eCommerce Marketing Specialist

In their effort to get better exposure for their company online, many companies will anoint the youngest (and obviously most “techy” staff member…) to set up their social networking/online presence.  The amateurs guide to posting your online presence “Playbook” usually developed by those who either have accounts, or know someone that does says that to be a successful online company in 2011 it is essential for your company to have:

1. Facebook Page
2. Twitter Account, WITH Tweets
3. Youtube Channel
4. Linked In
5. Blog
6. and coming soon, the 6^th pillar- Google+ (for business)

OK- by that measure you’re successful.  Now what? Most companies make the mistake of turning their message and online brand over to someone are young and seem to have played every PS3 / Xbox 360 game in existence- because they think by that virtue they understand how Social Networking works.  Well, some of that’s true (about 10% of it).  Anyone can set up a Facebook page or upload a YouTube Channel (and become a “viral” celebrity overnight…  see “Webcam 101 for Seniors”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcN08Tg3PWw)- but to sustain a long-term internet marketing program takes time to establish a strategy that will live past the initial push.  Anyone, given the right circumstances can attract a crowd; light yourself on fire and people will come to watch you burn- but after the flames diminish and there’s nothing left, the mob will disburse . Before the first login/password combination are compiled for your company to venture down this path careful consideration needs to be given to:

1. Study (and possibly rethink) your brand and message
2. Study your clients then go back to step “1”
3. Establish and rethink your strategy- is it consistent with “1”
4. Select the “right” person to establish your presence, not just a logical “able-body”

These are beginning steps to making sure you start off on the right foot for a long-term social networking strategy and not become a flash in the pan.  For this series of blog posts on Social Networking strategies I’ll dive more into ideas for developing a strategy based on segmenting your clients and prospective clients into categories and focusing on them, as well as how you can use Social Networking sites to develop your message and help with your SEO rating (with Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc…)- EVEN IF NO ONE EVER VISITS those sites. Next Blog in Series: “What are the essential components of  a successful Social Networking Strategy- and using that to drive SEO”

Who goes there?

In any retail environment, a slice of your traffic will be nothing more than browsers. They have no money, no way to pay or intent to purchase. They’re just looking. The problem is, most online retailers overestimate the size of this slice. Not everyone who leaves your site without purchasing is a deadbeat. Were they scared away by your registration process? Did they get lost? Did they need to see more product details? Dismantle the barriers and watch the number of abandonments shrink.

What Environment Have You Created?

If online commerce were simple, we’d all be on a beach drinking pina coladas through rolled-up cash. Unfortunately, simply building a website isn’t enough. Thoughtful consideration must be given to design and navigation structure. Skeptical? As any sales experts will tell you, every purchase is made within an environment; great products, price and service will not overcome a poorly designed environment. In the late-90s, we recall trolling around on a government surplus auction site. The products were desirable, if you could bear to dig through the multiple levels of sub-menus, reference numbers and category lists. Because of the confusing navigation, auction closing prices on this site were usually lower than market value, evidenced by the items selling a few days later on Ebay at a much higher price. The point: an unpleasant and puzzling site will choke your stream of prospective customers, eliminating all but a brave few. What do people do when they are confused? They hesitate, they lose confidence and they begin to disengage. Intent to purchase fades with each unsure click. If your shopper is frustrated or disoriented, they’ll leave. This has been proved and quantified during the last century of brick and mortar retail but it applies even more acutely online, where entry and exit are nearly effortless.

Price functions on a similar curve. More shoppers will tolerate clumsy navigation if your prices are discounted deeply. The danger online, however, is that your bargain-basement competitor will build a more elegant site than yours. After all, building a good site does not necessarily cost more than building an awful site. However, using price to control demand is an obvious and direct hit to your bottom line.

What Are Your Elements of Design

Effective online retail design utilizes visual coherence and simplicity rather than decorative or striking elements. Many non-retail sites, for example architectural firms, generally aren’t based on use – their aim is to display and impress. Inversely, Amazon.com is an online retail behemoth for a host of reasons, but edgy site design isn’t one of them.

That doesn’t mean your retail site should be the equivalent of a pair of tan slacks. Retailers can and should build a sense of brand identity and consistency using well-chosen and applied design elements.

1. Dimensionality is one technique that adds interest and is often employed in menu bars – layering, mimicking stacks of paper or ribbons give shoppers subtle visual cues that can aid navigation by more clearly identifying different pages, functions or operational areas within the site. A light hand is best; brash or overly emphasized elements fall flat.
2. A subtle shift in a clicked element is a great use of JavaScript animation, whereas rotating menus and fly-outs could either distract or repulse.
3. Well-designed icons impart meaning, engagement and brand identification. Overuse of icons or decoupling them from text can lead to a phenomenon called “mystery meat” in which your visitors have to guess what that button does.
4. Similarly, a few speech balloons might be a good thing, but 10?

