Archive for the ‘SEO and Marketing’ Category
Monday, May 20th, 2013
Online visitors are much more likely to do business with a site that is clear and enjoyable. If they experience problems or hitches, they may very well leave and purchase products from another retailer.
This is the state of ecommerce. Your online store has an opportunity to give the customer what he or she wants. There is only one chance to make a good impression – a sentiment that is true in the online world.
A product description can easily be overlooked. Yet, if there is not the right amount of information and media in the right spots, your online store can miss out. Keep the following tips in mind:
Text: Clear, concise text is a must. Make the text as reader-friendly as possible, and consider putting the specifications (and/or key uses or features) in bullet form, which can add space. Test the right amount of text for your products and make sure there is consistency across the online store.
Images: Quality is important here. Many choose to stick with one picture, though different industries can lend to more pictures being a good idea. Make sure that options are present, such as a product in a different color (that is or isn’t shown in the picture or pictures).
Video: Adding video can be a great idea or overkill, depending on your store. Give this some thought, for a product explanation or testimonial feature on the page.
Take a look at other online stores to see how information is presented. With the right approach, you can make your online store much more pleasant with the right text and media.
Contact us for more about the online store –from development to refining it for maximum sales growth.
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Thursday, May 2nd, 2013
Your website’s blog can be one of the best ways to market your shopping cart. Based on search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that drive more visitors to your website, you can then direct them to your products and services. This simple link can improve e-commerce – at no charge.
Consider for a moment the power of SEO. Since many of your potential customers use a search engine to find products/services, it only makes sense that you’d want to be near the top. With SEO techniques that make your site more appealing to search engines, you can increase that search ranking. Once that happens, you will receive more of that natural search engine traffic.
How can you make that happen? Your blog is the key. Writing quality content that naturally uses keywords that people will search is what SEO is all about. While there is more to it than that, this simply practice can have an impressive result on your search engine rankings for keywords.
Aim to produce blog content for your website. Consider the types of posts that you can write:
- Informational: News and helpful information concerning your industry.
- Promotional: New products, services, sales, and much more where you can include links to your shopping cart.
- Entertainment: People will respond well to appropriate pieces that entertain. They can be especially effective for a change of pace.
Include media and other items that can jump out at visitors. Also, don’t forget to share blog posts on social media, which can have a direct effect on SEO. Research has demonstrated that a big social media following can improve SEO considerations.
Want to learn more about leveraging your shopping cart? Contact us for more!
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Friday, April 26th, 2013
Over half of all Internet-connected people are on Facebook, in the United States. Numbers are rising for other social media sites as well, and businesses have already starting taking note of the trend.
Why? Social media, especially Facebook and the other giants (Twitter and Google+) is the key to driving sales. If your company wants to sell online, social media must be part of the plan.
One of the best ways to leverage Facebook is to fill your business’ page with great media. Videos and pictures have been proven to stick out to followers, as it catches the eye easily and it can be viewed conveniently. Here are some tips to get you started:
Start with pictures of your business, products, and/or services. Some may be more inclined to pictures than others, such as a food-based company, but any business can participate – even fun-spirited pictures of the office can be great.
Videos can help connect to customers as well. Use videos to explain your business and/or products, including brand new offerings and even holiday-themed sales. There are plenty of types of videos that can be used – such as Q&As and testimonials.
Find media from other sources to share. Perhaps there’s an informational/entertaining picture or video that would appeal to your customers. Share this kind of content to become a thought leader in your industry, and a welcomed source of entertainment.
Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Facebook and other social media avenues can help connect you with the customer, and ultimately improve your sales dramatically.
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Monday, April 15th, 2013
Inc.com featured some great examples recently from major retail websites to show how to sell products online by using effective content. If you’re looking for an ecommerce solution for your retail business or want to increase your sales, follow these tips to maximize your website’s effectiveness.
Product Descriptions: Include at least 75 to 200 words of product description with appropriate details like sizes, colors, weight, and shipping information. Use search engine optimized (SEO) keywords along with suitable marketing copy for best results.
High Quality Photographs: This is “the second most important thing about selling online”, according to the article and photos should be enlargeable without distortion. Photos are critical for sharing your products on visually based social media websites like Pinterest and Facebook.
Contact Information on Every Page: Include phone numbers, physical address, e-mail address, and contact availability hours in a prominent place on each page. Many potential customers will not order online from small businesses that do not include contact information in order to avoid scammers.
Internal Website Search: Visitors that land on your home page should be able to find the products they’re looking for easily by using a search feature within your website. While some may want to browse through different product categories, they may leave if they’re looking for something specific and can’t find it quickly.
