Email Verification Can Drastically Change The Bottom Line

For many companies the email marketing campaign has become the cornerstone of their outbound marketing plans. This type of campaign coupled with other marketing tools help compete for sales and a better bottom line. Email marketing has changed significantly as it has become easier to procure email addresses with the implementation of social networking programs, acquiring email addresses at point-of-sale in retail locations, optimized landing pages, and with most customers participation on the Internet.

How Business Blogs Fit in with Social Media

All the stuff you can do to market your business is pretty overwhelming, even on a good day. You hear people making noises about blogs, about social media, about search and many other marketing channels.

How exactly does a blog fit into the big marketing picture? If you knew the answer to that, you could make decisions with more confidence, and that counts for a lot because better decisions means better money.

To see how blogs fit into the larger landscape, let’s forget about them for a moment and take a look at all the other channels a business can use online to market itself.

How Website Performance Affects Online Shopping Behavior

We can talk all day about website usability, navigation, marketing and so fourth. What we don’t really look at too often is how our website performs which really can make or break the visit for the consumer.

Let’s look at some key statistics regarding how website performance affects shopping behavior:

                                 Source: KISS METRICS

Why Offline Stores and Small Businesses Need to Embrace Online Shopping and Build Better Websites

I recently wrote a story How Brick and Mortar Stores Can Use eCommerce to Drive Sales about tips that eCommerce stores can use to drive traffic to their brick and mortar locations. However, what really needs to happen is offline stores and small businesses need to grow up and  stop hiding in the corner from online commerce bogeyman. They need to give up their antiquated who moved my cheese mentality. It’s a fact that consumers’ preference for eCommerce stores will continue to grow, smart phone and tablet shopping will continue to rise, and merchants who don’t recognize this trend will fail. The first will be the small local stores followed by strip mall tenants but, at the end of the day, no one including big box retailers like Best Buy is immune. No one is too big to fail.

How to Discover your Online Business Story

In life, and business, telling the story of why you do what you do can be compelling, but telling that story online can be challenging.

We've all heard of the 'elevator pitch.' It's that between-floors-in-an-elevator summary of your life's work that has to have a hook. It has to be memorable and it has to be short enough to leave time for you to ask 'So, what do you do?' a few moments before the elevator doors open.

eCommerce Consulting

How an eCommerce Consultant Can Help Your Business

Internet retail makes up about 3% of all retail sales in the US and is expected to grow to at least 8% in the next ten years. What does that mean for online retailers? Quite simply, the market is growing, and is anticipated to at least double in the near future. With a growing market, comes growing opportunity.

However, that opportunity also attracts a large number of newcomers. Shopping engines such as Shopify.com and the like, make it easy for anyone to create their own retail website and sell online. This introduces a scenario where there is tremendous growth, but also very low barriers to entry, causing an influx of new retailers daily.

Only 16% of businesses use data to form a single customer view

While digital media has given businesses numerous channels to engage with their customers, only 16% of companies currently use that data to form a single customer view (SCV).



Creating a SCV gives businesses the ability to track customers and their communications and purchase behaviour across channels.

A survey by Experian found that while 72% of businesses recognise the benefits of using data to offer customers a joined-up multichannel experience, 84% aren’t able to use the data effectively.

National Restaurant Association and LivingSocial Research is in

Two months ago, we received news that LivingSocial was teaming up with the National Restaurant Association to work together to educate restaurant owners and managers to use online and daily deals, along with traditional methods to effectively market themselves.
LivingSocial gave the NRA an unrestricted grant to examine the effectiveness of a number of marketing channels. Research has not concluded and results are being reported. James Balda, the Chief Marketing Communications Officer of the National Restaurant Associaion says that finding the right marketing mix is essential in the restaurant industry.

How to Drive Laser-Targeted Traffic Using Overture

In online marketing business like affiliate marketing, no traffic means no sales. That’s the reason why most affiliates or webmasters easily shell out even big bucks just to get top rankings on the search engines. Once you are promoting a product or service in you web page, you need to have more visitors that can be potential consumers to your products and services. This is one of the fundamental rules to succeed in online marketing business. Here, you just need to start and get it right and you can do some things wrong but still manage to succeed. Don’t ever try to get it wrong because no matter how hard you work, you can never find yourself on the way to success.

9 Reasons to Put Your (Offline) Business Online

Why You Should Start Doing Business Online

So here’s the question: Why should I take my traditional company online?
First of all, let's clarify something. In the sense of this article a “traditional company” is one with a physical location and sells either in person or by phone or mail. They may or may not have walk-in customers. Essentially, a traditional “brick-and-mortar” company is one not selling online. Of course, these are being fewer and fewer every year.
There is much said about doing business on the internet or “putting your business online”. To many it may just sound too complicated or too risky. Learn why you shouldn’t do business online. But there are many good reasons to begin selling (and running your business) online. Here are the top nine reasons:

Creating A Web Page That Sells

==CREATING A WEBSITE THAT SELLS==

The website that we'll be dealing with sells an eBook based on hair styling tips, but these concepts should translate very easily into any website that sells a product or service.
In this article, we touch on subjects such as:

The use of graphics on a web page

Copywriting insights

Web Page Headlines

Benefits, not features

And more.
Our hope and desire is that you find this article of value, and that you find thoughts and ideas you can put to use in your own online business.
Let us begin...