What did I click?

Good retail site design walks the line between giving obvious information and giving too much;  If a page only has two or three buttons, simply changing the color of one when it is clicked is not going to do the trick. Design for the sake of decoration leads to clutter. Web design elements are best employed when they allow your shoppers to see where they are, what they can access, how to get there. Further, they ought to find what they want easily, whether or not they have to go to another page.

Reward your shoppers with great, solid design and they will reward you in turn.

InteractOne designs and builds e-commerce websites, with a whole-site approach that emphasizes content, SEO and capturing meaningful data. In business since 1998, InteractOne scales its approach to fit the needs of a range of clients from start-ups to Fortune 500 stalwarts.

For most businesses the benefits of using social media like twitter, facebook or a blog are very real. These platforms and can yield positive results for not only SERPS (Search Engine Results Page) rankings but for customer engagement and satisfaction as well. The key to using social media in a beneficial way for your business is simply that: using it.

For your business to effectively use Twitter and facebook you must be actively engaging with customers who reach out to you using these platforms. Setting it and forgetting it is a big mistake many company’s make. In fact if you plan to do that you are probably better off not venturing into the social media realm at all. Forgotten facebook pages can fill with spam, steal SERPS ranking (thus visitors). While Forgotten blogs and twitter accounts will not necessarily fill with spam they can steal SERPS and prove to be a hurdle between you in your customers.

On the other side of the spectrum properly using social media platforms can greatly improve your image and customer relationships. They can actively drive traffic to your site and significantly increase the number of loyal returning visitors.

How do you use social media platforms like facebook, twitter or a blog? The short answer is once a day for at least for 15 minutes. Really, that’s all it takes! Of course, the longer you spend the better but 15 minutes is a great start. Respond to questions, post/tweet company news, share interesting industry related articles, share related online pictures and video and more. The key is to do it on a regular basis.

So remember, if your thinking of using social media to drive traffic to your site, increase your customer interaction or satisfaction be sure to be an active user. Doing otherwise will do more harm than good.

One of the great assets to using WordPress as a CMS (Content Management System) is the amount of both free and paid for plug-ins. This is especially true in the SEO arena. Most WordPress sites are very SEO friendly right out of the box; however, by adding a few good plug-ins to the mix you can significantly improve your rankings on search engine result pages.

Two free WordPress SEO Plug-ins you should definitely look into are the All in One SEO plug-in and WP Title 2 plug-in. With these two plug-ins you can be sure that your basic best practices of SEO are covered.

The All in One SEO plug-in allows you to control your meta-tags for every post and page. Although meta tags weight in Google’s search algorithm has gone down it is by no way completely diminished and plays an important role in optimizing your site. By allowing you to focus your meta tags and page content around a few keywords the All in One SEO will ensure that your on page SEO is up to best practice standards.

One of shortfalls of WordPress out of the box is the inability to have SEO friendly title tags (usually the h1 tag) while keeping a pleasant look to the navigation. Enter the WP Title 2 Plug-in. This plug in allows you to keep your navigation links short and sweet while having SEO friendly title tags.

As more people become SEO educated the more you are going to have to do to get ranked well on the search engine results pages. Cover the basics and then some with these two outstanding free SEO plug-ins.

Your header tags can be great tools in aiding search engines in their quest to determine what your web site is about. I have seen many sites that completely ignore the placement, structure, content and use of these vital tags to their peril. Using these these tags correctly and effectively can help your on-site SEO efforts dramatically.

The header tags that carry the most weight are the h1, h2 and h3 tags. The h1 carries the most weight and influence with the search engines. As you might suspect the h2 tag comes in second and the h3 in last with as far as  influencing the search engines. Using more than these three for on-site SEO is not an effective strategy because the weight the remaining header tags carry after the h3 tag is negligible.

The placement of these three header tags is important. The h1 should always be above the h2 and the h2 above the h3. With the h1 tag I have found success with placing it closer the the upper left hand corner. Search engines studies have determined that this is one of the first places the eye travel naturally. In my own experience I have seen the weight of the h1 tag coupled with the upper left placement drop listings for websites on the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) by more than a page!

The content of the tags bears a heavy influence on search results. First and foremost you want text not images for content. You also want that text to be short and concise. A standard rule of SEO is to optimize each page for not more 1-3 keywords and this should be reflected in the header tags.

Using your header tags correctly with SEO in mind you can ensure your site is getting the most from its on-site SEO.  Together with other SEO best practices this technique can get you the SERPS listings and traffic your site needs to prosper.