Shopping Cart Action Buttons: Call to action buttons such as “Buy now” or “Download Now” should appear on every product page.
Visit our website and contact us today to learn more about our ecommerce and shopping cart solutions. We offer cost-effective solutions with over 15,000 ready-made website templates to choose from as well as custom website design options. We can also turn your existing website design into a working ecommerce platform. Be sure to browse through our portfolio of completed website projects and happy customer testimonials too!
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Friday, April 5th, 2013
From your website to the shopping cart itself, there are plenty of things that can undermine the experience of your online store. According to Dale Traxler, there are four mistakes that are of particular note. Perhaps you could increase the attractiveness of your online store by avoiding the following items:
- Ineffective Landing Pages: Focus is deservedly on getting visitors to your site, but if you aren’t converting on landing pages, it may all be wasted. Traxler hones in on making the landing page relevant; for instance, if you are running a 30 percent off special, then the landing page should represent that sale.
- Poor Site Search: A good online store search engine can make a big difference for a customer. Look for search tools that handle plurals, makes suggestions, takes care of typos, determines relevancy, includes a thesaurus, and gives results in a friendly manner.
- Poor Product Content: The product page is crucial for making a sale. A good balance of content and media, with descriptions, reviews, and more is ideal. Videos can also be utilized.
- No Shipping Estimator: Noted as a “personal pet peeve” by Traxler, he mentions how certain shipping and handling charges can be deceiving. Some sites may offer free shipping, yet a customer could come to the final purchase screen and find a handling charge. Upfront charges seem like the way to go, making the shopping experience as comfortable as possible for the customer.
Do you need help getting a high-quality online store for your customers? Contact us to find out more about leveraging an online store to multiply sales.
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Thursday, March 21st, 2013
Businesses that want to increase their profits and sell online should take stock in changing landscapes. From SEO to social media and responsive websites, there is a great deal that’s happening beyond the shopping cart. One old-fashioned element has also undergone a change – customer service.
While customer service will still involve phone and email support, the emergence of social media has led to it becoming an avenue for support. After all, most people are active on social media, and it is a convenient way to ask a question. Take a look at a popular retailer’s Facebook page and you’ll quickly see several customer service-related questions.
However, some businesses and brands are losing out on business. According to Jeannie Walters, only 49 percent of brands respond and track social media mentions. This can have a negative effect on customers, which can lead to a lack of positive brand recognition and repeat business with the brand.
On the other side of the story, there are many good things that can arise from positive customer service encounters on social media. Jameson Brown describes a great experience he had with Zappos.com, where he obtained a high level of service that may not have even led to a purchase at that site.
Take advantage of social media and be proactive with customers that need help. It can save your customers a great deal of time and help your business find its voice – one that can be a positive one to customers. Contact us to learn more about leveraging your efforts to sell online.
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Wednesday, January 30th, 2013
The Internet has opened the door for people to start their own businesses with little and sometimes even no cost at all. While starting an online business might save you from having to get a ton of business loans for start up capital, it still comes with all of the hard work of running a brick and mortar business. The hardest part of running any business in any industry is getting your product and service in front of the right people- that is, people that are looking to buy!
In order to increase your customer base and sales, you are going to have to spread the word about your website and product. Many of the most successful businesses online have millions of visitors to their website each month. A big part of the strategy these savvy ecommerce champions use revolves around search engine marketing. The whole point behind search engine marketing is to get your website indexed into the major search engines with keyword optimized content so that when your target audience searches for something related to the product you offer they can find your site!
The first thing you’ll need to do in order to develop a solid search engine marketing strategy is figure out what target audience your particular product or service is aimed at. For example, if you are selling weight loss books or exercise equipment, your target audience will be individuals who are looking to lose weight. Some companies offer products that are aimed at people in a particular age group. Once you figure out who your audience is, you can build your online presence to attract those individuals to your site.
Once you figure out your target audience, it’s time to do some keyword research. Researching keywords means that you are looking to find out what type of words and phrases your target market is using when searching for things related to your product or service. There are plenty of free tools online that can help you find keywords that actual people are typing in search engines. These words will be put into various pieces of content on your website to help get a higher ranking in search engine results pages, making it easier for potential customers to find you online.
Your next step is to take the information you gathered from above and apply it to creating a blog for your website. Each blog should provide helpful and relevant information about your product, but also provide some type of value to your readers. Each of the posts should be less than 500 words and should contain the keywords you researched so that the different search engines you submit your website to can pick up the content and index it in the search results. When doing search engine marketing, you are not only looking to optimize blog posts, but your status updates on various social media platforms should be optimized as well.
