It’s a pet peeve of mine: visiting an e-commerce web site and their copyright date is from last year – or even worse, it’s from 4 or 5 years ago. To me, that’s the sign of a web site that is not ‘fresh’ or updated. Certainly Google and the other search engines are paying attention as well.
Some software platforms will automatically update the copyright date on your website for you at the stroke of midnight on 12/31 each year, but there are still many others that it is a manual task. However, just because it’s a manual task doesn’t mean that it should be overlooked. Take a second now and look at the bottom of your web site in the footer. What does it say? If it doesn’t say Copyright 2012 – it’s time to change it.
Written by Pat
January 26th, 2012
Written by Pat
So you’ve spent a day or two putting together a slick email that you are sure is a winner; you’ve edited the subject line until you were bleary-eyed and now comes the big question: What is the best time to send out a marketing email to your opt-in email list?
Sending out your customer emails at the right time is not as difficult as you would think. The trick is to know when people are most apt to read them. If you send it out at the wrong time, there will certainly be an effect on your marketing campaign. Emails sent out overnight, for example, are the ones that are most likely to be deleted without even being opened.
To get the best results, take a look at the graphic from Pure360emailmarketing.co.uk and see what time slots you should avoid for your future email marketing campaigns.
(you can click on the graphic to view it full sized)
December 1st, 2011
Written by Pat – West Florida Components
The economy and consumer buying habits have significantly shifted in the last few years. In today’s competitive environment, it’s important to take a look at your marketing strategy on a regular basis. Evaluate what you are doing and take a hard look at what your competition is doing, too. If you’re still banking on last year’s PPC campaign to drive your business, you’re probably missing out on some valuable opportunities to acquire new customers and increase your sales.
Here are some questions and suggestions to help you evaluate your marketing strategy:
Lead Generation:
Review your email marketing efforts. Do you offer a place to sign up for your newsletters on every page of your website? How about in your physical store? Do you use social media platforms as a way to capture emails and leads?
Analyze the results of your last few emails blasts and newsletters. What is the open percentage? What is the most clicked on article? What product converted the best from your email campaigns? What is the product or article that drew the most attention in your tweets or Facebook page?
General Promotions:
Discounts and coupons – whether they are used in person or on a web site, can drive tremendous amounts of new business and encourage repeat customers. What is the coupon with the highest number of conversions? Where was it distributed?
Evaluate any rewards programs for repeat customers. Take a close look at the percentage of repeat customers before a rewards program is instituted. What is the increase after a rewards program is put into place? What is more effective: percentage off discounts or flat dollar discounts? For your web sales, use analytics software to help you find the answers.
Search Marketing:
Many businesses use Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising to generate customers and sales. When is the last time you looked at your keywords? What is the highest performing keyword? Which ones can you cut?
Review where you are spending your PPC money. Should you invest in a retargeting campaign? Would your products do well with a targeted Facebook PPC ad?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) campaigns need to be evaluated on a very regular basis. Where are you ranking for your major keywords? What new keywords need to be targeted? What changes need to made due to algorithm changes in the search engines?
This is just the tip of the marketing iceberg. All businesses, large and small need to ask themselves these questions frequently. Remember – if you’re not measuring the success (or failure) of your marketing efforts, you’re losing time and money. You need to know what works so you can devote your resources to those efforts and cut your losses on what doesn’t work. Keep it fresh!
July 21st, 2011
submitted by: Pat – West Florida Components
The Internet Merchants Association and its sponsors recently presented eight educational sessions to the ASD trade show attendees. The bi-annual sourcing show was held at the Las Vegas Convention Center with over 30.000 visitors in attendance.
Platinum and Diamond level sponsors including Vendio, Alibaba and MIVA Merchant were among the featured speakers on topics ranging from integrating social media to building effective web sites and search engine optimization.
Most of the speakers have provided their slide decks so that session attendees can review them and download them. The slide presentations are available at slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/imamerchants
The Internet Merchants Association is now accepting applications for the March, 2011 educational sessions. Speaking preference is given to all IMA Platinum and Diamond level sponsors. Interested parties can learn more about the speaking and membership opportunities by contacting Pat Pepe. She can be reached by email at pat@imamerchants.org.
August 30th, 2010
Online shopping is growing by leaps and bounds, so it’s easy for online stores to feel lost on how to increase their visibility. With TheFind, however, getting your products found by shoppers is easy – in fact, we may already be sending you referrals!
Want to work with us to gain exposure online and optimize your store on TheFind.com? Then read on.
Who is TheFind?
TheFind is a shopping search engine – the #2 shopping engine as of ComScore’s May numbers. We’re an increasing source of traffic for merchants big and small!
Benefits:
Get found by the 18mm shoppers who visit our site every month.
Showcase your store and products for free.
Access TheFind Merchant Center to control and optimize your product listings.
How can I start working with TheFind directly?
Registering in our Merchant Center is the way to start! Claim your store in our Merchant Center in order to use our features, like:
1) TheFind UpFront Program: the UpFront badge is a symbol of trust for shoppers that is placed on your homepage and shares important store information with them that, in turn, helps merchants improve their conversion and click through rates. Because we value this increased transparency, we also give UpFront Members an additional boost in visibility on the site. On average, merchants have seen an increase in visibility and traffic of 10% after joining the program.
2) Product Feed Upload Tool: submit a direct, comprehensive product feed to improve your products’ relevancy and freshness.
3) Customizing product results: Add a promotional snippet, a store logo, or even a vanity coupon.
What if I work with a feed partner?
Great news – we can work with any feed management team. You’ll need to set up and verify your account in order to access our feed upload tool.
What are the fees?
There are no fees for registering and claiming your store, joining the UpFront Program, or submitting a direct feed!
Let us know if you have any other questions. For technical assistance, please contact the Merchant Support Team at merchantsupport@thefind.com.
June 30th, 2010
E-commerce moves so swiftly. Seems like just the other day we were talking about Google Checkout, and now we’ve got to figure out whether or not we’re going to use Facebook’s social plugins. And the list goes on, doesn’t it?
Because we at IMA are serious about the benefits we provide to ecommerce practitioners, we’re now offering etailers a unique opportunity to join the association and reap the full benefits of being a member—including access to the IMA’s private member forum, where you can engage with and learn from other members, gaining insight into e-commerce best practices you won’t find anywhere else.
Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond members can also avail additional amenities depending on their membership level, including a dedicated company platform within IMA’s member-only forum, speaking opportunities, and discounted rates to the IMA’s annual conference held every March in conjunction with the annual ASD/AMD trade show.
Effective immediately etailers can join the IMA at the Bronze level (a US $99 value) for one year. Just select the “Bronze Plan” on our registration page here, and you’ll be in.
Go ahead, do it. Join now.
May 21st, 2010
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