December 2008 Archives

Social Media: Your Customer Is More Important Than Ever

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Website Marketing

on December 26, 2008 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Raise your hand if you are a social media user. (OK, you can put it down. Your coworkers are starting to stare.)

Not sure what a social media user is? Let's take a little test. Do you have a profile on Facebook or LinkedIn? Do you write a blog? Do you frequently IM or send text messages? Do you use Skype, Basecamp, or delicious? How about uploading photos from your cell phone to the Web?

If you said yes to any of the above, you are a social media user. And as we race into the beginning of 2009, you're far from alone. That term applies to just about everyone who uses a phone or computer.

But there's a deeper meaning to social media than just visiting sites or using devices. What it really means is participation. And participation is a very important idea because it's related to collaboration. Collaboration produces a kind of co-ownership, a collective contribution. A shared stake or responsibility, an ongoing relationship. When we participate, we co-create.

In other words, your customers help create your product. And when power shifts to the consumer, that's serious business.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3632173

Save Our Sales: Preventing Abandoned Shopping Carts

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Website Marketing

on December 26, 2008 8:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With holiday buying budgets being squeezed, it's critical to make sure you are doing all you can to minimize cart abandonment in your ecommerce web site. Naturally, if a customer has taken the time to place an item in his or her cart, you want to close the sale.

Here is a list of nine tips for preventing shopping cart abandonment:

1. Establish a strategy for saving items in your cart.
2. Ensure that real-time inventory messaging is found on the product page and in the shopping cart.
3. Message cart strategy to ensure customers know when and if their cart will be cleared.
4. Review abandonment opportunities.
5. Understand current technology's ability to trigger abandonment e-mail.
6. Send multiple e-mail reminders spaced so as not to be annoying.
7. Use incentives to save the sale.
8. Include merchandising tactics to foster the customer relationship and encourage purchasing beyond the abandoned item.
9. If abandonment is due to out-of-stocks, consider a stock alert capability.

See the full story at: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/advertising/article.php/3788976

PPC Landing Pages: PPC Visitors Have ADD

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Website Marketing

on December 24, 2008 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The first and most important objective of the landing page is to convince the visitor that they've come to the right place.

Here are some PPC Landing Pagedesign guidelines:

1. Keep the logo small. Take a look at the landing pages of prominent retailers - the size of the logo has shrunk steadily over the years. I personally believe the logo need be no larger than 200 or so pixels wide by 50 high.

2. Most people, including ADD site visitors, don't read content formatted as paragraphs. Put your content - benefits, features - into short, bulleted items.

3. Graphics can be very helpful -- product photos, pictures of happy people benefitting from your products/services -- but keep the graphics relatively small. They should reinforce your textual messages and help guide the visitor to a quick conversion. See #6 below.

4. The button or link that allows the visitor to take the next step in the conversion process should be big, prominent and "above the fold" - visible on the screen without forcing the visitor to scroll to see it.

5. Limit or exclude off-page navigation. The more specific the search term, the less likely that the visitor arrived on your page without conversion intent. For that reason, pages web design often contain only three links - the link going to the next step in the conversion process, plus one each for the Privacy Policy and About Us pages. The latter are included for those visitors who need to feel the site and company are trustworthy. But we want to keep the visitor on the landing page - so we usually open a new window to display these two, leaving the landing page visible and accessible behind.

6. Adopt the attitude, "If it's not helping, it's hurting." Any text, graphic or filigree must help focus the attention of the visitor on completing the conversion.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew_email/experts/profitable_ppc

7 Simple Ways To Build Traffic To A New Website

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Website Marketing

on December 23, 2008 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Got a brand new website ? That's great, but nobody cares. OK, maybe that's a little harsh. The truth, however, is that just having a website doesn't get you much. Many business owners I meet are surprised to find, once we look at the numbers, that the shiny new site they had built not too long ago gets little to no traffic on a daily basis.

Many newcomers to the web make the mistake of thinking that just by buying a domain main and putting up your site visitors are going to happen by - something like when you buy property and build a storefront in a busy part of town.

It just doesn't work that way. The web is harsh. You can have the best looking site in the world with great resources and content and go entirely ignored or unnoticed. It happens. It's happening right now. Somewhere out there in the ether is a brand new gorgeous website loaded with great content, and nobody cares. Poor little lonely site.

But there is hope. Every website had its early days. Even sites that get hundreds of thousands of visitors a day started out with none.

