January 2009 Archives

In this economic environment, many organizations want to use email marketing more effectively. List maintenance and growth are critical. The constant attrition from churn, unsubscribes, and complaints places a downward pressure on lists and presents challenges to marketers trying to maintain program efficacy.

Most organizations also have only a fraction of their customers' e-mail addresses. Eventually this leads to the topic of e-mail append.

I've written before about how to perform e-mail append successfully.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/clickz_email_experts/em_mkt/opt/newsletter

Every year or so, I look closely at search engine marketing (SEM) best practices for launching a redesigned site. Over the last four or five years, much of the advice has stayed the same. Today, however, I discuss some techniques that may have changed since the last time you launched a site update.

Rapid Crawling and Indexing

Launching a redesigned site can create a bumpy ride as old content moves to different locations. Assuming most of your pages are complete and ready for prime time, expediting the crawling and indexing of your new pages is the most important SEM-related issue to execute efficiently.

One easy way to do this is to include your new URLs in your XML site map feed the minute the new site is live. That's not new. But for over a year, Google has offered exceptionally flexible XML site map submission on which few sites seem to capitalize.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3632436

I'm going to go out of sequence again and describe a new Google AdWords that will, IMHO, change pay per click advertising in a fundamental way. Frankly I'm surprised that there's been so little discussion about the feature in print, forums, blogs, etc.

I'm talking about the Google AdWords Conversion Optimizer. Google quietly added this feature to every advertiser's AdWords account a few months ago. In a nutshell, it regulates keyword-level bids, promising to deliver as many conversions as possible, at or below a cost-per-conversion you specify.

That's right -- automated bid management, the Holy Grail that's been so highly-valued that companies offering it have been built and sold at a profit -- some more than once.

In a perfect world, automated bid management performs a function that is difficult or impossible for a human to perform: monitoring conversion behavior several times per day, and adjusting keyword bids so that the likelihood is high that the advertiser will pay no more and no less than the amount required to get conversions at or below their target cost.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3632476

Shopping, in many ways, has always been a social activity. Before the rise of the Internet and online shopping, women would often shop for clothes or go to the mall with friends -- and, in the more distant past, were often on a first- or last-name basis with their service providers (their dry cleaner, the grocer, their doctor, etc.). Similarly, men have long been known to consult or compare opinions with other men when it came to, say, cars and/or farm or yard equipment and/or electronics, and likewise had "their guy" at the stores they frequented.

That social aspect of the shopping or commerce experience is in large part what instilled and maintained customer and brand loyalty. Then along came the Internet, which, to a large degree, changed shopping from a personal to an impersonal experience. Out went the social aspect of shopping, the leisurely browsing and discussions around what to get, and in came how quickly can we get shoppers to the product(s) they are looking for and to checkout.

See the full story at: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com//article.php/3797916

If you run an Ecommerce website, then you know that it's important to make sure that your products show up in the organic search results ahead of your competitors--especially if your competitor is selling the same products. Optimizing your ecommerce web site for the search engines can be tricky at times, so we'll examine what's really required in order for your products to rank better than your competitor's products in the organic search results.

Optimizing an ecommerce site isn't that different than optimizing any other type of web site. In order for a page to rank well in the organic search results, the page needs a few things: a good title tag that includes the keywords you're targeting (typically the product name), good content on the page that includes the appropriate keywords, and links from other web pages to that web page. And in order for the page to remain in the search engines' indexes, the page cannot be a duplicate of any other page on the internet.

An Search Engine Friendly What does it mean when I say that your site is search engine friendly? I'm referring to a web site that can be easily crawled by the search engines without being restricted by cookies, redirects, session IDs, and long URLs with lots of parameters in them. To find out if your site is already search engine friendly, go to Google and perform site:www.yourdomain.com search. If you know you have 100 product pages on your web site and Google is showing all of them, great. But if Google doesn't appear to be indexing all of your product pages then there's a reason--and most of the time there are issues with the site that can be fixed.

