consumers has made an online purchase with a mobile device. Furthermore, over the last year, tablet shopping traffic increased 161 percent while smartphone traffic increased 119 percent.

However, only merchants and marketers who have a strong mobile presence are reaping these benefits. Luckily, Monetate’s Ecommerce Quarterly study contains a plethora of mobile shopping insights, which Web workers can use to better improve their mobile-optimized websites and marketing strategies.

The Stats

Some of the most intriguing metrics from the study show that even though traditional desktop traffic still makes up 81.6 percent of the market share, these shoppers actually have the lowest average order value (AOV) at $91.76. Conversely, tablet shoppers only make up 8.37 percent of the website traffic market share, yet have a higher AOV of $96.84, while smartphone shoppers make up 10.03 percent of traffic and have the highest AOV of $97.82.

This data proves that even though desktops still drive the most traffic, mobile customers tend to spend more when they actually make a purchase. Yet, it is important to note that smartphone shoppers have the lowest conversion rate at 1.01 percent followed by tablets at 3.12 percent, while traditional desktop traffic has the highest conversion rate of 3.28 percent.

In order to get the best return on investment (ROI) from mobile, merchants shouldn’t only create a mobile-optimized site, but instead build smartphone and tablet specific sites. This is because Monetate’s statistics show that tablet shoppers are much more likely to convert than smartphone shoppers, despite the fact that smartphones drive more traffic. This is most likely the result of consumers who leverage their smartphones to comparison shop while inside brick-and-mortar stores. For this reason, merchants should create smartphone sites that prominently display product ratings and reviews, and tablet sites that feature easy-to-use navigational elements and high-quality product images.

The States

While it is clear that mobile is worth the investment, there are still many uncertainties when it comes to mobile marketing. That being said, marketers should be aware of the geographic locations that contain the highest number of mobile savvy shoppers. According to Monetate’s report, Maryland drives the most mobile traffic, followed by South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas.

By leveraging this geographical data, marketers can build mobile campaigns that target shoppers in these states. For example, marketers can create location-specific campaigns that include incentives to buy, as well as display geotargeted customer testimonials to consumers in a specific area. Additionally, marketers can combine geotargeted messages with in-store inventory data, which can help drive sales both in-stores and online. For instance, marketers can promote in-store returns for online shoppers or launch a geotargeted banner that features an item that is out-of-stock online, but is available at a nearby store.

Your Data

While all of the aforementioned data can be used as a good starting point for optimizing mobile sites and marketing campaigns, merchants and marketers should rely on their own analytics for optimizing their mobile strategies. For example, even though Maryland is overall the top state for mobile traffic, your analytics may reveal that your business receives most of its mobile traffic from Wyoming or Hawaii, which would make it a better idea for your campaigns to center around those areas.

At the end of the day, it is important to remember that mobile is still an emerging channel, so testing a variety of elements and analyzing the results (for mobile sites and marketing campaigns), is the only way to ensure that you're receiving the best ROI for your company's mobile initiatives.

Cash in On Payments Data

Administrator — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 19:15:00 GMT

Business success often hinges on your ability to better understand your customers.

Even as the digital era brings a growing number of faceless transactions, there are many ways that businesses can easily learn more about their customers’ interests, brand loyalties and lifestyles. While online marketers may utilize more traditional outlets like social media, Google and marketing analytics to learn about customers, many are overlooking one valuable resource – payments data.

Rooted in the data, which is gleaned from every card transaction, is the basis of “payments intelligence”, which provides underutilized and valuable data about customers and the payment choices they make. Payments data is often left unstructured and never acted upon, let alone optimized. But a new way of thinking allows merchants to get around that trove of payments data. No longer should there be a commodity-driven approach to payments, rather, you should look at payments more intelligently – as fingerprints left behind by your customers allowing you to better know and understand them.

For example, the card type a customer uses reveals a lot about that person. Just knowing whether he or she is using an American Express or a store card can reveal their level of affluence or degree of loyalty to a brand or store. Additionally, the type of card used can reveal insights into a consumer’s geographical location. Are a lot of your customers using prepaid Visa cards? Which states are driving what forms of payment? Perhaps MasterCard is your customers’ preferred choice of payment method. This information can be overlaid with other data points and interpreted by your business to make more informed marketing, service or general business decisions.

The payments engine of the future will be filled with intelligence that will allow businesses to calculate a customer's lifetime value, predict the propensity for a customer to make the next purchase and even personalize offers to individual customers. These actionable insights serve online merchants in two ways:

1. They can be factored into CRM and marketing activities that are part of your total customer experience.

2. They can help you avoid billing cycle disruptions and/or avoid certain transactions all together.

As disruption occurs in the traditional provision of payments services, payments intelligence is becoming more realistic. While much of the data involved in payments intelligence has been available for years, a new generation of developers and systems is approaching transaction processing with the mindset of app-driven SaaS developers – where intelligence drives new action.

Gathering payments data and turning it into actionable payments intelligence is easier than it sounds. Every retailer or service provider that processes payments is sitting on increadibly valuable data, if they know where to look and which questions to ask. Questions like “Is this a repeat customer?” and “What card brand does this customer use?” can reveal more than you might think and can help you realize payments intelligence fluency.

With only a couple of months left until the busy holiday shopping season, businesses have a lot to gain if they simply look at the data that they are already collecting. Understanding who your customers are through their payment data can ultimately have a large and positive impact on marketing and customer relationship management. The countdown is on – will you know who your customers are by Thanksgiving?

About the Author: Sayid Shabeer is the director of customer success at Litle & Co. His team focuses on value delivery to clients across their Litle experience – from sales to on-boarding, continuing through to merchant services.