A key part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is tracking the performance of keywords.  For some sites, a high traffic flow is the goal regardless of who the visitors are and what they want. Other websites, particularly e-commerce sites, focus not only on traffic but conversions as well. In either case tracking keyword performance is necessary.

The first part of tracking keywords is actually selecting the keywords your SEO campaign is focusing on. A simple Google search for “SEO keyword tool” will yield many results.  However, two of the best tools I can suggest are Google’s Keyword Traffic Tool and Wordtracker’s GTRends. For each page of your website I would focus on no more than two keywords.

When it’s time to see where you rank for those keywords, purchase a SERPS (Search Engine Results Page) rank checking software or choose from the many free services on the web. The important thing is to run these often and always record the results.

Once you’ve picked your keywords it’s time to set up website tracking software.  Again, a simple Google search will provide many options to choose from. Before you try any of the paid services, I highly recommend you try Google Analytics.  This tracking software is highly configurable, creates great reports and gives most, if not all, paid services a run for their money.

Now for the hard part, combining your SERPs data, website tracking data and your SEO efforts.  This is why most companies pay SEO Agencies the big bucks.  You must discard the keywords that rank well but are not converting or bringing traffic in,  increase SEO efforts on keywords lagging in SERPS but still bringing performing well and track new keywords that you discover through data analysis.  All the while you must continue  to collect, analyze, combine and organize all tracking data.

Tracking keywords is an intricate part of a successful internet marketing plan and a must for effective Search Engine Optimization. While it may prove time and resource consuming, the end result is a website that more than pays for itself!

Adding a blog to your Magento store is an excellent way to connect with your customers, increase your SEO efforts, and make your store an authority site on the products and services it offers. With a blog you can constantly add relevant content(for both your customers and search engines) making your store a destination for information relating to your product or service.

A blog allows you to connect with your customers on a never before seen level. You can publish news releases, detailed product reviews, related content, take customer comments/questions/concerns and respond to them in kind. Coupled with the latest social networking platforms you can cultivate this relationship even further. The relationship you establish with your customers is a great way to see market trends and analyze customers wants in needs. Most importantly it will increase conversions, purchases, and create a loyal customer base.

By successfully connecting to your customers through your blog posts your Magento store will become an authority destination on the product or services you sell. Along with this authority status will come an increase of traffic.  The increase will come not only from returning readers and customers but those looking for information. As your authority status grows people will link to your site from other websites further increasing traffic flow.

Connecting with your customers and becoming an authority site on subjects concerning the products and services you sell will cause your search engine rankings to improve dramatically.  You can further your SEO efforts by providing links to different pages in your Magento store in each individual post. Not only will your customers be lured in by this stream of content but search engines will use it to determine what your site is about. By keeping your posts focused you can manipulate this into better SERPS (Search Engine Results Page) rankings for your site.

A blog for your Magento store is a good idea on many levels. By becoming an exporter of fresh relevant content related to the products you sell, your blog will become an importer of customers and indispensable marketing tool.

The product pages on the Magento Shopping Cart system are often overlooked and not optimized to their fullest extent. Optimizing them properly for both search engines and human visitors might take some extra time but is well worth the effort. Here are some tips to make your Magento product pages easier for search engines to find as well as more inviting and encouraging for the people shopping them.

Magento’s product pages are pretty well optimized for search engines right out of the box.  Most meta tags are automatically filled given the data you include when loading products into the system.  The key is to fill out as much of the product fields as possible.  This can prove challenging but will pay off in a big way with your products getting found on the web.  The job of search engines is to provide relevant search results for the user. The more product description, images and related information you can provide, the more of a chance you have of getting found.

An often overlooked field is the label field in the image tab. Think of this tab as another place to add keywords that support the title tag and description.  By filling it out,  your image title and alt tags will have unique values instead of using the title tag text that Magento includes by default.

Providing an adequate amount of information not only helps with the search engines but with selling and gaining a loyal consumer base.  Consumers often use the web to find information on the products they want to purchase.  Product descriptions that are complete, point out all the product benefits and features and are supported with multiple images and video that are clear and crisp will not only encourage viewers to buy but to come back, tell their friends and come to rely on you as a the guru in your market.

As you can see, optimizing for search engine robots and human online shoppers are not completely opposite practices.  Making sure that your products pages are geared toward both, you can ensure that your site is found and your products are seen.  More importantly, product page optimization will result in converting your traffic into sales!