If you have a shopping cart on your web site then you're most likely using a shopping cart that can be changed to be more search engine friendly. Many popular carts like OSCommerce, Miva, X-cart, and Monster Commerce, are already search engine friendly or include some plugin or additional features that can make it more search engine friendly. You'll need to figure out which shopping cart you're site is using and see if you're using the latest search engine optimization-related plugins or add-ons.

The URLs of your site should not include variables, parameters, or session IDs. If you have question marks in your URLs and/or if you have page URLs that change every time they're visited, then that needs to change. You should be able to pick out one product page on your site, visit that URL directly, and that page should come up--and it shouldn't change or give an error or "not found" message. Like I mentioned earlier, many of the common shopping carts include plugins or "add-ons" that will make the required changes. If you're not using these plugins or "add-ons" then you might consider installing them or moving to another shopping cart.

See the full story at: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2006/04/10/SEO-for-Ecommerce.aspx

More than any other group of Website design professionals, Internet retailers spend the most time focusing on individual page elements. They do this for good reason; each and every change they make (even small changes) produce a big impact. Sometimes it's not always for the better. That's why understanding best practices goes a long way towards getting your enterprise in the black.

Chances are high that the first add-to-cart button you encountered didn't make much of an impression. It's likely you understood it's purpose and you took the pre-determined action set forth by the merchant - buy and move down the sales funnel towards order completion. But as more merchants came online and user attention and loyalty became more difficult to secure, merchants began to get creative. For some end-users, merchants went overboard and made broader influences on consumers purchasing behavior - sometimes in good way, sometimes not.

From this trend came elemental testing. And one element that is often tested more than any other is the Add-To-Cart button. When redesigning an add-to-cart button, the elements tested are often the visual design, the text/copy and usability. Let's first look at button text and how wording can influence user behavior, as well as some general design choices related to add-to-cart buttons.

See the full story at: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/pages/designing-better-add-to-cart-buttons.aspx

In our online world, a vertical directory is a Web site that focuses on one particular category of products and services. Nearly every niche has one or more good directories serving that industry.

Some simply list names, numbers, addresses, and Web sites. Others provide the opportunity to create fairly comprehensive listings where business owners can share detailed information about their enterprise and what it offers. This kind of sites are often a good place to increase your business exposure in a search engine optimization stand point.

Vertical Directories Often Rank Well

Some of the best vertical directories rank well because they publish plenty of good content on their subject, which appeals to the search engines. Having many similarly themed pages also helps them to rank for a wide variety of long-tail search terms. In addition, these content-rich sites are good resources for their users and, because of the collection of expert information they provide on their topic, people tend to bookmark them, return to them, link to them, and recommend them to others.

Choosing Directories

Choosing the right directories for your business listing doesn't have to be difficult. See which rank well for the top two or three terms for which you'd like to rank (without using location terms). For example, if you have an eye clinic, see which sites rank well for "eye exam," "eye doctor," and "optometrist." Any that appears on the first page of results in Google, especially for more than one term, are sure winners and deserve your consideration.

See which directories bid on those same terms in pay-per-click advertising because being well represented on a site that brings you targeted traffic from their advertising can often be a wise investment. Some directories bid on thousands of location plus keyword terms, so check the AdWords area of the SERPs to ferret out any that may be bidding on yours. If you run your own ads, be careful to consider where you're bidding in comparison to any directories in which you're listed, as you don't want to drive up ad prices unnecessarily.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/clickz_email_experts/search/local_search/local/newsletter#3632349

"No more design guess." Those four simple words summarize what it means to have a site optimization program leveraging A/B or multivariate testing and behavioral targeting. Now, you can say the value isn't in reducing guesses but in maximizing site performance based on business goals. But the way we do that is to reduce guesses or gambles.