Here are 7 simple things you can start doing right now to help drive traffic to your website.

See the full story at: http://www.sitepronews.com/2008/12/16/7-simple-ways-to-build-traffic-to-a-new-website

HuffThomas.com Site Launch!

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Website Marketing

on December 19, 2008 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

7strategy just launched HuffThomas.com new website design! HuffThomas performs statutory examinations of many types of business especially to insurance companies.

Check it out here... www.HuffThomas.com

ThePneumaCenter.org Site Launch!

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Website Marketing

on December 19, 2008 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

7strategy just launched ThePneumaCenter.org new website design !, ThePneumaCenter provide a consistent methodology of spiritual health care and chaplain (ministerial) services across the continuum of care to people of the world regardless of race, class, nationality, ethnicity, and religion.

Check it out here... www.ThePneumaCenter.org

Into the Pits: Time for an E-Marketing Tune-Up

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Website Marketing

on December 19, 2008 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As we head into the holidays, now is a great time to ensure your emarketing campaigns work the way they are supposed to and to bring good cheer in the process. In this column, I'll focus on measurements and how they can be used to tune campaigns.

Branding aside -- an important element in its own right -- the first step to getting your campaigns to work is to ensure that your online processes work. Let's assume you've attended to fundamentals such as avoiding checkout processes that require registration. Dive into subtler factors: do you provide too many choices or are searches going unanswered because potential customers are looking for a "widget" but you've called it a "gadget"? Surprisingly, these types of issues can confound the best e-marketing efforts, and they don't always show up as an obvious cause.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/clickz_email_experts/brand/emkt_strat/newsletter

How to Increase Your Search Efficiency

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Website Marketing

on December 18, 2008 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Everyone feels the need to stretch every extra penny in these tough economic times. Even the most profitable company isn't immune to cutbacks and budget tightening.

Search marketing tends to be very cost effective, and can exhibit high ROI as it is, but you still can't rest on your laurels. With less budget for traditional media and more going into online media , marketers are realizing that even though online is the "measurable" and "cheap" sister, it must be optimized to maximize results.

That means revisiting your search strategies to make sure you're fully exploiting every dollar you invest.

Let's review some quick tips for optimizing your search efforts (both paid and organic) to stretch your dollar further: See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3631992

5 Tips for Successful Blog Optimization

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Website Marketing

on December 17, 2008 8:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are five tips for successful business blog optimization benefits in the long run:

1. Find a practical purpose for starting a blog. There are many reasons why companies would benefit from starting and publishing a blog. Some might use blog software as a content management system for an online newsroom or to archive newsletters to the web.

Other blog applications include: aggregating industry news, publishing ongoing product development information, improving customer relations, building thought leadership or improving online marketing and sales. Identifying a specific business goal that can be facilitated by the creation, publishing and promotion of blog content should be the first step.

Whether the goal is to better connect with existing customers and reduce support costs or to attract more media coverage to improve industry reputation, there should be a specific business goal for the blog. Search engine optimization (SEO) can be used to further that objective through improved search visibility.

See the full story at: http://www.toprankblog.com/2008/12/5-tips-for-successful-blog-optimization/

3 Reasons Why Blogs for SEO Fail

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Website Marketing

on December 16, 2008 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There are many benefits to publishing a business blog and improved search engine visibility is one of the most popular. It's pretty common advice to hear: start a blog and the fresh content will attract links, improving your search results. Such tactical advice can be very effective.

Unfortunately, the advice gets filtered and distorted, not unlike what happens in the game "telephone" kids play. Pretty soon one or more blogs are implemented for the sole purpose and expectation of improving search engine visibility and nothing else. At least nothing else that's accountable.

What's wrong with this picture? Blogs started solely for SEO objectives will inevitably fail.

See the full story at: http://www.toprankblog.com/2008/12/blogs-for-seo-fail/

Search Engine Optimization: 11 Basic SEO Strategies for Beginners

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Website Marketing

on December 15, 2008 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

search engine optimization (SEO) is the process getting your website ready to be found in organic web searches. By organic searches, I'm referring to web searches that appear naturally as the result of a search for a particular keyword or phrase, rather than appearing in the sponsored links (pay-per-click advertising) section of a search page.

Frankly, for the first few years I was online, the thought of doing my own SEO made my eyes cross, and I was overwhelmed at where to start. I even toyed with the idea of hiring a specialist to do this for me, but never got around to it. However, over time, I slowly began to see a pattern emerging, and started to optimize some of my sites accordingly. One of the best days of my business was when I recently ranked #1 for a particularly competitive search term.