Essential Tips For Creating An Effective Business Website

Many “brick and mortar” small businesses are choosing to have a website in order to establish their presence on the Internet. Having an online presence is a great way of getting an edge over competitors in your industry – it allows you to tap into a whole new stream of prospective customers who are searching for your products or services on the Internet.
The barriers to entry when creating a business website are low. However, if you do decide to create an online presence for your organization, make sure that you create a website that enhances rather than detracts from the customer’s perceptions.
Here are some essential tips for creating a good website for your business:

Is Shopping Online Really Cheaper?

Who doesn't love shopping? Ohh... we all do! Even those people who deny it. So, what about online shopping? Nothing better than being able to shop from the comfort of your own home. But, is it cheaper than your trip to the mall? Let's investigate.
It is just so convenient to switch on your laptop or computer, browse through a couple of online shopping websites and place your order. M-Commerce has become so popular that you can now even make a purchase on your cell phones. You can shop while on the go. It doesn't take more than a couple of minutes and you do not even have to step out of the door.

Πώς το Facebook βοηθά τις μικρές επιχειρήσεις

Η λειτουργία Facebook Offers υπάρχει στο δημοφιλές κοινωνικό δίκτυο από τον Φεβρουάριο και έγινε αντιληπτή από τους χρήστες τον Απρίλιο.
Πρόκειται για μια στροφή του δημοφιλούς κοινωνικού δικτύου σε αποκλειστικές προσφορές που εμφανίζονται στο News Feed του χρήστη που τις «διεκδικεί». Αντίστοιχα, εάν ένας από τους φίλους σας αγοράσει μια προσφορά και ενδιαφέρεστε κι εσείς, μπορείτε να την αποκτήσετε με ένα κλικ.

Top 5 Mistakes People Make Buying Paid Search Software

I’ve probably talked to hundreds of companies thinking about or actively buying paid search software over the years. Yet, people continue to make the same mistakes over and over when buying paid search software.


Here are the top five mistakes people make when buying paid search software and how you can avoid them.

10 Tips for Adapting Your Web Site for International Customers

Experts project that the population of cybernauts—not the David Bowie cover band, but rather global Internet users—will soar beyond the 2 billion mark in 2014. Nearly half of those Web users are expected to reside in Asia. What do these stats mean for your e-retail business?
One thing's for sure—an English-only Web site won't deliver the results your international brand deserves. Your potential customers are searching, browsing, purchasing, and rating products online in their native languages—and they wouldn't have it any other way. Studies show that buyers shy away from making purchases in other languages, especially when the currency is not their own. So if you'd like shoppers to find your online store and buy your products in the international digital space, the very best way is with a Web site made just for them—in their language and according to their local customs.
What does it take to adapt your current Web site for international customers? Let's start with 10 practical tips to get you speaking the language of e-commerce translation and move you down the road to multilingual retail.

Tips to Increase Web Sales

Higher Conversion Rate = Increase in Web Sales = Higher Profits...

Generating higher online sales involves - Getting targeted traffic to your site and Converting website visitors into actual buyers. Driving traffic to your site can be managed by using numerous web site promotion tools. But after getting a visitor into your online store, your storefront is your only tool to trap and motivate a visitor to purchase your merchandises. In other words, your website is your "only sales executive" on the web.

Why PayPal Continues To Be Relevant To Small Businesses

I’ve been using PayPal for years and they have been the easiest way to accept payments online. Over the years, with the rise of mobile payments, there have been new options for small businesses to consider as they seek to ensure they can accept payments in the most secure and easiest ways possible. Amazon.com also enables payment acceptance and has given stiff competition to PayPal. Furthermore Square and Intuit GoPayment offers small businesses easy ways to accept payments from anywhere.

5 Web Development Tips for Increasing Online Sales

Some merchants might not realize it, but the design of their online storefronts-from the landing page to the shopping cart-has a direct effect on sales. Even the smallest of design elements can improve or harm conversion rates, and this tutorial will tell you five things you can do as a web developer to increase online sales.
Think about it from a shopper's perspective. It seems pretty clear that you want your shopping process to be as intuitive as possible-but a lot of online storefronts don't practice what they preach. Sometimes, web stores get too artsy with their designs. Others use flash animations that can slow down the shopper's browser. Still others use color schemes that send the wrong signals to shoppers.
Performing A/B testing on your online storefront is an important part of making sure your site appeals to customers and makes shopping as intuitive as possible. There is a range of ways that different design elements can affect online users, and testing helps put those ways in perspective. With more than ten years of experience designing online storefronts, we've seen enough to know what the "dos and don'ts" of web store design look like.
Here are five tips on how you can turn more visitors into customers and seriously improve conversion rates using some simple design techniques.

The Free Shipping Formula for Online Retailers

There is something decidedly special about offering free shipping. Whether it’s because everyone loves free stuff or paying for shipping is extra painful, I can safely say: sales volume will increase when you offer Free shipping.
Free Shipping taps into the dark corridor that encases our credit card and whispers “buy me.” It rationalizes buying something online that we might just as easily buy at the store down the street. It justifies our retail itch and transforms maybe-buyers into full-fledged conversions. Sounds great right?
Maybe.
From the consumer’s perspective, free shipping is a huge pull factor but when does it make sense for you to offer it? Will the sales increase justify the $5.99 you fork over to pay for free shipping? In this post, I’ll review the decision making process and outline the factors you’ll need to consider when deciding whether or not to offer Free Shipping.