You can even get it down to three words: "no more guesses." No more guesses about design -- and many other things. If we have defined site goals, understand the impact of different behaviors on our sites and are really looking to maximize site performance, we may want to look at reducing the guesses for key pages and throughout the site in a number of areas, including:

• Visual web design

• Layout/information architecture

• Calls to action • Offers • Pricing

• Copy

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3632334

If you're a large media brand, your traffic, especially your search traffic, is probably high. But how's your traffic growth? In other words, your bosses might ask: "What have you done for us lately?" Today's column points out three tips for larger search engine marketing companies and content publishers, including what they can do to increase visibility and properly utilize the assets they've spent years developing.

Pay Attention to the Entire Keyword Curve

If you're in any sort of news organization (hard or soft news, entertainment, sports, etc.), your target keyword spectrum many include any of the following term types, as well as many more

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3632277

Going forward, online marketers will face challenges similar to those of their political counterparts. The online market's accelerated maturation due to recent economic turmoil means that growth will no longer come as easily. Growth now will have to come at the expense of other channels or competitors, rather than from new users.

Three Online Marketing Goals for 2009 and Related Metrics

Because both marketers and consumers will have limited budgets, we'll see longer sales cycles, lengthier prepurchase dialogues with consumers, and less brand advertising. As a result, companies will focus on the following three goals and the related analytic indicators to track them:

• Increased ROI from better resource utilization.

• Improved targeting based on a better understanding of the behaviors that drive profitable revenues.

• Enhanced customer focus to determine what's being said about your organization and to respond quickly to resolve customer issues.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3632306

With the New Year underway, it's a perfect time to assess your Web shop, both in terms of web design and function, and give your e-business a marvelous makeover. Just like a bricks-and-mortar store needs an occasional paint job and some rearrangement of stock, so too does your Web site.

However, before you drag out Dreamweaver and start drooling over template web design, you need to think carefully about what you're about to do. You'll want the best results for the money and time you'll be spending on the upgrade. To help you out, here are my five top dos and don'ts to help avoid the angst caused by making a wrong decision when conducting an e-commerce site makeover .

See the full story at: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/article.php/3794461

It's no secret that 2009 will be a challenging year for business owners. As the line between success and failure shrinks, it pays to make the most of your marketing efforts. Email marketing, when done well, is a highly effective tool to drive sales and to build customer loyalty.

Find bellow the top five suggestions on how to improve the results you get in your 2009 email marketing campaigns .

1. Clean Your E-mail List

2. Review What Worked and What Didn't

3. Make a 2009 E-mail Marketing Plan

4. Use Customer Data

5. Try Something New

See the full story at: http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/buyersguide/article.php/3794736

Maybe the best thing we can say about 2008 is that it's over today. Was it a dismal year for you and your e-mail program? There's no time like the present to resolve to do better, starting tomorrow.

If you don't know where to start, any one of the resolutions on the list below will help you get your email marketing efforts back on track in the coming year.

Need more information to help understand any of them? Most of these resolutions come with a link to advice in a related ClickZ column. Nothing could be easier, and after you celebrate tonight, maybe that's the best gift of all.

Here are the top 10 resolutions for email marketers:

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3632218

For the e-commerce industry, 2008 was a challenging year, yet growth is still on par with last year, and it appears online store-owners are busier than ever meeting the demands of a maturing market. Here's a look at some of the issues and trends that marked the year, and will certainly continue to grab headlines in 2009.

Trying to Cash In on Social Sites

Perhaps the biggest conundrum of 2008 in regard to online sales was how to make a profit by marketing and selling on social networks such as Facebook. Widgets and special e-commerce applications abound for social networks, but so far, members seem to want to communicate more than they want to shop.

Still, word-of-mouth marketing is powerful, and research continues to cite the fact that consumers continue to share -- and trust -- information about products they gain through social networks, even if they aren't actually making purchases there. So, we're certain in the coming year we will see more services and technology designed to help online businesses both market and sell through these sites.

Getting higher rankings for your targeted keywords is often cited as the main reason for online success. Here are eight simple SEO techniques that will help you improve your site's rankings in all the search engines, especially Google.

See the full story at: http://www.site-reference.com/videos/Search-Engines/8-SEO-Techniques-Every-Webmaster-Should-Know-29.html