If you are looking for a way to increase the traffic to your website and expand your online presence, contact us today for more information on our services!
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Thursday, January 17th, 2013
Every online business should be enriched with search engine optimization for easy access. SEO keywords are what make your shopping business site soar high up the ranks in search engines. This optimization will increase your hits greatly and brandish new potential customers. If you’re interested in providing effective SEO for your e-commerce site, follow these basic steps.
Write Unique Content and Keywords
You’ll still want your site to look fresh and original so why not incorporate your own writing style for product descriptions and information about what your business stands for. The main point in writing website content is to ensure you add in specific keyword phrases to your sentences. Write paragraphs focusing on the keywords without it being overwhelming. For example, your keyword can be the product’s name and if people typed in this name in a search engine, your site will show up somewhere on the list.
Link Back to Your Achieves
No matter what kind of site you have, linking back to yourself with the integration of internal links will boost your hits to different pages of your site. If you have relevant words on a specific page, this page will most likely show up the most in a search engine. Adding links to other portions of the site on this page will increase your traffic.
Stay Away from Animated Pages and Flash
A Flash intro might seem inviting and tempting but it actually does nothing for your SEO optimization. When using a script such as this, you cannot link back to any of your pages thus it is deemed useless when aiming for SEO rich content. If you want to bite the bullet and use Flash, try to at least add navigational links on top or bottom of the animation.
Social Media
In today’s world, social media is the largest network in which you can get clients. For example, if you sign up for Twitter and make it specifically for your business, you can tweet sales and promotions. Use a hash tag to get your point across and just may say other people retweeting. This will multiply the number of hits you generate a month thanks to word of mouth.
If you would like more information on how to make your online shopping site stand out, contact us.
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Thursday, January 10th, 2013
Internet marketing is often focused on SEO, backlinks, and blog content. These strong methods can certainly help your business get noticed – but what about doing it all on your site? SEO-friendly content on your blog – which includes links to your products – can have a lot of weight.
You can add search engine value to your site without going off of your website. Consider the following tips:
- Create SEO-friendly content on your blog that looks at your products. For instance, write an informative post that offers insight into a problem, and how one of your products makes life easier with that problem.
- Include appropriate links (i.e. on the keywords) that points directly to your product pages. This will provide links to items on your site, which search engines will notice.
- Find other ways to cover your products. For instance, you could write a blog post that announces a new version of a product. With this approach, you’ll still be able to write SEO-friendly content and include relevant links to gain visibility in the search engines.
These steps can get your website – and thus your shopping cart – noticed on the search engines. By building links on your blog, hitting relevant keywords hard, and staying consistent, the value will add up to bring more traffic to your site.
Build links on your blog for your products. If you keep at it, it will pay dividends to improve the standing of your products on your website. Contact us to learn more about getting your shopping cart noticed by prospective customers.
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Saturday, December 8th, 2012
The holidays are upon us. Happy shoppers are already hitting the stores and shopping online, hoping to score the best deals for presents for their friends and family members.
Did you know that people search using different keywords during this time of year? They do! And if your Internet marketing campaign isn’t optimized for those changes, your customers will find other stores to fulfill their many holiday wishes.
The fact is, a great number of people will go to the Internet to find what they’re looking for before they even set foot in a store. If you’ve made the necessary changes to your website content, you’ll be ready to provide them with what they’re looking for. Of course, when you’re making any kind of plan to change your SEO strategy, it’s best to get an early start on it. That gives you plenty of time to add more content that will attract those holiday shoppers.
But wait! Your ability to reach the masses doesn’t stop with your content. Word of mouth is the most effective way to advertise. Social networking is the “word of mouth” of today, and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have the ability to make your holiday marketing efforts extremely profitable. Once you have your holiday SEO in place, share away! Your customers will find your awesome deals right on their Facebook walls or in their Twitter feed, and (most likely), share those with their friends.
So, how do you find out which keywords work the best during this time of year? Well, for one, most customers will search for the word “gifts” before they search for the word “presents”. So, spend some time optimizing your site for “gifts for her” or “gifts for him”. That’s a great way to increase your website traffic, and do it quickly. It will also help if you showcase some of your products in your blogs; specifically those that are popular holiday gifts, like shoes or perfume.
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. What words would you search for, if you were interested in your products. Sometimes doing something as simple as looking at shopping from your customers’ point of view can change your approach entirely.
For more information about growing your business during the holidays, or any time of the year, contact us today!
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