The secret to internet marketing can be boiled down and concentrated into a couple of phases. Yes, there are important SEO techniques, product placement algorithms, hosting decisions and other endless tactics you will need to implement; however, what really determines your success online is your overall strategy. A solid strategy will keep all your internet marketing efforts inline and focused towards a common goal.  A successful strategy for running a business online should include these major phases:

1) A Well-Designed Website. Before you start worrying about traffic or conversions be sure your website design fits well with the genre of the market you are aiming to be a player in. A well-designed website should take in account not only form, but function as well. Navigation, forms, checkout, and any other processes a visitor might go through on your site should be logical, easy to complete and blended seamlessly into the design.  Your website should be pleasing to the eye yet easy to navigate. All websites, regardless of which type of market, should have professionally written text, free of grammatical errors and have a unifying theme or focal point.

2) Increase Traffic to Website. Once you have a well-designed website its time to introduce it to the masses! Implement a Search Engine Optimization plan for keywords that are attainable through organic search. For keywords that are beyond your SEO budget use pay-per-click (PPC). PPC is a great tool to get capture traffic that comes with those particular keywords that prove elusive to your SEO efforts. Other online advertising tools you can use to connect to your customer base are banner ads, social media, and e-mail marketing. Remember what works for one business might not work for yours. Be sure to craft the right mix these tools to get the optimal amount of traffic.

3) Increase Conversions on Website. Now that you have your traffic numbers up its time to increase your conversion rate. Whether you are selling items through an eCommerce store, selling ad space on your website or just looking for viewers to fill out a contact form to get leads, the goal of most websites is to increase conversions. This can be accompished by the strategic placement of ads, contact forms or products. Maybe its the call to action or other site text that needs to be tweaked. Increasing conversions on a website requires careful analysis and testing of almost every aspect of your website.

Having a well thought out overarching strategy to success online separates the businesses that succeed from those that fade out into oblivion. Sun Tzu put it best: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”.

There are thousands upon thousands of web hosting companies out there.  It can be overwhelming to sort through them all to find out who has the best price for what you need.  A lot of times with web hosting the saying “you get what you pay for” is very true.

“…but I just found a host that says they offer unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space for $15 per month!  What’s the catch?”

For a lot of websites an unlimited plan is just fine, especially if your site has little traffic and not a lot of database access needed to display the pages.  A simple WordPress site or even a small company site would be no problem.  A lot of times under these circumstances a cheap unlimited plan is just fine as long as you aren’t expecting very much growth and page load time is not a concern.  These companies can offer “unlimited” everything because there IS a catch.  If you start using a lot of their server resources, space or bandwidth they will pull the plug, plain and simple.  As soon as you go over a comfortable amount of space or usage then chances are your site will go offline.  Again, this is not a problem for a small site, but what if you wanted to host Magento on an unlimited plan?

The short answer is yes you can, the long answer is no you shouldn’t.

Magento has some very specific requirements to function properly.  The fact that it is working “properly” doesn’t mean that it’s running efficiently or quickly.  Speed is a very important consideration when dealing with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  SEO is the lifeblood of a lot of storefronts online.  With SEO you get the traffic from people using search engines like Google who are looking specifically for what you are selling.  When these web surfers arrive at your website, how long do you think they’ll wait before moving on?  Eight seconds.  If your page doesn’t load in eight seconds then it is widely accepted that a majority of people go back to the search results to find someone else.

When you have an unlimited plan you are sharing the server with hundreds, possibly thousands of other clients.  This translates into slow loading times since requests being sent to the server have to wait in line to be served, where a fast server will dispatch requests quickly so there is no waiting.  Your page could be very small in size but still take a long time to load on a slow server.  Magento is a robust and highly customizable platform that is built to be fast but you have to put it on a fast server to realize its full potential.

Magento takes up a fairly large amount of resources on a server due to the complexity of the code and database.  Even with caching enabled, the smallest Magento site is still at the mercy of the server that is running it.  When shoppers come to your storefront the home page should load very fast.  On an over-utilized server the loads times are always slower.  When selecting a hosting company be sure they don’t have your website on a server with hundreds of others.  There really is no way to know if this is the case or not.  Usually the only recourse you have is to ask and to search the web for reviews or comments about the company you are considering.

I have found that the best practice is to see if the company that designed your site also provides hosting services.  The company that develops your online presence is going to want it to load quickly since they will most likely use it as an example to get more customers.  Everyone wins in that situation because you can be sure your site won’t just get stowed away on some overcrowded server and the company that designed your site will be able to proudly display it in their portfolio.  Most design companies are willing to allow hosting somewhere else under the condition that they are not responsible for load times or other issues that can happen on a server not in their control.

When you are ready to design your Magento store be sure to keep speed in mind!  Use a company that allows your site to grow as-needed.  Don’t forget to ask your designer if they can also host the site for you.  Most times it will not be as cheap as a shared server but the benefits to your traffic and overall customer experience over time will make the server pay for itself.