Here are the 11 strategies that I regularly implement on my sites for better SEO positioning

See the full story at: http://www.site-reference.com/articles/General/Search-Engine-Optimization-11-Basic-SEO-Strategies-for-Beginners.html

Tips to Help You Avoid Online Shopping Risks

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Website Marketing

on December 12, 2008 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Risks: Fraudulent shopping sites, Holiday e-mail scams, and Malware

While the Internet can allow you access to millions of items and stores that you may want to shop for the holidays, it is important to remember that anyone can set up a Website that looks like a legitimate retail site. This time of year fraudsters know more credit card numbers are given out by online shoppers and to capture those numbers they are setting up legit-looking retail Website, accepting consumer's credit card payments for items they purchase -- and within a day or two the site is gone. In November and December there are also more instances of legitimate Web sites being hacked, with the results to consumers the same.

See the full story at: http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2008/SafeOnlineShopping.asp

PPC Landing Pages: The End of the Line -- Or the Beginning?

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Website Marketing

on December 11, 2008 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week we will -- finally! -- start our discussion of PPC landing pages. Amateur PPC advertisers ignore the importance of landing pages entirely. Sophisticated advertisers know that PPC landing page design and testing is at least as important as building and optimizing great ad groups with great ads.

Expert PPC advertisers realize that PPC landing pages have more impact on conversion rates and ROI than anything else they can do. And the few truly god-like advertisers don't stop at landing pages; they build, test and optimize the entire conversion path, from the landing page through the last page of the conversion process.

See the full history at: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew_email/experts/profitable_ppc

Eight Free Tools for Tuning Up Online Ad Campaigns

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Website Marketing

on December 10, 2008 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Managing a pay-per-click ad campaign isn't easy -- it takes constant attention. And some days you're just not inspired to think of hundreds of variations of a keyword or check their density on a page, or to research the competition or to format everything for maximum performance. To help, we offer the following free tools to assist you in your online advertising efforts and help you boost visits to your Web shop.

See the full story at: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/advertising/article.php/3783356

10 Quick Tips to Boost Website Sales

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Website Marketing

on December 9, 2008 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Small changes can often make a difference in whether a customer at your Ecommerce Web Site purchases from you or hits the back button to look for a better alternative.

The 10 initiatives below can boost the sales on your site, helping you to weather economic storms and position you to sprint ahead of the pack once conditions change.

See the full story at: http://www.wdfm.com/marketing-tips/boost-site-sales.php

December E-Mail Marketing Tips

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Website Marketing

on December 9, 2008 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With Cyber Monday over and the final stretch of December ahead, online merchants are officially in the count-down to the holidays. Find out what Ecommerce Web Site owners should be doing during the month of December as part of their overall holiday promotional plans.

Tips for December Email Marketing Promotions

In December, you will really want to pick up the pace as we get closer to the final shopping days. Normally, subscribers might start clicking their spam button due to the frequency of some e-mail newsletters, but for online vendors, this month is the one time of year when you can send more e-mails out and not get blacklisted by subscribers. Right now subscribers really want those promotions and shopping deals. In December, you should focus less on branding and more directly on products in your inventory.

See the full story at: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/advertising/article.php/3788236

The 12 E-Commerce Tips of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa

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Website Marketing

on December 1, 2008 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

According to a recent survey conducted by the e-tailing group, this holiday season more shoppers plan to do their gift buying online instead of in stores. The reasons shoppers gave for the switch included time savings, better product selection, no crowds and saving money -- in other words, convenience, value and time savings. Survey participants also said they planned on buying fewer holiday gifts and spending less money this holiday season.

So if you own or operate an ecommerce web site and hope to turn a profit this holiday season, the message is clear. Your web design and your products really need to stand out. You need to make sure customers can easily and quickly navigate through your site. You need to make sure you have (in stock) the products that customers are looking for. And you need to make sure you have enough bandwidth, so if your site gets lots of hits, it won't slow down.

To see the full story visit: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/advertising/article.php/3786966

Five Timely Tips for Holiday Email Marketing

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Website Marketing

on December 1, 2008 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Now that Halloween is over and November is underway, it's time to reassess -- and adjust -- your holiday email marketing plans.

Find out what Web shop owners should be doing between now and Dec. 1 to optimize their holiday email marketing efforts.

To see the full story visit: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/advertising/article.php/3783891

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